Page 12 of Surviving You, Scotch and Sammy 1

“Okay,” she giggles softly. “But until then, you’ll have to count with your fingers.” She gently tugs her hair from my grasp. “Let’s work on trig. I know Mr. Godfrey wants us to concentrate on that.”

***

I’ve been down to the lake almost every day for over two years, only skipping one or two days here and there. I’ve never once set an alarm to ensure I wake up on time, my body just knew it was Sammy time. Time to get up. Time to get my fix. But today, the day I finally have an invitation, I wake to an alarm set particularly early, and I stumble around my bedroom and get dressed while Marc tiredly grumbles from his bed.

My house isn’t tiny, but there are seven of us here, so Marc and I share, and Britt and Kari share, while Alex was lucky enough to get his own room. He graduated high school two years ago, so I’m sure he’ll move out soon enough. I have first dibs on his room when he does.

I pull on running shorts and shove my feet into sneakers, then plugging my earphones in, I run out my kitchen door and hit the pavement and head toward the lake. If I look into the distance, I can barely see the smallest amount of color peeking over the horizon as the sun wakes up, but the street lights are still on and the sky is otherwise pitch black.

If I’m being completely honest, as well as enjoying the view and proximity of watching Sammy swim, I also just don’t feel right about her being alone so early in the morning.

It’s too damn dark and the lake is too secluded. It might be pumping and full of life in the middle of the day in the summer, but five a.m. and alone just doesn’t feel right. It’s almost spooky, the complete and utter silence that surrounds the space while I watch her do laps.

What normally takes me twenty minutes to jog, takes less than fifteen today. I guess I may be a little eager to see her, but I feel like her accepting my request of tutoring meant more than what it appeared on the surface.

A part of me doesn’t give a damn if I fail every math test I ever have for the rest of my life if it means she’ll continue sitting beside me and smiling over my shoulder. But the other part of me wants to slam dunk my exams just to show her I was listening and I’m not a dumbass. I want to impress her.

How do I impress her without making her job redundant?

I stop running just as I hit the grassy knoll surrounding the water, and I walk slowly toward the lake I know she’ll be lapping soon. I’m early and I wasn’t expecting to see her here yet, but as I wander closer, I find her already slicing through the water in one of a few two-piece bikinis she wears. Todays is a simple dark brown with no patterns or embellishments, but she looks amazing no matter how plain her bathing suit. I watch her cut through the water as fast as usual and I wander to the dock and sit down.

This is like a vacation for me. I usually run around the lake and stay far enough away to see her, while the darkness and surrounding trees shield me, but today I get to be front and center.

I kick my shoes off and peel my socks away, then I sit and dangle my legs over the edge of the dock. As soon as my feet touch the water, I literally feel my balls draw up inside myself. It’s cold as fuck in there. Colder than I thought. My eyes snap back to Sammy’s long lean body slicing its way toward me, and I have to talk myself down from snatching her out and wrapping her in a warm blanket.

She does this every damn day! She must seriously need that space from home.

I sit cross legged and wait for my nuts to reemerge, and I rest my elbows on my knees as she swims the last twenty feet toward me. She’s so beautiful in the darkness. She’s so beautiful always.

Her hands grab the edge of the dock just inches from my legs, then her head moves back and her eyes meet mine. With a sassy smile that’s only about ten percent blush and ninety percent sex, droplets of water sit on her lips and nose and tempt me to lick them off.

Soon. So soon.

“You came.”

The water laps around her at her abrupt stop, and the small waves lick up the thick piers of the dock and reach out for me. My teenaged brain instantly sprints toward the gutter, but this is Sammy. Sweet Sammy, which means, no gutter talk. “I told you I would.”

She wipes a hand across her face as the water continues to lap around her. “I wasn’t sure if I dreamed yesterday up.”

“I feel like I did,” I admit. “I’m glad you’re not screaming and freaking out right now. It means it wasn’t a dream.” I watch as she leans her head back, dipping her hair in the water seductively. I lean closer – she’s my magnet, and I couldn’t stop the movement even if I wanted to. “I like this new reality, Sammy. We could steal an hour together every morning before the rest of the world wakes up. It can be our time where you and I are the only people that exist.”

She moves back slowly, warily putting a foot between our previously close faces, and sadness washes over hers again.

My brows pull in tight. “Why so sad?”

“I just don’t understand why you’re nice to me. I’ve accepted the fact I don’t fit in in this town, but you’re an anomaly. You’re so nice to me, I’m almost terrified this is a huge joke, like our entire class are about to jump out of the bushes and steal my clothes.”

“No. I’d never--”

“And somehow, despite my fears and the fact I think you’re batshit crazy for saying some of the things you do, I believe you. I believe you’re not tricking me, but still, that brings me back around to why.”

“Because I love you.”

“No! I don’t believe you, Sam. I don’t believe people our age know what love is, and I don’t believe people our age can be in love.” She moves closer to me again. “I think teenagers possess powerfully creative and emotional brains, and they can think that they feel these things, but it’s not true. It can’t be true.”

I lean toward her, and I wait for her desperate eyes to meet mine. “I know what I know, Sammy. I know that my heart started beating a new tune the day I met you, and it hasn’t gone back to the way it was since. I know that you’re scared because we’re kids, and as kids, we’re hardwired to listen and believe bitter adults when they tell us we don’t know shit and that the world is out to hurt us. And mostly it is, but I know what I know and I know I will never hurt you. It’s okay that you don’t know it yet. I won’t stop courting you and I won’t just walk away because you need time to believe.”

She quirks her brow slowly. “Courting me? Courting. Really, Mr. Darcy?”

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