“You guys must be getting along better. He hasn’t come over to my house with his mopey face in at least twenty-four hours.”

He smiled. “What, that disappoints you?”

Truthfully, I had been disappointed. A little. I wouldn’t call myself possessive, but Kane was like a favorite pair of jeans that I’d outgrown but still couldn’t bear to give away. “No,” I said. “I mean—”

“Are you guys together?”

“Together as in…together?” Um, yeah, really bright, Hailey. “No. No. No. No. Kane is…Kane. He changes girls more often than he changes his socks.”

“Oh yeah? So my kid brother is a player, huh? Interesting.” He dragged his feet on the ground to stop swinging, so I did too. When he jumped off the swing, he turned to me. “I get the feeling you can teach me a lot, young Hailey.”

I nearly swooned at the way he said my name. He spoke slowly, always, but he said it in a singsong, breathy way that I felt all the way down to my toes. “What do you want to know?”

He shrugged. Then he reached through the wooden slats of the pirate ship and pulled out my notebook. I cringed as he looked at the picture I’d drawn. I’d only managed a few horizontal lines, with small peaks meant to be the ducks swimming across the pond.

He said, “Impressive.” Then he climbed up into the ship and put a pencil to the paper. “You mind?”

“Whatever. I was only playing around.”

He started to sweep the pencil across the page. His dark hair fell in his eyes, and he blew it out of the way, pushed those dark frames up the bridge of his nose. The concentration on his face was delicious; I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t formulate words.

“So,” he said, glancing at me, making me blush because he must’ve known how intently I was studying him. “Hailey Ward. What else do you like to do?”

I’d started playing with a button on my tank top. When I recognized what I was doing, calling attention to that area of my anatomy, I stopped abruptly and fastened my hands against my sides. Flat as a pancake. That’s what Kane called me. Quickly, I crossed my arms over my chest. Better. “Gymnastics?” I don’t know why it came out as a question.

“Really? Can you do a cartwheel?”

I nodded.

“Do one.”

“What, now?”

He nodded.

I turned out into the grassy part of the lawn and did one. Then, because I felt like showing off, I did a front handspring. A terrible, wobbly one, because halfway into it, the bottom of my tank top sagged, exposing my stomach and threatening to reveal all I didn’t have. When I landed, I tucked the hem of my shirt into my shorts. “Happy?”