“She’s definitely a reason to stay, isn’t she?” I call up to him, a few feet above me. “I like having her around.”
Kaleb keeps going, crawling the incline to the top of the waterfall.
“Nod once if you’re thinking the things I’m thinking,” I say.
Finally, he glances down at me, his dark eyes dead as usual as he pauses his climb.
But I keep going. “I know you are,” I tease. “You were going at her so hard the other night, she couldn’t get a word out.”
His gaze looks out, back over to the beach where Tiernan is. I look, too, seeing she’s taken off her shirt, sporting a white bikini top on a body she hides damn well under my clothes. Her breasts are almost too big for the top, but she keeps her shorts on as she sits on her blanket, arms resting on her knees and looks up at us through her sunglasses.
“What did she feel like?” I ask.
But when I turn around, Kaleb is climbing again, sweat making his black hair stick to his neck and temples.
“Kaleb?” I grab a pebble and throw it at his legs. “What was it like?”
He scowls down at me but keeps going.
I glance back at her again. My dad squats down next to her, showing her how to bait a hook. I have to give her credit. She is indulging him. I fucking hate fishing.
“I wonder what she feels like when she’s happy,” I tell him. “When she gives herself to someone and lets herself want it.”
I’d love to see what she looks like when she’s alive.
“I hated that yesterday, you know? Seeing her like that.” I don’t know if he’s even listening, but I keep watching her. “She needs us.”
I need another presence in the house if I’m going to make it through another winter here.
I turn back to Kaleb, and he’s stopped. He looks down at me.
“Don’t run her off,” I warn him. “I mean it. If she stays, I’ll stay.” And then I add, “For the winter, anyway.”
Tiernan
“You said you didn’t want to fish,” my uncle says behind me.
I reel in the line, glancing over my shoulder and seeing him approach.
I turn back around.
He found me.
My flannel, tied around my waist, blows against my thighs as the skin on my bare back and shoulders prickles.
He stops next to me, baiting his hook.
After the boys darted off to cliff dive before, Jake tried to get me to fish, droning on about how the reel and rod work and how to cast a line, but I barely listened. Kaleb’s jump off the top of the waterfall made my stomach drop even more than it already had during my interaction with Noah this morning.
I hadn’t wanted him to leave the shower.
I waited for him to touch me.
“You don’t like help, do you?” Jake asks me.
I draw in a breath. Nope. Which is why I decided to sneak over here when you weren’t looking and do it myself.
I watch the water flow where my line disappears under the surface. Do fish actually swim in streams with this much of a current?
“You’re not asking, you know?” he continues, trying to catch my eyes. “I was offering.”
“I’m a loner.”
He snorts under his breath. The current pulls the line, and I reel it in a few inches as he casts his own, the spool singing loudly.
He clears his throat. “So how is it you can shoot, but not fish?”
“I never cared to learn.”
“And now?”
I throw him a look. “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t know how.”
I don’t want the boys doing everything for me. And learning new things keeps my mind busy. I can do origami, play three songs on the ukulele, type seventy words a minute, and it only took me three months to train myself to do a handstand.
“Competitive, huh?” he asks.
“No, why?” I arch an eyebrow. “Is that a de Haas family trait?”
“No, a Van der Berg one.”
I look up at him. I expected a remark about my family.
“You’re ours now,” he says and looks down to meet my eyes.
Ours now.
When you’re here, you’re a Van der Berg, Noah had said.
Jake’s soft eyes hold mine, and the way he stares at me makes warmth bubble up in my chest, and I don’t know why. Noah and Kaleb seem miles away.
I look away, suddenly aware he’s half-dressed, but his eyes stay on me. I can see him out of the corner of my eye as I reel my line back in a little. His smell surrounds me—a mixture of grass, coffee, and something else I can’t place.