Sunkissed by Kasie West (popular e readers .txt) 📕

he must’ve just completed the series of slides. His hair was wet and he wore a swimsuit and water shoes. And he looked really good. Really, really good.

“We were just talking about you,” Maricela said unhelpfully. Then she had the audacity to be distracted by a group of campers standing on an outcropping of rocks by the water. “That’s super slippery, guys, be careful!” She walked away.

Brooks stopped in front of me, water dripping off the bottom of his shorts. “You think I hate everyone?”

“I mean everyone but me, obviously.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “Obviously.”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming to this today,” I said.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“I guess that’s true.” Because I hadn’t known today was his day off.

He jerked his head toward the slides. “You going to try it?”

I realized I was just standing there, sweat on my face, gripping the straps of my backpack, my shoes and shorts and T-shirt still very much on. “Yes, of course.” I let my backpack slide down my arms and onto the ground by the pile of other backpacks. I was very aware that Brooks was still there as I took off my shoes and shorts.

“Do you do this a lot?” I asked.

“The slides?” he responded.

“Yes.”

“I’ve done it a few times.”

“It’s fun?” I didn’t know why I was so nervous.

“For a girl with the Granny app on her phone, you can’t be scared of this.”

I laughed. Granny was a game where a scary cartoon grandma hunted down the player and killed them if they didn’t hide well enough. I hadn’t played it in forever. “I was wondering when you were going to start calling me out for my apps.”

“Not nearly soon enough,” he said.

“You owe me reciprocation.” I narrowed my eyes. “You do actually have a phone, right?”

He chuckled. “Yes. I do.”

“Don’t laugh. This place messes with my head.”

“It is super weird not seeing people on their phones all the time.” He held up a finger. “Except your sister.”

“True, she keeps us all in this decade.”

“Is she serious about making a band documentary?”

“As serious as Granny is when she discovers your hiding place.”

His lips twitched a little and he said, “So your sister is going to kill us?”

I shoved his shoulder. “And I thought my joke was bad.”

“Your joke was bad. It was terrible. It deserved that comeback.”

As we headed up an incline toward the first slide, D turned away from the group she’d been talking to and jolted to a stop when she saw us. I inched to the left, putting more space between me and Brooks.

“Hey, Desiree,” Brooks said.

The hard look she’d given me slipped off her face and she showed all her teeth to Brooks. “Hi, be safe.”

He nodded and we continued up.

When I was sure we were well past her, I said, “She saw me yesterday.”

“What?” he asked.

“At the ropes course. With you.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped, then relaxed. “Are you sure?”

“I mean, no, but I think.” I watched as his brain seemed to work through things. I cringed. “That’s bad, right?”

“She didn’t see us. She would’ve reported me.”

“Yeah?”

“For sure.”

“And if she had reported you?”

“I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Then we need to be more careful.” I almost suggested that we shouldn’t spend any more alone time together. That we always needed to be with other people if we were going to hang out. But I couldn’t force myself to say it out loud and I knew that made me selfish.

He nodded. “Agreed.”

I slid down the rock after Brooks. It wasn’t quite as smooth as it looked but it was fun. Especially the drop at the end. I landed in the large pool below with a splash, my breath sucked out by the cold.

When I surfaced, Brooks was talking to Kai and Lauren, who were treading water off to the side. I swam over to join them, out of the way of the steady stream of people sliding after me. Most of the sliders didn’t linger in this drop zone but continued through it and on to the next.

“How deep do you think this is?” Kai asked. “As deep as the school pool?”

Brooks looked down as if he could see the bottom but the water was dark. “At least.”

All I could see were our legs, pumping to keep us afloat. “Did you two go to high school together?”

“Yep, Bulldogs for life.” Kai barked and held out a fist, but instead of bumping it with his own, Brooks pushed down on Kai’s shoulder, sending him underwater. Kai must’ve pulled on Brooks’s leg from beneath the surface because Brooks went down fast with a laugh.

My brain was just thinking about the fact that one of our rival schools back home were the Bulldogs when Lauren said, “They live in Pasadena.”

“You do?” I asked Brooks, who had resurfaced.

He wiped off his dripping face with one hand. “I do what?”

“Live in Pasadena?”

“Yes, why?”

“We live in Arcadia,” I said. How had we never talked about this before? When he said he’d traveled four hundred miles to get away from home, for some reason I thought he lived north of here. Oregon or something.

“You do?” he asked. Our cities were basically neighbors.

I nodded. Brooks was hard to read but there was a brief flicker of something in his eyes—surprise?

“Come on, Brooks,” Kai said. “Let’s show them the echo chamber.”

Lauren, who was floating on her back now, said, “What’s the echo chamber?”

“Follow me.” He swam toward the curtain of water falling from the edge of the slide above, and then he swam through it, disappearing from sight.

Lauren followed him.

I put my hand on Brooks’s arm. “Hold up.”

“Yeah?”

“Should I be worried about that?”

“About what?” he asked.

“Lauren is fifteen. Kai knows that, right?” Now that I knew Kai lived in the next town over from us, I was worried even more that Lauren had gotten some ideas in her head that this could actually be something real.

“She’s fifteen?” he asked, as