“No,” said Ben. His heart was beating more quickly, and he realized that he was afraid that Caddie would stop talking now. “You are interesting. To me.”

“But not to anyone else?” Caddie said.

“To anyone, probably,” said Ben. “But right now to me especially.”

“I’m guessing this is why you don’t date much,” said Caddie.

At first Ben thought that she was angry again, but she was smiling a little, and he realized that she was merely teasing him.

“So, what else?” Caddie asked.

There were so many things that Ben wanted to talk to her about now that they’d started—what she wanted from him, where they could go from here, what she was doing when she didn’t come home. This last question was the most pressing, and also the last one he wanted to raise. He feared that Caddie would just pull back into her shell, and although he worried about what she was doing, he knew that, at least for the moment, he had to let her keep that part of herself a secret.

“How about dinner?” he suggested. “All of this talking is making me hungry.”

“I could do that,” Caddie said. “I’ve even been known to eat and talk.”

Ben stood up. He was feeling good. Caddie stood as well, and suddenly they were facing one another. This is the part where we hug, thought Ben. He started to reach out.

“I’m going to put a sweatshirt on,” said Caddie, moving quickly past him. “It was getting kind of cold out there.”

Ben let her go. Don’t push her, he told himself as he listened to her walk up the stairs. This time, there was no pounding of feet, just the soft groan of wood. It was, Ben thought, the loveliest sound he had ever heard.

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29

Hudson stood up and pulled the mask from his head. He was hyperventilating and looked around for a way out of the pool. A second later, Ben was standing beside him, his hand on Hudson’s shoulder. “What happened?” he asked.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Hudson said. “It felt like I was drowning.”

“Put your regulator in,” Ben ordered. When Hudson didn’t respond, he took the regulator and helped it to Hudson’s lips. Reluctantly, Hudson opened his mouth and closed it around the rubber mouthpiece.

“Now breathe,” said Ben.

Hudson breathed. Air rushed into his lungs. He exhaled, then did it again, in case the first time was a fluke. Again the air flowed into his lungs. He let the regulator drop from his mouth and looked at Ben. “It really did feel like I was drowning,” he said sheepishly.