Page 98 of Swerve

“So you are more beautiful?”

I shake my head, glancing down under a bout of ridiculous shyness.

He tips my chin up, and I am forced to meet his eyes. “You are. I don’t think my memory even did you justice.”

“You say that to all the girls?”

He swings a glance left and right. “What girls?”

I laugh.

“There is something I’ve been thinking about, here all by my lonesome.”

“What is that?“ I ask softly.

“What it would be like to kiss you. Really kiss you.”

I feel the breath catch in my throat. My heart thumps once, hard. I feel a boldness I’ve never felt before. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

The heat in his gaze ignites something inside me. I slip my arms around his neck, and he lowers his mouth to mine. We kiss, and I all but dissolve in his arms. I’ve never been kissed like this, and all I know is that I want it to go on forever.

When he pulls back, he stares down at me, brushes the back of his hand across my cheek. “Not even my imagination lived up to that.”

“Mine either,” I admit. We study each other, taking our time, and then I say, “Can I tell you something?”

He nods, rubbing his thumb against my lower lip.

I close my eyes for an instant and then open them to meet his gaze full force. “This past year, I’ve realized that life is to be lived. The desire I once had to make something of myself, become someone my parents would have ended up being proud of feels like something a little different these days, a need to really live, experience moments and places I know I will look back on one day and be grateful for having done.”

He studies me in silence long enough that I begin to wonder if this sounds silly. But then he says, “I want what I do and who I’m with to be deliberate. My choice.”

“Me too,” I say softly.

He takes my hand and starts pulling me toward the sea in front of us. “Let’s make that first memory.”

I laugh, following him across the warm sand. “I can’t swim in this,” I say, waving a hand at the skirt and blouse I’d traveled in.

He loops an arm around my waist and lifts me up, walking into the water. “You sure can’t,” he says, setting me down at a point where the water laps at the back of my legs and reaching out to undo a button, pushes my blouse off my shoulders. He touches his thumb to the scar near my collar bone, leans in and gently presses his lips against it.

I lift his T-shirt, run my hand along his waist and find the scar from the bullet he’d taken in helping me save Mia. I lean down and press my lips to it, lingering for a long moment.

I hear his intake of breath, raise my head to look up at him.

“I can help you with this clothes problem you seem to be having,” he says in a voice laced with desire.

“You’re a master problem solver, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told. How am I doing?”

“So far, very good.” I reach out to pull his face to mine, kissing him, deep and full while the Caribbean Sea laps at the back of my legs and a blazing sun shines down upon us.