“I know.” She pulled out a few more pictures of them fishing, hiking, and playing Monopoly with Beau and Nick. “Look at the scowl on Nick’s face.”
“Ornery bastard.” Zev snickered and fished out a picture of him and Carly riding their bikes in front of his parents’ house. Jillian and Jax were sitting on the hood of their mother’s car, Beau and Nick were playing catch with their father on the grass, and Graham was pulling his bike out of the garage. “Remember how Graham used to try to follow us?”
“Yes, and half the time you tricked him into staying behind as the lookout with the walkie-talkie.”
Zev flashed a cocky grin. “Because I wanted to be alone with you.”
“We were ten.”
“What can I say? I fell in love with you the day I first asked you to be my adventure partner when we were in second grade.”
“You did not.”
“You’re right. It was before that. But that was a major day for me. When I went home that afternoon, my dad and I had a man-to-man talk.”
“I think you mean a man-to-boy talk.”
“Don’t dis my manliness. I might have been little, but I knew what I wanted. My father gave me a lecture about being careful when we went out on adventures. He said to remember that you were a girl and that it was my job to protect you.”
“I was pretty tough,” she said, loving his father even more for having had that talk with Zev.
“I told him that. I said you were tougher than all the boys in my class. But he said it was still my responsibility to make sure you were safe.”
“He’s a good dad.”
Zev set the picture down and said, “Want to know what else he said?”
“What?” She reached into the box for more pictures.
“He said if I got any funky feelings, like if I wanted to kiss you or if you tried to kiss me, that we should probably wait until we were older so it didn’t ruin our friendship.”
“Really? But we were so young.”
“I know. I was kind of floored. My father never said much. Even back then I knew that when he spoke, whatever he was saying was worth listening to. Why do you think you had to be the one to push us toward every base?” He held her gaze and said, “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you. I was supposed to be protecting you, and I was always walking a fine line that I didn’t fully understand. I had all these hormones pulling me toward doing things, but the last thing I wanted to risk was our friendship or do the wrong thing.”
He sounded so heartfelt and honest, her words came unbidden. “You’ve never stopped protecting me. As much as it hurt us both, you left because you thought you were protecting me, and you didn’t go after me when I left Mexico because you thought you were doing what I wanted. You were still protecting me.”
“And then when I saw you at the wedding, all that protecting went to shit.”
She pressed her shoulder against his. “Dream on, Braden. You’ll always protect me.”
“Oh, I’m dreamin’ all right, Dylan. Dreaming of you naked in my arms again.”
They reminisced, kissed, and kidded around as they went through more pictures of the two of them on field trips and archaeological digs, sled riding with his siblings, and bundled up in a tepee they’d built on Zev’s bed. There were holiday pictures with funny Santa hats and Fourth of July celebrations where they were running around with sparklers. There was a picture of Carly and Zev at fifteen asleep on the Bradens’ couch, fully clothed, with Zev lying behind her, his arm around her middle. Nick was standing over them, arms crossed, a scowl on his young face. Carly remembered that night well. She and Zev had asked their parents if she could stay over to watch a Freddy Kruger marathon. It was all fairly innocent, although they’d made out and gone to second base when they were alone. They’d woken up to that scowl and to Jillian claiming she had blackmail material on her digital camera—including the picture they were now looking at and one of Zev and Carly kissing. Zev had confiscated her camera, keeping the evidence.
“Babe, look at this one.” Zev leaned closer, showing her a picture of them with Beau and Tory at a Pleasant Hill Spring Festival.