Page 48 of Fight

Breathless, she stayed submerged underwater for a few seconds before she pushed herself to the surface and inhaled deeply. As she gulped a couple more breaths, she reached up to rub the water from her eyes, an amazed laugh sputtering from her mouth.I can’t believe I just did that.

The rushing sound of water was louder down in the pool and the spray from the fall was stronger. It coated her already wet face and shoulders in additional water droplets as short, involuntary laughs broke out of her mouth in bursts.

Soon after she and Jake had finished talking about work, she’d pushed her drawing aside and watched him sit there so replete and at ease in front of the tableau of open space and rushing water.

Cynthia wanted her fired. And Jake thought the situation was “complicated.”He had been there with Mr. McIntosh. He knew she hadn’t done anything wrong.Complicated my ass.

She felt antsy and irritated, like she desperately needed to dosomethingto make him feel as off kilter as she felt. That something had apparently been quietly taking off her clothes and jumping off a cliff. She actually hadn’t given much thought to it; she’d just acted, which was very unlike her.

That recklessness still thrummed under her skin, and combined with lingering adrenaline, it left her feeling a bit spontaneous. What would she do next? She didn’t know who this version of herself was, but she liked it.

As she doggie-paddled and basked in her impulsivity, there was a huge splash about six feet away from her. Jake’s head bobbed up from the new ripples of water and he smoothly swam over until he was a couple feet from her.

“What the hell, Lena?” he shouted angrily above the sound of the waterfall. “You scared the shit out of me!”

The heavy mist from the waterfall shrouded them, making him look like an angry sea monster as he glared at her with beads of water gathering on his forehead and wide shoulders. Had he taken his shorts off, too?

This wasn’t the Jake that had divulged his issues with his father to her while they laughed on a mountain summit. No, she recognized immediately—this was last-summer Jake. The Jake who yelled at her for walking too slowly and ridiculed her for not wearing the right shoes. Well, she wasn’t going to fall into last-summer-Lena behavior just becausehehad decided to regress.

“It’s okay, Jake,” she said, reaching up to wipe water droplets from her face, willing herself to maintain a serene stance. “I’m okay.”

“You could have gotten hurt,” he said seriously, his angry glare shadowing his features and his arms effortlessly swimming wide to keep him afloat. “That’s a high jump. It’s hard for a lot of grown-ass men to summon the courage to go through with it.”

Lena rolled her eyes at this. She'd met no bigger baby than a grown-ass man. “You’re the one who told me it was safe. You said you’ve done it before.”

“That’s different.I’m different,” he continued in a loud, bossy tone. “You’re sof—”

“Stop!” Lena interrupted, holding her hand up out of the water. Last-summer Lena had returned with a vengeance. “If you say I’m soft so help me—”

“Well, it’s the truth,” he insisted loudly over the rush of the falls. “And it’s not a bad thing,” he said in a patronizing tone.“I get that now.”

Lena didn’t know what to start withthatas she continued to tread water across from him. Her arms were starting to ache and she was cold—especially in the shade of the cliffs. She really wanted to go ashore and lay in the sun on one of the flat, sun-draped boulders she could see behind Jake, but apparently she had something to prove.

“It’snotthe truth,” she said, fuming. “But I am sogladthat you’ve had a realization that a personality trait youimaginedI have is ‘not bad.’ I’m not soft, Jake. I’m strong. I jump off cliffs!” She attempted to raise her arms in the air to display her bravado, but caught herself as she quickly started sinking.

He glared at her while water collected on his angular face and wide shoulders. He didn’t bother to wipe it away at all, while she couldn’t stop rubbing her eyes to see better. He looked like he was made of stone. She wanted him to break down, too.

Still treading water and keeping her eyes on him, Lena somehow managed to reach behind her back, unhook her dark purple bra, and pull it off her body in one smooth motion. She held it in her right hand as she stared at him straight in his gorgeous frozen face.

Her breasts were bobbing beneath the clear surface of the water. He looked down at them, his eyes further darkening with heat and his breath quickening, but otherwise he didn’t move.That’s not enough.

Balling her bra up in her hand she took aim and threw it towards his face, hoping to hit him right between the eyes. She missed though, and the bra went flying past his right ear.

Looking back at the bra, now floating in the water behind him, he turned around and looked at her questioningly before his eyes got caught on her bare breasts again.

“I meant for that to hit you in the face,” she explained lamely.

“Ah,” he acknowledged shortly, looking back up at her face and nodding slowly.

“I’m sorry I don’t behave how you want me to, Jake,” she said softly. “I’m not perfect. I don’t always make the right decisions. But I don’t regret jumping off that cliff. And I don’t regret coming out here with Daniel because…I wouldn’t have been able to spend this time with you otherwise.” The admission came out of her with a rush of breath.

She felt raw and vulnerable. Her arms, and now her legs, were really starting to hurt now, which sucked because she had just been rubbing in how she was so strong. Now she was tired and mostly naked and he hadn’t said anything for a while.

“And I don’t regret…throwing my bra at you,” she added halfheartedly.Okay, maybe I regret that a little.

She sighed and started to move around him to get her bra and swim over to the flat boulder she’d been eyeing. It was going to be an awkward walk down the rest of the mountain.

“I don’t do this with anyone else.” She stopped moving when he said the words and went back to looking at him. He still hadn’t wiped any of the water away from his face, which made her feel itchy and uncomfortable, but his eyes reflected a new vulnerability that hadn’t been there before.

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