Deeper (14 page)

Maybe we’re just seeking comfort. Maybe we’re just dealing with released tension. Maybe it’s just stress. I don’t know why we keep touching, when we barely know one another. Can barely stand one another.

He pulls back, keeping a lock of my hair wrapped around one finger. I look into his eyes. They’re too intense to be sky blue. They’re ocean blue. Caribbean blue.

“So you can’t fall in love,” he says, wrapping my hair further around his finger, pulling me closer. “You can’t have sex. I’m okay with the things you can’t give me. Just give me what you can, and I’ll let it be enough.”

My eyes move to his lips as he speaks, watching the perfect, full shape of them wrap around the words. I barely register what he says.

“I don’t know what I can give you.” I put my hand over his, the one that’s wrapping my hair. “This is all happening so fast.”

“Is a month fast? It feels like forever. It feels like I’ve been waiting for you to say you’re mine from the moment I met you.” He doesn’t pull back. “I can’t stay away. Every time I touch you I want more.” He pulls my hair, and me, closer, till he’s whispering almost against my lips.

I can’t believe he’s saying this. We’re just coworkers. Coworkers who can’t keep their hands off each other. Coworkers who seem to understand each other more than anyone else.

“Knight,” I say, and my lips brush his. “We can’t. We’re working together. We have to stay professional.”

“Oh, cause we’ve been so professional so far? You were awfully professional at the party, on the bed, underneath me.”

I want to be mad at him but his lips are tickling mine as he talks and it’s driving me crazy. Maybe I should listen to Amy and take what he’s offering. It’s a better offer than I ever should have expected, after all. He’s willing to go without the sex. He wants to keep me safe. Hopefully he’ll eventually realize a part of that is letting me keep other people safe too.

His hand under mine feels so right. I know I should think about what Amy said happened to him. I should probably think about what’s happened to me.

But it’s like the broken parts of us seem to fit together so well that we are both willing to fall into this and not question it. I don’t want to question it. For once I just want to go with something and worry about it later.

“Want to talk about this in the hot tub? I’m sore,” I say. I’d rather tell him there, where my body can relax and I can see him shirtless.

He looks at my scratches and anger flares in his eyes. “Are you going to be okay in there?”

“Yeah, some idiot covered me in waterproof bandages.” I grin.

“My bad.” He stands and pulls off his shirt and heads over to the hot tub. He slides in and watches me walk over. I slowly pull off my jeans, then my shirt, and throw both on the bench near the hot tub. There’s a window high up on the wall through which we can see the sky. Too bad clients don’t get to sit here on a nice night, letting the warm water soothe them while they watch the stars. It’s really an experience.

It’s more of an experience with Knight. He leans back on his arms, watching the sky with me, and I can’t help but think that if I’m going to fall into something stupid with someone, it’s a plus for them to come in this package.

He’s all tanned, rippling muscle, from his shoulders, to his abs, to his ken doll lines. The edges of a tattoo wrap the very sides of them and go around his back. Thorns. A thick line of thorns. I’ve never had a chance to really look at it from the back.

“Can I see your tat?”

He shrugs and turns around, planting his arms on the side of the hot tub. “It’s ugly.”

“Yeah,” I say. He turns around in mock offense but I laugh and get in and come over to him. I put one finger lightly over each edge that wraps his waist, right above his board shorts, and he does a quick intake of breath. “Why thorns?”

He shrugs, puts hands over mine, pulling them around him. “No reason.”

I pull away. “That seems like a lie.”

“Then maybe it’s something I don’t want to talk about. At least not yet.”

“So there are some things you can’t put on the table too. Maybe we should get this all out in the open.”

“Sure.” He sits on his side of the tub and I push away to sit on the bench on the other.

“So you know what I can’t, won’t, do. What about you?”

“Hmm.” He thinks about it, rubs his tat with one hand. I want to touch him there. “I can’t answer every question. I can’t talk about the thorns. Not till I’m ready.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t promise not to want more from you.”

“Okay.”

“Most of all, I can’t watch you get hurt,” he says, and he stares up at me with vivid intensity as he says it. “Don’t ever ask me to do that.”

“Alright,” I say. “Is that all?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He taps a hand on the side of the tub and it makes a slapping noise. “Oh, and I get to pay whenever we’re out. No dutch.”

“Fine.” I need money for school anyway.

“Oh, and this one is really important. I want to kiss you underwater.”

I grin. I’ve been wanting the same thing. Pros of dating a lifeguard. “Deal. Someday.”

“Someday is fine,” he says, coming over to me, picking me up and setting me on his lap in the tub. “It’ll be fun to keep you guessing when it could happen.”

“I’m okay with that.” I float so easily in his lap in the water, yet I can feel his skin and muscles all around me. It’s wonderful.

“Good.” He touches his nose to mine, and looks like some kind of alien up close because my eyes can’t go cross eyed enough to bring him in focus. He looks like he has an eye in the middle of his head, between his two regular ones. I laugh.

“Oh, I’m funny, huh?” He pulls me closer, tries to look menacing, but I slip off his lap and edge away.

“No, not funny.”

“I see,” he says, folding his arms and walking towards me. “I’m trying to be all romantic and you think it’s funny.”

A thrill runs over me. I love cat and mouse. I turn to run but don’t even make it out of the tub before he catches me around the waist and starts to tickle me. How different it is from how I felt about William. I was never excited then. Well, maybe for the 6 seconds prior to his death. Not the right kind of excited.

Knight growls while he tickles me, pretending to be mean while I pretend not to like it, but after a minute he lets me go so that I can breathe and I settle against him in the tub with a sigh.

“So we’re good then?”

“I think so, princess.”

I wrinkle my nose. “That’s the second time. Don’t call me that.”

“Why? It makes sense. If I’m a knight, then aren’t you the princess?”

“No. Gross. I’m a knight too. Or a queen.”

“Are you married?”

“No. I’ll be a knightess.”

“Ugh. That’s worse than princess.” He thinks for a moment, then his handsome face lights up and he laughs. “I’ve got it, you can be the dragon.”

“What?”

“That works, right? That’s the other thing knights hang out with, I think.”

“I’ll keep princess. Actually, how about just plain Rain.”

“Plain Rain. You want to be plain Rain?”

I frown because it’s not exactly flattering, and I feel like he always comes out ahead when we verbally spar. “Fine. Princess is fine.”

I shouldn’t like the sound of it. It sounds spoiled and bratty. I’ve always been my own knight. But it’s nice to have someone to depend on. It’s nice to not feel like everything is on my shoulders. With Knight, I feel like I’ll be even more equipped to keep everyone safe. What happened to William won’t happen again.

“Hey Knight, do you know why your mom named you that?”

He tilts his head and his eyes twinkle down at me. “I was wondering when you’d ask. Everyone does.”

“I bet. It’s unique.”

“She was really into romance novels. She says I saved her life when I was born. She calls me her knight. It’s a dumb name I guess.”

“I like it.”

“What about Rain?”

“My parents are from Texas. My mom says I was as welcome as summer rain.”

“Interesting,” he says, pulling me close.

I snuggle against him. “This is going to be sort of fun, isn’t it?”

“Sort of?” he says, pulling me closer. “It’s gonna be a blast.”

Somehow, despite all of my fears and doubts, I believe him.

Ryan smiles at me and shakes his head from the other side of the lap pool. He can’t believe I’m actually guarding.

I don’t have to look up to know that Knight is stalking me in the background. He’s certain something is going to happen, that every guy is waiting to molest me after the whirlpool the other day. Never mind that half of the kids in the pool are children.

My legs ache and I can’t wait for Knight to come take me off the shift and out to lunch. It’s Tuesday and there’s a break from free swim at noon. Two hours off, and the patrons have to leave, and only come back if they’ve paid for the evening as well.

“Enjoying your blast from the past?” Knight’s voice startles me, and I know he’s behind my chair even though I’m smart enough not to take my eyes off the water. It’s the oldest sup trick in the book to test lifeguards on their commitment to their post.

“I’m not going to look at you. I’m watching my water.”

“That’s too bad, ‘cause I’m looking pretty sexy today.”

“Damn,” I mutter. I want to look. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve felt this way about someone, and I’m enjoying it. Lunches together, talking about everything and anything, laughing about the guards’ antics while trying to hide our relationship from them.

He’s a bit overprotective, but it works to have someone watching out for me while I obsessively watch out for everyone else.

I’m only nineteen, and when I’m with Knight I actually feel that age, rather than the old maid I was, hiding in my dorm every night while the others went out and enjoyed college life. I pulled off great grades, but I wasn’t happy.

“Chris is coming in for you.”

“Great.” I shift my weight from foot to foot. Because I’m sore.”

“I could switch out with you.”

“No thanks. It’s good to see what the guards put up with once in a while.”

“I wish they could see everything we put up with,” he mutters with a sigh.

“Speaking of which, looks like you’ve got an issue in the slide pool.”

He groans and jogs over, and I’m glad it’s in my line of vision because the scene is entertaining. Adults always think they can go down the slide, even if they can’t swim, because it’s only three feet deep at the bottom. It doesn’t work that way, and now a man is flailing there even though he’s clearly over six feet and just too panicked to touch the bottom. His head isn’t even submerging.

I try not to smile as Knight tells the guard not to go in yet and tries to wave to the guy. Yells at him to stand up, tries to throw a tube at him. It bounces off the guy’s face, but he doesn’t grab it. I know why he’s reluctant to let a guard go in when it’s not someone really drowning. It throws off the whole rotation and the guard has to change, and it will mean we can’t go to lunch on time. It’s selfish, but that’s just how we think here, and frankly the guy saw the posted rules and chose to break them.

Knight throws up his hands, wades in up to his knees, and pushes the tube in the guy’s face again. The guy pushes past it, trying to use it to get to Knight, but in the process, stands up. His face pales in embarrassment, and he shoves past Knight to get out, getting Knight even wetter.

Knight looks over him at me and I put my hand over my mouth and try not to giggle. He can’t even get mad at me for looking away from the water because people know it’s closing for lunch and everyone in my area has left.

I turn my full attention back to the water, still laughing a bit. If I’d been in his situation I’d be pissed, but that’s how the job is. People assume lifeguarding is rewarding, that it’s full of saving people’s lives and listening to their gratitude, but that’s not how it is at all.

Ninety percent of it is trying to save jerks from their own stupidity and earning their asinine wrath in return. When I worked in the kiddie area at my last park, most of my day was picking up toddlers who had fallen face down in their lifejackets and were now stuck there, drowning, because the lifejackets were too soaked and heavy to let them up.

Stupid parents would just leave them there and chat with each other, till I made my way round to pull their kid, gasping and crying, out of the water. Then they’d come over to me, point a finger in my face, yell at me for touching their kid, and storm off.

Like they’re just too embarrassed by almost letting their kid drown to give me any credit for stopping it.

I’ve never been thanked for a save.

At least, not a patron save. I was thanked by Amy for going in for her the other day. And I was thanked by Kate this morning for helping her through her asthma attack. She said that she was in complete darkness but could hear my voice calling her back, and it kept her from passing out, maybe dying. She thanked me, and it was gratifying, though I was only administering oxygen and rubbing her back and talking to keep her lucid.

Saving people is part of the job, but it’s nice to hear a thank you sometimes. I think of Knight’s face as the dude he saved pushed past him and have to make an effort not to laugh again.

“Something funny, hmm?”

He’s behind me. I can hear drips from his hair hitting the floor. “Nope. No way.”

“Think it’s funny when I have to get wet right before lunch?” he growls.

“No, not at all.”

He blows a loud whistle, signaling the guards to close up their areas, and then cages me in against the chair stand at my station. “So, laughing at my misfortune?”

“Nope.” I take off my tube and set it down on the deck. “I would never, never dare.”

“Good!” He laughs and picks my tube up to carry it to the break room. “Sorry princess, I’ll have to change before we go to lunch.”

“S’okay. When you gotta go you gotta go.”

“You know that’s not how it’s supposed to be used, right?”

“You know, go, as in, go in for a save?”

He laughs and rolls his shoulders back, then shakes his head, spraying water around. I dodge and hold up a hand.