Page 60 of The Next Chapter

The first brush is soft, like a flicker.

But then I’m so pent up that soft is just not going to cut it.

With as much purchase as I can manage treading water, I wind my hand around the back of his neck. The move makes him bob down in the water which also lets him deepen the kiss. And almost drowning him aside, now we’re talking.

The slide of his tongue is like heaven.

His hand on my scalp makes me shiver.

I’m a bundle of nerve endings and they’re all lighting up. There’s a good chance I look radioactive right about now.

We’re a clash of lips and teeth and tongue. Treading water and kissing is actually not as easy as romance movies would have us believe, but we’re A-star for effort.

I’m unleashed and I should be terrified about how good the press of his body against mine feels.

Then, there’s a pain like lightning down my calf. I yank my mouth away from Noah’s. ‘Fuck, cramp!’ I tell him. Every time I move my leg the pain gets worse, lancing through my muscle like a hot poker.

This. This is why I have a healthy fear of open water. One wrong move and you drown. This is it. I’m going to die in an oversized puddle on the side of a mountain.

I panic some more. Swallow icy water. It makes me cough and splutter. Oh god.

Warm arms wrap themselves around my middle and I’m floating backwards towards the mossy banks.

I will my breathing to go back to normal.

Not today, Death.

There’s a chance I said that out loud because Noah laughs.

Well, that’s one way to ruin a good kiss.

We’re at the edge now, and even though I can absolutely walk, Noah hauls me out and I let myself be dragged like a ragdoll. We land on our backs, and I just stare up at the tree canopy above us. Breathing hard.

‘Argh… ahhhh.’ Noah’s hands are on my calf.

‘This should help.’ He rubs the sore muscle. And even though I’m pretty sure that rubbing has zero impact on cramp, I am not about to turn down a leg rub from Noah.

Still, I don’t want him to feel obliged to do it for hours, so after a respectable amount of time, I say, ‘I think I’m good now, thanks.’ I can’t look him in the eye.

‘We should probably be getting back,’ I tell him, all the reasons that kiss was a bad idea hurtling back into my brain now that we’re no longer kissing. ‘I need a shower.’

He nods and kneels up, pulling his trainers towards him.

I sit up too, realizing that half the forest floor is stuck to my wet back.

I wrestle wet socks onto wet feet and push them into my trainers with an audible squelch.

We agree to walk the rest of the way back, on account of the cramp.

What do we do now?

With Colin, we’d been talking online for so long before we met, it was obvious what we both wanted. A life partner. Someone to split the council tax bill with. But this with Noah, like everything out here, it’s just so completely outside of my comfort zone.

‘I can actually hear your brain, you know?’ he says as we emerge onto the depressed grass path that winds around the loch.

And an impromptu swim is all well and good until you have to walk home all soggy with bits of branches in your hair. Then the whole thing loses some of its shine.

‘I’m not thinking that hard,’ I tell him.