“This way.” He spoke again, his voice soft and warm, like a gentle spring rain, and then he held his hand out.

I looked down at it. Big. Reassuring, and I wanted to take it. I hiked my dress up slowly. I’d already ditched the high heels—you couldn’t walk on a beach with them. I took a step and stopped when I got to the water’s edge. I glanced down at the small waves. They looked harmless like this, but I knew better. I knew what lurked beyond the breakers. I knew that other world intimately, that one in which you can’t breathe and where you finally let go.

Let go.

The thought hit me like a wave might do. The thought that if I was out there now—falling into the water, sinking under—that this time, I would fight. I wouldn’t let go. I would fight to breathe and live, and fight my way up to the surface with everything I had. The thought made me take a step into the water. The cool water lapped at my ankles and at first I gasped, but then it started to feel good.

I slipped my hand through Jake’s as he stepped in farther.

He held my hand so tightly, and gently coaxed me in.

“Not too deep,” I said nervously.

“Not too deep,” he reassured me.

The water climbed over my ankle to my calf. I jumped and giggled as a small wave broke against my knee and splashed me in the face.

Jake stopped walking. “Hi, Anything But JustLori,” he said.

“Hi, Jake,” I replied.

We smiled at each other in the water, the music and bass coming from the club thumping through the air. He moved closer to me and his eyes drifted down to my lips.

“There’s something I didn’t get to do at the dance,” he said.

“What?” I asked, my eyes leaving his and also traveling down to his lips.

“This.” And then he pulled me into his arms and kissed me. The music throbbed through us as the kiss started out slowly and then deepened. He took my face between his hands and I dropped my dress, letting it fall into the water below as the kiss intensified. And then his hands left my face and traveled across my shoulders and started to blaze a hot trail down my arms . . .

This was it. Don’t pull away. Don’t pull away, I told myself. Let him touch you.

His hands drifted down my arms to my fingertips, where they stopped for a while, before moving off again. And then I gasped against his lips when I felt his hands on my lower back. I wrapped my arms around his neck and allowed my body to fall into his. No one’s hands had been on my body like this before—except his.