Page 89 of A Pack for the Wedding
Maren splashes water in his face before dunking her head back under to get her hair wet.
"Knox! Beth! Mason!" Arthur waves from the water. "Don't be boring!"
"Knox," I say. "You're up."
He takes one last sip of his seltzer, sets it in the cupholder, and stands. He pulls his shirt over his head, walks to the swim platform, and steps off the edge like he's stepping off a curb.
Clean entry. Comes up pushing water off his face with one hand.
"Acceptable temperature," he reports.
"Mason," Arthur calls. "Come on."
Mason pushes off the back railing, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head in one fluid motion. He walks to the edge and launches himself. He hits the lake like a boulder, sending up a massive, tidal-wave splash that rivals Ben and Harper's combined entry. He surfaces a few feet from Knox, water streaming down his face.
Which leaves me.
Suddenly, I am very aware that I'm surrounded by wet, half-naked alphas whose broad shoulders and dripping chests are doing absolutely nothing to keep my core temperature down. Plunging into a freezing lake actually doesn't seem like a bad idea right about now.
I pull my dress over my head and toss it on the bench. I step through the gate at the back of the boat, curl my toes over the edge of the swim platform, and jump.
Cold. Full-body, electric, every-nerve-awake cold. It rushes over my head and swallows me, and for a second there's no shop, no buyout, no decision, just water and pressure and the muted thump of my heartbeat in my ears.
I surface.
The sun hits the crown of my head. Arthur and Ben are splashing each other like twelve-year-olds. Maren is floating on her back, arms spread, face tilted to the sky. Harper is laughing at her man, who has his hair slicked back and looks younger than he has in weeks. Both Knox and Mason immediately close the distance toward me.
Mason pushes his wet hair back with one hand. "Cold?" he asks, his voice a low rumble.
"Freezing," I manage.
But the truth is, I'm suddenly not cold at all. Knox drifts a few inches to my left, while Mason stays planted on my right, and the sheer, radiating heat of their proximity is enough to make my blood run warm.
From across the water, Arthur yells, "MARCO!" and Maren yells back, "We areadults!" and Ben yells, "POLO!", and the lake fills with noise and laughter.
I float on my back and let the water hold me. My ears are underwater, everything muffled, and I think about what Harper said yesterday. About having exactly the life I wanted, withthem.
I'm still not sure what I'm going to do. But being here, right now, I definitely do feel swayed a certain way.
***
Back at the cabin, we're spread across the deck in various states of sunlit collapse: towels on the planks, legs stretched out.
Harper is lying on her stomach on a beach towel, chin propped on her folded arms, while Ben sits cross-legged beside her, feeding her slices of peach from a paper plate. She takes each bite without even lifting her head, looking exactly like a pampered housecat. He wipes juice off her chin with his thumb, chuckling softly as she nips the pad of his finger before melting back into the sun.
I'm in the wide porch chair, watching the lake through the railing. Arthur is on the deck beside me, back against the wall, working through a container of strawberries. Knox is in the other chair, doing something on his phone. Mason is at the railing, forearms flat on the wood, facing the water.
Arthur picks up a strawberry, turns it once to inspect it, and holds it out to me. "This one's yours."
I look at it. "You're giving me your strawberry."
"I'm giving you thebeststrawberry," he says, offering a wink that sends a sudden, heavy thrill straight down my spine.
He says it casually, the way you'd hand someone a chip from a bag. And I guess I should take it the same way. Except when Ilean forward and take it from his hand, my lips brush the edge of his thumb.
"Good?" he asks, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave as his pupils visibly dilate, suddenly swallowing up the green of his irises.
It's perfectly ripe. "Yeah," I say, my cheeks flushing. "Good."
