“You know, ‘sand between your toes’ is an expression for a reason.”
Jo let go of her bag and jerked her head up. Heather of all people plunked herself down beside her, and Jo sucked in a breath. Sure, some people socialized with their advisors, but Jo wasn’t some people. Hadn’t she proven that yet enough?
It was just her luck that Heather and Lisa had volunteered to be chauffeurs/chaperones for this particular field trip. Roberto had the day off, and Dr. Galloway was busy getting things ready for some hotshot visiting scientists. And so both her and Adam’s bosses had decided to tag along.
She hadn’t even been able to let herself sit next to Adam in the van. Not with the two of them looking.
“Sounds overrated to me,” Jo said, before casting her gaze out across the water.
Heather bumped her shoulder against Jo’s, and Jo just about went out of her skin. The touch was so casual, like it was nothing to press past the bubble of space she projected out around herself, and something inside Jo felt like it was crumbling. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
Jo crossed her arms over her chest.
A moment of silence passed before Heather asked, “Have you ever been in the ocean before?”
Jo shook her head. When would she have had the chance? She’d grown up landlocked, had ended up going to college in Chicago. It wasn’t as if there’d been a lot of family vacations when she was a kid.
Quieter this time, Heather said, “Then maybe you should give it a shot.”
“I don’t know…”
“Why did you decide to come today?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour? Despite her reservations, their outing to the rain forest had been more than worth it. Maybe she’d hoped this would be the same.
Maybe she hadn’t been able to resist the heat in Adam’s gaze as he’d pressed her up against the door and asked her.
He looked so good, out there amid the waves. The bronzed musculature of his chest glowed in the sun, the darkened mop of his hair slicked back against his skull.
“Peer pressure,” she settled on. “Mostly.”
Heather hummed. “Yeah. If he’d asked me to go somewhere, I don’t know if I could have resisted, either.”
Forget the heat. Forget everything else. The pit of Jo’s stomach flashed with ice. She turned, following Heather’s gaze, and sure enough, she was staring at Adam. Her mouth twisted with a knowing smile.
Shit. Jo blinked hard and flexed her jaw. “Does everyone know?”
“Nah. A few suspect, maybe. But you’ve been playing it pretty cool. Him, on the other hand?”
“Oh.”
Heather’s voice went soft and warm. “If you could see the way he looks at you…”
Only Jo had. She’d caught him more than once. He’d been completely unguarded about it, gazing at her with a deepness to his eyes.
“Plus,” Heather added, “he’s started to come over here about a dozen times, only he keeps stopping himself.”
Right. He’d been trying to abide by her wishes. Sure, Kim had always known, and she and Jared had gotten more than enough confirmation a couple of nights ago. But their advisors. The scientists they work with…
“We were trying to be discreet.”
“Oh, please. Picking out which summer interns are hooking up is a national pastime around here. It’s the most fun we get all year.”
Off in the distance, Adam’s head swiveled around, and it was just like Heather had described. His gaze sought her out. It wasn’t easy to see from where she sat, but Jo knew his expressions well enough by now.
Nudging her with her elbow again, Heather said, “Do what you want, Jo. But if I were you, I would be taking as much advantage of that as I could. There’s more to life than just work.” With that, she stood, dusting the sand off her legs as she went to rejoin the rest of the grown-ups beneath another umbrella a respectable distance away.
Alone again, Jo tried to force her breathing deeper. But it wasn’t any use. Around her, the world was twisting on its axis.
She’d come to this island dressed in anger, convinced she was being passed over for a choice assignment on account of her gender. She’d taken a guy who was only trying to help—one she’d since learned could be so tender—and she’d literally thrown him on account of some misguided fear, some reflex.
She’d been letting that same fear guide her ever since.
Had she ever not been operating on fear?
The spots in her vision faded, resolving the space around her into hues that seemed even more vivid than they had just a moment before. Bright white sand and the red of her borrowed shorts. Ocean blue and Adam blond. Adam eyes and Adam flesh. And beyond him, a sky that stretched out into infinity, an atmosphere of limitless colors, illuminated by a single star.
It was literally night and day versus the last time she’d stared up at the heavens in wonder. Wrapped in Adam’s arms, still shaking from the revelations she’d made to him about her mother, she’d cast her gaze skyward. For the first time, she’d allowed the possibility she might deserve more.
And here she was, eyes blinded by brilliance instead of darkness, considering almost the exact same thing.
More was out there, swimming freely in the water. More had sunlight dancing off his shoulders. More kept looking her way and waiting for her to join him. All she had to do was stop being afraid to.
For one long, aching moment, she rested her forehead on her knees.
Then with trembling fingers, she reached out and unlaced her boots. When her bare feet touched the sand, she let out a single, cut-off fragment of a laugh. Heather had been right enough. The sand squished between her toes, cool beneath the umbrella’s shade and searing hot beyond it.
She’d scarcely gotten to her feet, scarcely begun to lift the hem of her shirt before Adam was jogging up the beach toward her. And it wasn’t even fair. He looked like something out of a movie, or from television, and here she was. Looking like this.
“Hey.” He came to a stop before her, grinning widely. Water droplets slid in rivulets down his chest. “Are you coming in?”
“Thinking about it.” She was thinking about a lot of things. Casting her gaze aside, she fingered the edge of her shirt again. Quietly, she asked, “You sure I won’t look ridiculous?”
“You’ll look perfect.” He put a hand on her shoulder, ducking to put them eye to eye. “You’ll look like you.”
Fuck her if he didn’t sound as if he actually believed that.
She wanted to laugh, just as much as she wanted to shove her boots on and go hide in the van for the rest of the day. Unwilling to actually do either, she brushed her hair off her face and shook her head.
“Here,” he said, crouching to reach for his pack, which he’d left in a pile with the rest of them. “I promised I’d sunscreen your back.”
It was a relief, not having him looking right at her as she stripped. He probably knew that. Still, she hesitated. “You’re supposed to put it on at least fifteen minutes before you go out there, you know.”
“Then we’ll dawdle here for as long as you think we have to.”
He rummaged through his bag for what seemed like an awfully long time, and she stood there, dumbstruck, until she remembered what she was supposed to be doing.
And it wasn’t any big deal. Adam had seen her naked plenty of times at this point. She was wearing shorts that covered her to her knee, and her sports bra was almost a tank top. It was just her shoulders and a little bit of midriff. And cleavage and arms and…
Fuck it. She closed her eyes and tugged her shirt over her head. Her heart stuttered, and she held her breath. But when she looked again, nothing had changed. The world had kept on spinning. Their advisors still sat a stone’s throw away, talking amongst themselves, while the rest of their friends played in the waves or lounged in the sun. No one looked their way.