Heartache and Hope (Heartache Duet #1) - Jay McLean Page 0,73
my neck. “I’m so fucking close to…” Then he laughs. “We need to cool the fuck down.”
I nod, eyelids heavy, hands going to the back of his head.
“You ready to go in?”
“Carry me?”
He rears back, his eyes holding mine. “Always, Ava.” And I know what he’s saying without saying it—he’ll not just carry me physically, but metaphorically, too. He’ll carry the heavy weight that comes with all my burdens. Always.
The water is cooler on our bodies than we expected, but we adjust quickly. “If you could be anything in the world, what would it be?” he asks, circling me while I wade around the shallow water.
“Easy. True crime fact checker. No, wait! I’d host my own podcast. Or, like, make YouTube videos, but without me in them. Maybe just my voice. I like my voice.”
“You do have a nice voice,” he says, stopping in front of me to hold me to him. I instinctively wrap myself around him. He adds, “But you’d definitely get more views if you showed your face.”
“You think?”
“Ava, I’m a guy with working eyes. Yes.”
“Do you think guys would—you know—over me?” I joke.
He laughs. “Also, yes. But I don’t like to think about that.”
“If I get enough views, I could possibly make an income from it.”
“Possibly,” he says, amusing my random thoughts.
“Maybe I should get a boob job,” I murmur, looking down at my breasts.
He rolls his eyes. “Your boobs are fine, Ava.”
“Just fine?” I pout.
He kisses the top of each breast. “They’re perfect.”
“Tell me when you fell in love with basketball,” I ask him, my chest to his back while he piggybacks me through the water so we can explore what looks like a cave.
He shakes out his hair, flicking droplets all around him. “I don’t really know. There wasn’t a specific defining moment. I remember being around twelve and… I mean, I didn’t really know how well I’d played, but apparently one of the recruits from FSU was there, and he spoke to Dad after the game, told him that I had ‘real potential.’” He turns us around so I can climb onto the rocky embankment covered by a low cliff edge. I sit on the edge, listen to him speak. “I swear to God, Dad told everyone about that conversation, even the lady at the gas station on the way home. He was so damn proud.” He pulls himself up to sit next to me, his knees bent, elbows resting on them. The sun beats down, making his eyes as blue as the lake in front of us. He smiles when he turns to me, his shoulders lifting. “So… I don’t know. I think, for me, it was never about my love for basketball so much as it was about my dad’s love for me.”
I hold his arm to me, rest my head on his shoulder. “So… you do it all for your dad?”
He kisses the top of my head. “Kind of like how you do everything for your mom, right?”
We’re farther in the narrow cave, still exposed to anyone in the lake, but hidden away enough that we’d see them first. We spent the first few minutes exploring, finding rocks strong enough to carve our names on the underside of the cliff. I glance at him, at the way his brow dips in concentration as he works on the middle stroke of the letter A. So far, he’s written Connor 4 A, and it’s so sweet and innocent and brings to mind my own innocent insecurities. “Connor?”
“Ava?” he responds, not looking away from his task.
“Why don’t you want to have sex with me?”
He drops the rock he’d been using, then curses and picks it back up. He continues the middle stroke, digging deeper and deeper.
“It’s just, you’ve had the chance. You’ve had me in your bed, and me here, now, and you don’t really… touch me… like that, I guess…” I mumble, tripping over my words. I sit down, my back against the stone wall.
He rubs the heel of his palm against his eye, groaning.
“You don’t need to answer; it’s okay. I was just wondering, is all.”
He’s on the final A when he says, his voice low, “I’m scared.”
“Scared?” I repeat. “Of me?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “I’m just worried that I won’t perform, I guess. And you’re a lot more experienced than I am.”
“Not a lot,” I rush out.
He shrugs. “You’ve done more than I have. Hell, you’ve done all of it.”
I’m quiet a moment, wondering how he knows, but then…