She comes up from the water and smiles. “So what do you say, Wolverine? Cease-fire for one day, pretend we don’t have a past, know we won’t have a future. Maybe, today we just relax, swim, and try not to burn the house down.”

“Twenty-four hours.” I can’t get my voice to stop shaking. “Why now? Why twenty-four hours?”

She swims toward me and leans her arms on the side of the pool, I never noticed, but her nails are a pretty shade of blue. When did she paint them? When did she buy nail polish?

Stupid questions that I literally can’t stop fixating on as I lean down and put my feet in the pool next to her. “So?”

She tugs my ankle. “I’m tired, Ambrose. I’m so tired.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I just want a break. Haven’t you ever just needed a break? I have no idea what’s going to happen after we graduate. I have no clue where I’m going, I have nothing, nobody, and I’m so, so sick of worrying about the same thing over and over again. So yeah, I want a cease-fire. I want to swim and feel free. I don’t want to fight with you. I just need—“

“—Freedom,” I answer in a harsh whisper. “Where you don’t feel like the victim even if you aren’t.”

Her eyes narrow. “Yeah.”

“All right.” I don’t know what the hell I’m doing as I peel my shirt over my head and toss it onto the concrete. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right.”

Or wrong.

Let’s be honest; all of this is wrong, even if it feels right, but who am I to say no.

Not when she’s right there.

Not when I’m right here.

Damn.

I feel like an addict waiting for my next hit while still trying to push away the one thing that will destroy me.

We have no other option but destruction.

And yet, I give in.

I fold.

Maybe I always will.

She swims back with a small smile, pieces of hair are sticking to her cheeks. I want to touch them.

I’m tempted to lick the water from her face like a psycho, but damn I feel dehydrated suddenly.

I’m cold, yet the flame feels like it’s getting higher and higher; it rises the closer I get to her, telling me we’re about to get burned, telling me I’m repeating a past mistake, like we’ll both be burned this time, again and, again, and yet I pull off the rest of my clothes and jump into the water, splashing her, I’m swimming toward her.

It hits me, the idea that maybe I can’t quit this girl—no matter what I feel or what I think, she just exists in my universe, and my universe is part of hers.

She swims toward me; I try so hard not to look at her long legs, but I fail, and then she’s right in front of me, panting, out of breath, asking for that cease-fire, asking me for twenty-four hours of normalcy that I want nothing more to give her.