Page 39 of Dreadful

“Baby.”

Those four letters move through me the way heat moves through water—slow at first, then everywhere at once, until I can’t find the place it started.

“Told ya,” Gage crows.

I don’t get a chance to respond. Gage’s arm hooks around my waist and the ground disappears. I get one breath before the water swallows us both—cold shock, white noise, the muffled roar of displacement—and then I’m kicking back toward the surface, blinking chlorine from my eyes.

The laugh comes before I can stop it. Bright and unguarded and completely involuntary, the kind that lives in your chest for days before it finally finds a way out. I don’t remember the last time I laughed like that. I’m not sure I want to think about it too hard.

Gage catches me around the middle before I can reach the wall.

“You can’t hold onto me and expect me to tread water,” I tell him, twisting in his grip. “Some of us can’t touch the bottom.”

He grins, slow and unhelpful, and walks us two deliberate steps toward the deep end. “Better?”

“Gage.”

“Wrap your arms around me. I’ve got you.”

I do—arms looped around his neck, legs around his waist, the full length of us pressed together in a way that makes it hard to think clearly.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Over here.” He swims us to the far wall and drapes his forearms over the edge, and I ease my legs down until I’m just holding on, my cheek close enough to his jaw that I can feel the warmth still radiating off his skin despite the water.

His eyelashes have clumped into little dark spikes.

“I remember when you broke this.” I drag a fingertip along the bridge of his nose, following the slight bump near the top.

“Yeah, which time?”

“You know when.”

Something shifts in his expression—amusement, mostly, but underneath it something softer. “I handled that.”

“You cried.” I bite the inside of my cheek to suffocate the grin threatening to spread.

“I did not cry,” he says with a scoff.

“Oh, you definitely cried a little. I distinctly remember tears.”

“I’m sure you’re aware, Bell, but when you break your nose, your eyes have a tendency to leak.” His mouth finds the side of my neck in retaliation—not a kiss exactly, more of a delicious kind of threat.

“Right. Leaking, of course,” I sputter around a laugh, tipping my head back.

My gaze zeroes in on Rafe across the yard on instinct. And even though the world is upside down now, I see him clearly. Outwardly, he looks the same—almost bored even. But I see the tension in his frame, the set of his jaw is different. I feel it the way you feel a change in pressure—not quite a sound, not quite a sensation, just a sudden awareness of being in someone’s periphery. My skin pricks with it.

Gage’s thumb traces a slow line up my spine. He threads his fingers into the hair at my nape and lifts my head until our faces are inches apart. “Stay with me, Bell.”

I look back at him. “I’m right here.”

“Hm.” He dips his head until his lips drag across my collarbone, tightening his grip on my hair. It’s deliberate enough to make a point.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I kind of like it.

“If you could do anything right now, what would you do?”

“This.” His reply is immediate.