Page 41 of The Cost of Forgetting You

The memory of the last time we were here, of the kiss that we shared, flushes my skin.

I’m a grown woman. I realize that feeling this way about a childhood crush is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve had better kisses, some amazing sex, since then. Well, standard sex. But standard sex is still more amazing than an innocent kiss, right?

So there’s no reason I should feel like this. But my stomach turns to liquid and my face grows hot and my hands leech of all warmth. Truett, meanwhile, drives us to the perimeter of the tree’s swaying branches without so much as an ease of the throttle to let me know he, too, remembers what we shared here.

Because for him, it was just practice. But for me it was everything.

Once the engine is cut off, the chorus of a country night looms close. Those frogs and crickets are accompanied by flowing water and the whisper of willow branches tangling together on the breeze. I close my eyes and draw the air deep into my lungs. A familiar comfort seeps into my skin. My taut spine relaxes. The headache that was forming disappears.

I hear the rustling of clothing. My eyes split open.

“What are you doing?”

Truett, whose shirt is already off, stops fiddling with his fly. “What do you think?”

Without hesitation, he strips his Wranglers off and leaves them discarded beside his boots. His body is toned and painted with a farmer’s tan from days spent working in the fields. My gaze flits over his broad shoulders. The defined slopes of his biceps. The sinful V-shaped dip that disappears beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs.

His thumbs hook there, and I hold up a finger. “Don’t you dare.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “A little skinny-dipping never hurt anyone.”

“Except for the person who has to witness it.” I cross my arms. “I’d like to keep some things about you to the imagination, thanks.”

“So you’re saying you’ve imagined what I look like naked?”

“No!” Yes. The heat in my cheeks is unbearable. “I’m saying— You know what I’m saying. Just keep your underwear on.”

“As you wish.” He bows, then turns and takes a running leap into the dark, swirling river. The current carries him a few feet down. He comes up hollering, his cheerful cries mingling with the melody of the forest around us. His arms sweep outward, drawing him toward me until he finds purchase in the soft sand of the river bottom. He plants his feet and rises, silver rivulets of water spilling down his chest beneath the light of the full moon. There’s a dark spot on his ribs, a tattoo of some kind, that I can’t make out in the shadows. “You coming?”

I scoff. “I am not getting naked in front of you.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

My feet cement to the ground. Any oxygen left in my brain drains completely, leaving me dizzy. “Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?”

He crosses his arms over his chest and uses one hand to scratch his chin thoughtfully. “Let’s see, would’ve been early 2000s. You were knee-high to a grasshopper, and hell, so was I.” He laughs, his teeth flashing. “We got into some mud where the river cuts through the north pasture, and Mama hosed us off in the backyard. She was so pissed at me.” His chuckle dissolves into soft hiccups as his arms drop to his sides. The water parts around his fingertips where he swirls them along the surface, the reflection of the night sky rippling apart. “You’ve forgotten so much since being away.”

The words gut me as thoroughly as if he’d used a blade.

I stagger forward, through tall patches of switchgrass that tickle my exposed calves. There's a smooth expanse of sugar-soft sand near the water’s edge, and I collapse onto it with my legs stretched out before me. The water laps at the shore, nearly brushing the toes of my new Keds. I draw them close, wrap my arms around my shins, and rest my chin on my knees.

“So that’s a no on skinny-dipping?”

I stare straight ahead, to the far riverbank. “Dad brought up memory care facilities today.” Again, I almost add. Though it feels like admitting to some sort of failure to do so.

“Like the one your nana was in?”

I nod, blinking slowly. I’ve been away so long I’d forgotten how it feels for someone to know your history as thoroughly as you do. To not have to fill in the blanks.

He wades into my line of vision, face solemn, and for once he reminds me of his dad. The hollows of his cheeks, the slight cleft of his chin. Waylon wasn’t around much when I’d come over. He’d be out working the cattle with their farmhands or in town doing God knows what, but the few times he came to dinner with my family or passed by me in their kitchen on his way to retrieve a beer from the fridge, his expression was always stern. It made the chiseled lines of his face seem so harsh.

Paired with the gentle slope of Lucy’s nose and her soft gray eyes, however, it makes Truett look like a man lovingly carved from stone. Like artwork set free from a column of marble.

“If you need money for it, I can help. I’ve got enough set aside?—”

I stiffen. “I’m not putting my dad in a home.”

“No one said you had to, yet. I’m just saying, when the time comes?—”

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