What might have also helped, as Aaron and I dropped our towels close to where Des was stationed on a lounger, with two arms crossed behind his head and sunglasses over his face, was that Aaron didn’t see me as… more than a friend. I didn’t have anything to prove to him… even if I would have wanted to. With my towel extended long-wise, I dropped the rest of my things on top of it and faced the direction of the water as I pulled my cover-up over my head and let it fall too.

I didn’t bother looking behind me as I lowered myself onto my towel and settled on my butt, snatching the bottle of sunblock I’d brought and pouring a handful into my palm so I could start applying it to my legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Des sitting up and going to pick on a sleeping Brittany before they both stumbled toward the water. I managed to get both my legs saturated before I glanced to the side to find Aaron sitting there with his own towel maybe three inches away from mine. His gaze was so focused on the beach break, I frowned. I hadn’t thought too much of how quiet he’d been, but… What was going through his head? Something bad? I could remember how quiet my brother had been for a while after he’d gotten back from his tour following his injury, and I didn’t like Aaron doing the same thing, especially when I didn’t know him well enough to have a solution… if there even was one.

Feeling something pretty close to panic, or maybe it was desperation, filling my belly, I reached over to poke him, not knowing what else to say or do to get him to stop making that distant face.

Luckily that was enough to get him out of his trance because he blinked once and turned to face me, an easygoing expression on his face finally, not the strange one that had been on there right before. “You okay?” he asked, looking at me like it was the first time he’d seen me in a long time, his gaze going from my face down, being totally obvious about checking out my bathing suit.

I wasn’t going to think about it.

“Yes,” I said to him, noticing he still hadn’t taken his shirt off. “Are you?”

He did that quick nod again that made my stomach clench. What was going on with him?

“Sure?”

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze finally swinging slightly lower, a dimple prickling at his cheek. “That’s cute.”

My face turned as red as my bathing suit. At the rate I was going, I needed to get a sunburn all over so it wouldn’t be so obvious every day.

His index finger touched my right strap so lightly, I almost didn’t feel it. “Did you make it?”

I fought the urge to squirm. “My bathing suit?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, now checking out the little gold clasp right between where my barely B-cup boobs were.

No one had ever looked anywhere below my neck before. “No. It was Jasmine’s, but she gave it to me.” I picked at the strap he’d just finished touching, giving it a pop. “It looks better on her, but I like it.”

The smile that came over Aaron’s mouth was the most gradual, slowest thing I’d ever seen. It was almost pitying, but something about it cut that corner and made it so sweet, it confused me even more. And of all the words he could’ve said to me, he went with, “I doubt it, RC.” And with that expression still on his face, he lifted his chin and frowned down at my skin. “You don’t have a scar.”

I made a noise in my throat loud enough for him to glance up at. “From my surgery?” I basically croaked, even though I knew that had to be what he was talking about.

Aaron nodded, his gaze flicking back down at the triangle of exposed skin on my chest.

“They didn’t… the catheters were by my…” I waved my hand around my groin. “Hips.”

That had him glancing back at me, one eyebrow up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I smiled.

Another slow smile crawled across that mouth I’d probably be daydreaming over for the rest of my life. “All right. Hurry up and finish putting sunblock on then, would you?”

I wrinkled my nose but reached for the tube, part of me glad he was letting the surgery talk go. I put more sunblock on my palm as I bounced my gaze from my palm to Aaron and back again, attempting to move the conversation along before he changed his mind. “Did you not bring any?”

Like every other man I’d ever known, he didn’t “need” any.

I tipped my head to the side and gave him a flat look that had him cracking into a grin like he hadn’t just been staring off into space minutes ago and then staring at my bathing suit and chest. “Fine,” he finally groaned, taking the sunblock from where I’d left it balanced on my thigh.

Trying my best not to be obvious as I spread the cream over my forearms before moving up to my biceps and shoulders, I watched as he rubbed the barest amount into his legs, the white getting stuck in the light brown hairs and over the tops of his big, almost pale feet. There was a line somewhere a few inches above his ankle bone where the color of his legs changed almost dramatically to the shade of light tan his feet were. From his boots, I figured.

“Hey, don’t be stingy. Get some more sunblock if you need it,” I told him.

He let out this little snicker in his nose. But that was all. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me, before he dropped his hand and went back to applying sunscreen, his hands dipping beneath the hem of his shirt to rub at his chest without exposing more than a sliver of a lean hip and an inch of skin above his swim trunks.