“No.” I swiped my wet hair away from my face, not offering him anything else. He wouldn’t understand. Or maybe he would. He had lost his father, and almost lost his fiancée a few months apart from each other. Emma wasn’t the same. While tonight did give me hope things with her might finally be hitting a turning point, I wasn’t willing to bet on it. Not yet.
“Looked like it,” he grumbled.
I glanced at him as I hoisted myself up onto the dock beside him. “I wasn’t trying to drown myself. I was floating.”
“Submerged underwater for forever.” He handed me my towel beside him.
“Not forever.” I dried myself, and then wrapped the towel around me. It didn’t feel right to be sitting beside Dawson in my tiny bikini. “Just for longer than you were obviously comfortable with.” I tried to put a teasing tone into my words, but it came out wrong, making my words sound weird. Snippy.
“Yeah. You got that last part right.” He placed a hand over his heart, and shifted until his eyes were locked with mine. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.” He was serious.
“Sorry.” I wrapped my arms around myself and hung my legs off the edge of the dock. Now that I was out of the water I could feel a chill in the air. It settled into my bones, causing me to shiver. “I didn’t know you were there. What are you doing out here?” He shouldn’t be here. He should be far away from me.
His jaw twitched, as though he didn’t want to tell me. I noticed his eyes drift out toward the sky, the colors of the sunset lighting his face in different shades of purple and pink. “I have a hard time being at my house alone. Since Dad passed away.”
My stomach flipped. “Oh.” I didn’t know what more to say. I understood his pain, but then again, I didn’t.
“I keep wondering if I should sell the house and move on.” He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “But, then I think about Emma and I can’t. I need to be here. For her.”
The breath was knocked out of me by his words. They hurt me. Even though I knew they shouldn’t. I should be telling him how true his words were, reinforcing them, but I couldn’t.
Then I realized what he was saying. He wasn’t telling me he wanted to sell his father’s house; he was telling me that he wanted to leave Parish Cove. A spasm of panic rippled through me, because what if he did?
What if things between him and Emma didn’t work out? I knew it was hard for him to continue pursuing my sister when all she wanted was for him to move on to someone else. What if he finally gave in to what she wanted and let go? What if he left Parish Cove without ever looking back? I wouldn’t blame him, but I wouldn’t be one hundred percent happy about his choice either. It would crush me, because he would be leaving me. Twice.
I smoothed my fingertip against my brow. No. I couldn’t think like that. Dawson wasn’t mine. He never had been, and he never would be. He was Emma’s, and if things between them didn’t work, things between us still couldn’t. You don’t date your sister’s ex-fiancé. It was an unwritten rule. Right?
It should be. Dear God, it should be.
“And you,” Dawson muttered, loud enough for me to wonder if he had said anything at all.
“What?” My voice cracked as the word pushed its way past my lips.
He turned to look me in the eyes. “I said ‘and you’. I couldn’t leave you behind either. You need me as much as Emma does, as much as I need you.”
All I heard was those three final words of his—‘I need you.’
For years, I had dreamed of him saying those words to me, among others in the three-word category, but I never thought it would happen.
The circumstances surrounding why he admitted to needing me slammed into me from all sides. It wasn’t that he was admitting his deep, long-rooted, undying love for me. It was that he knew we needed each other to make it through things with my sister, to help get her back on track. No one besides us knew what the other one was feeling when it came to her situation.
A sudden sense of nausea sloshed through my stomach. This was what had pulled Emma and Dawson together. They had bonded over taking care of an ailing parent. And now what were we doing? Bonding over my sister’s accident.
I couldn’t look at him. This was wrong. Everything about this moment was wrong. Realizing this didn’t change how I felt about him though. I was sick. How could I have these desires for him? I was betraying Emma. I was disrespecting her in the worst of ways, and she didn’t even know. Somewhere along the line, I had turned into a sneaky snake, and I hated myself for it. I needed to lock all of these feelings up inside and toss away the key.
Dawson and I could be friends and nothing more. Friends helped one another through tough times. That was what we had been doing. It was what we would keep doing, because I couldn’t bear to shut him out. Not now. Not while there was still so much happening with Emma. Not while I was still worried about how things for her would turn out.
“I know.” I didn’t deny what he’d said, because it was the truth.
His brows furrowed as he stared at me, and I wondered if he imagined I would have said otherwise. Had I surprised him? “Why are you looking at me like that? Did you think I would argue with you?”
“Actually, yeah, I did.” His lips twisted into the same boyish smile they always seemed to when he was embarrassed about something. It was cute.
Even as a friend, I was allowed to think something about him was cute, wasn’t I? The beginnings of a headache twitched behind my right brow as my confusing emotions continued to torment me.
“What have you got here?” He moved to grab the grocery bag I’d packed, breaking whatever had been building between us.
“A picnic for one.”
“Salad, sweet potato chips, dip, and—” He lifted out the water bottle. “I know this isn’t water.” His grin grew.
“It’s not.”
“Care to share? I didn’t have much to eat tonight, and I could always go for a drink, even if it is a little fruity.”
Friends shared meals and drinks with one another.
“Um. Sure.” I reached for the sweet potato chips. “Here. There was this guy who gave me a really great tip when it came to making these.” I was trying to be normal. To ease the tension in the air around us.
“Oh yeah, and what was that?” A light twinkled in his eyes, one I was glad to see come back.
I nodded. “Yeah. He told me they needed to be cooked.”
Dawson’s warm laugh drifted from him. I loved his laugh. “Smart guy.”
“I think so.” I grinned as I popped open the dip. “He also saved my ass on this dip.”
“He saved your ass, huh?”
“Yeah, he tossed mine out and made a fresh one. This one tastes good and won’t give you food poisoning; the other one, I’m not so sure about.”
Another rumble of laughter bellowed out of him, vibrating the air around us with his happiness. “I doubt it would have poisoned anyone. You’re too sweet and cute to make poison, even the accidental kind.”
I swallowed hard. His words making something shift inside of me. Friends. We were two friends hanging out. Friends shared meals together. They shared drinks. They said nice things about the other when they were being hard on themselves.
Friends were all we were and all that we would ever be, I reminded myself.
THE HOUSE WAS DARK and eerily quiet when I slipped back through the kitchen door. My cheap sandals squeaked against the tile floor as I maneuvered to close it behind me. Goose bumps prickled across my skin at the coldness in the air. AC was a wonderful thing to have, as long as you weren’t coming in from outside, dripping wet.
I tiptoed to my room, wondering how late it was and why Emma hadn’t waited up for me like I thought she would. I was glad she hadn’t though. My guilt from having spent time with Dawson at the dock was already eating at my insides.