I’d assume. But you know what they say when you assume something.
When I fully opened the door, my mouth fell to the floor.
The very, very wet floor.
“Holy fuck!” Mia yelled. I couldn’t even yell at her for using such a dirty curse word because I was frozen.
My entire house was full of water. Like, not just a little bit damp… there was water everywhere. It covered the tops of my feet when I walked in. Water poured over my toes and crept out onto the porch. The weather strip at the bottom of the door had been keeping it inside.
I quickly ran into the living room, dropping my purse on the porch first, and went straight to the bathroom. Water was spraying everywhere.
It hit me in the face so hard that I had to take a step back to catch my breath. It was like walking up to a spewing fire hydrant, spraying rapidly in every direction possible. I was soaked from head to toe and there was no fucking way I could tell how to turn the water off. The only thing I could tell was that water was squirting from an exposed pipe behind my no-longer-there shower.
They were replacing it and had taken the old one out earlier in the week. Apparently, something had gone very, very wrong.
I hurriedly ran out of the bathroom, dripping with icy cold water. Mia stood back with wide eyes, taking in my appearance.
“Holy shit! What do we do?”
Build an ark and tell people to call me Noah? I have no fucking clue.
Instantly, I thought to call Dawson. I pulled my phone out of my bag, heart racing from stress, my bare feet squishing on my now wet rug, but then my shoulders slumped.
My phone was dead! Oh, my God.
Shit.
“I’ll be back,” I yelled, running down my concrete steps.
I knew that if someone had seen me running down the street in a see-through blouse and skirt sticking tightly to my lower body, bare-footed with stringy, wet hair, they’d probably call the police.
Or a psych ward to come collect me and throw me in with the loonies, but I truly didn’t know what to do and I knew he would.
I rounded the corner to my old street and zeroed in my gaze onto the blue truck that was still parked in the driveway. My heart lifted.
Praise!
I didn’t have time to hesitate as I climbed the familiar porch stairs. I didn’t have time to absorb the pain that I’d felt when walking along the wooden porch and up to the navy blue front door that looked exactly like the one I’d opened and closed so many times in my youth.
Oh, but I definitely had time to worry that Breanna would answer the door.
I knocked anyway. No, wait—I didn’t knock; I frantically pounded my wet fist on the wooden door.
It opened quickly. Dawson stood there wearing only jeans. Let me reiterate that: Dawson stood there wearing only jeans. There was something mouthwateringly edible about an attractive man in dark blue jeans, no shirt, and bare feet. I praised God again, for the beautiful sight.
The dark jeans hung low on his hips, just below those lick-worthy abs that I just knew he’d have, and then my eyes traveled down to the bottom of his pants, where his bare feet stood out. I licked my lips. Literally. The sight of him snatched words right out of my mouth. In fact, the sight of him snatched any other thoughts right out of my brain. When I finally brought my eyes (that no doubt had “fuck me” written all over them) to his, he locked onto my face for a split second before raking his own eyes down my body. They moved so slowly that I felt like time had stopped.
A distant throb ached between my legs and my mouth went dry. My heart squeezed in my chest and I was instantly turned on. One look from him and I was drowning in a puddle of swoon.
Wait, that’s water.
Oh! My house!
“Need a towel?” he asked in that overly cocky voice that I hadn’t heard since we were teenagers.
“My house…”
I shook my soaked hair, still unable to put a proper sentence together. “Water.”