“No,” he said carefully. “I wondered, but it never seemed like you wanted to talk about it.” In truth, he’d been desperately curious, but it had seemed like the topic was off-limits. And as they’d established to his great chagrin, they weren’t always so great about talking back then.

“When I was three, I fell into a pool at a party.”

His body tensed, which was stupid, because obviously she was fine. She was right here. In his arms. He forced those arms to loosen. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was here. If they were friends with benefits, there was probably no call for cuddling. He would let her lead the way on that front.

She slid right off him—okay, then. But he didn’t have time to get maudlin over it. She looked him right in the eyes and said, “My dad had to jump in and get me. They didn’t notice right away, though. Apparently I just slipped in. So I wasn’t actually breathing. They called 911, and one of the guests did CPR on me.”

He whistled. “That’d do it.”

“I don’t remember any of it, though.”

“I bet you do, in some kind of visceral way.”

“I must, right? Why else would I have been so freaked out by water for so many years? They tried to make me take swimming lessons after that, but I would just scream bloody murder. I do remember that. Standing on the pool deck and honestly thinking I would die if I had to go in. Everyone kept telling me to calm down, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe just looking at the water. Eventually they gave up.”

His heart was breaking at the image of young Evie terrified and screaming. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I was embarrassed. Who lets their life get derailed by an event they don’t even remember?”

“Your life didn’t get derailed. You just couldn’t swim. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“It kind of was in a lakeside town. But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“No one cared,” he said, wanting to put her at ease. But that wasn’t actually true, was it? And they were telling the truth these days—at least when it came to sex. But she’d opened up to him about this. Could he do the same? “You remember when we were dating?”

“No, Sawyer. I don’t remember that at all.” She rolled her eyes at him but grinned as she did so.

He pushed a lock of hair out of her face. But only because it looked like it was bugging her. Then he made himself stop touching her. Again. It was harder this time. “We’d hang out at the beach, but you’d never go in.”