The liquor warmed me from the inside out, loosening my rules and regulations. The part of me I kept shut down was waking up, coming back to life.
Holden Parish sat beside me on the bed, beautiful and dangerous, his green eyes glittering in the moonlight.
Be careful…
I drained the flask and handed it back.
Fuck being careful.
Holden tipped his empty flask upside down and arched a brow at me. “Do you have something to say for yourself, Whitmore?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Let’s get wasted.”
Laughing and stumbling into each other, we refilled the flask, this time with the Sridhars’s hundred-year-old whiskey. Holden said it was primo, but it burned just as badly going down as the vodka. Holden messed with the stereo again and Prince’s “When Doves Cry” filtered through the warm night.
We went back to the patio where my discarded tux jacket lay in a heap on the ground. A strange exhilaration flooded me, making me warm all over. Though drunk as shit, I felt awake. More awake than I had in years.
I stood up and tore off my tie, then began unbuttoning my shirt. Holden watched me from his lounger, his eyes widening.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” I took off my shirt and yanked off my pants. “No, fuck that, I do know. I’m going to swim.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“Good for you,” Holden said. “Better for me.”
I felt his eyes on me as I stripped down to my boxer-briefs, and instead of it stopping me, knowing he was watching spurred me on. The sensation of being alive and free intensified. I dove headfirst into the deep end. My lungs constricted at the cold bite of water that mellowed, slipping over my skin like cool silk.
I broke the surface and swam to the edge, rested my arms on the concrete. “You coming in?”
The booze was making me reckless. Holden, in the pool with me, stripped down to his underwear, was a bad idea.
Or maybe it’s the best bad idea ever…
“I don’t swim,” he said.
“You don’t know how?”
“I know how. I choose not to.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t been in so much as a bathtub in years. Not since Alaska.”
My chest ached and the anger at those who’d hurt him returned with a vengeance, sobering me slightly.
“What happened?
Don’t give me the PG-rated version. Tell me everything.”
His lips curled in a faint smile. “I like Drunk River. Drunk River is direct.”
“It helped me to tell you my shit. I want to help you.”
“You can’t help me,” he said sadly. “But it’s nice that you want to try.”