diving in

by delightisadream

But still—what was he doing here? She knew the simple answer. He was Sam's son, her step-brother, and he'd been at the lake house with their new family all summer long. As to why he had come out onto the back porch at eleven at night when it was clear she was the only one out there, she didn't know. They hadn't had a real conversation in over a year.

A sudden breeze blew by, sending her dark locks tumbling and crashing around her face, the wet tendrils hitting her weakly. She tugged at the damp towel around her shoulders and hunched into it further, focusing on breathing in the night's cool air.

Grace sighed in content. Something about the night just calmed her, the fresh outdoors soothing her worries—or trying their best. She lived primarily in one of two states: quiet peace, or subtle anxiety. She absolutely adored Sam's lake house—her lake house? Her mom's?—and it could act all it wanted that she was in the peace stage, but it couldn't successfully hide the truth from her. Summer was coming to a close.

Which, normally, would stir up excitement for what the new school year held. But things were different this year. After summer ended, she wouldn't be coming home to Grey House every day to do her homework and help Cassie with chores and whatever guest's lives they had magically become a part of. She wouldn't be happily swamped with extracurricular activities and bursting to arrange a date with Noah. None of that would be happening, because she wasn't going to Middleton High anymore.

Graduating had been bittersweet. Every molecule of her being was psyched to continue with life and see what she would find, but her brain just wouldn't let up on all she was leaving behind. It constantly nagged at her that choosing a university out of state had been a huge mistake, and that maybe she should just take a gap year and stay in town. Whether staying in town would strictly be for the year off or if it would end up being long-term to further her education, she didn't know.

But she didn't want to—no no, she wasn't going to let up on her decision. Someone had once told her she would never leave Middleton, and if this not only proved him wrong but also took her away from him, then she wasn't going back. Not to say her pick of universities had been entirely shaped because of him, but it was just a tad influenced—

Grace's back stiffened as her breath caught, simultaneously thankful for and cursing her 'feelings.' Speak of the Devil… She considered calling out his name like she used to, but that was reserved for her friends, and she doubted he'd appreciate it now anyway. But still—what was he doing here?

She knew the simple answer. He was Sam's son, her step-brother, and he'd been at the lake house with their new family all summer long. As to why he had come out onto the back porch at eleven at night when it was clear she was the only one out there, she didn't know.

They hadn't had a real conversation in over a year.

She felt rather than heard his footsteps move closer, wondering if she should say something first.

"I was going to shower." His voice was empty, almost monotone, and she couldn't tell if he was irritated or just stating a fact.

She started to clear her throat then stopped. Grace straightened her spine and spoke into the open air, "Sorry if I used up all the water." It figured he'd come out to complain to her about her late-night shower. It wasn't her fault he hadn't planned better around her schedule, having known she and her mom were going kayaking and then thrift and antique shopping all day and that she wouldn't be back until late. Of course she was going to shower when she got home. He could have accommodated to her needs just once.

"You didn't," he replied, granting her a little emotion in his words. His bare feet made a dull sound as they moved forward, stopping when he dropped into the lawn chair a few feet adjacent her. He tossed two large t-shirts onto the porch floor, a squelching noise sounding as soon as they hit the wood. She caught his raised eyebrow. "Just took the last towel."

Her nose wanted to wrinkle playfully, but, one) it would be unwanted, and two) her eyes were stuck on his hair. They might not have been talking-talking, but she saw him more times in one day than she'd ever seen him before this past summer, and she thought she was fairly well-versed in his hair style. Last year he had grown it out a bit more, making her grateful for what she thought was temporary time apart; she really didn't prefer the length. But now, in the faint light from the sunroom that the porch was set off of, it looked different to her.

"Did you cut your hair?" she asked, the words out before she was aware she was going to say them. They rarely ever started this kind of conversation anymore, and she feared his reaction for a split-second before she grasped the situation. This was small talk. She had asked about his hair, not his deepest fears.

He nodded once, pausing only slightly before saying, "Yeah. I...wanted a change."

Whoa, whoa; was that code? "A change?" Again, she didn't realize she was speaking aloud. Grace cringed. "For college?" she added, just because it sounded better. Not like what her stupidly optimistic brain was thinking.

There was a pause again, and she was sure she felt his eyes on her arms. "Sure. I guess."

This was physically painful. All of his sentences sounded like a bad script reading where the actor just wasn't into the scene. Another gust of wind hit her so she would shiver. She pulled the towel tighter around her body, face firmly staying pointed out to the dock.

"Are you cold?"

"No." She was. But only a little, and she could handle it, just like she'd handled the past year and a half without him.

Great. Now she was frowning.

"What time is it?" she asked quietly, voice coming out much more timid than she intended.

"Grace, I didn't bring out my phone."

"I didn't notice, Nick." She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and scream. Who were they?

"Right. You were too busy not looking at me."

Okay, she scoffed at that, the urge to close her eyes lessening as the one to scream increased. "Oh, I apologize. Did you want me to do that thing where I announce your presence before you do? I'm sure you'd just love that."

It was almost as if she could sense him tensing up. "Do whatever you want, Grace. Nothing you say affects me."

That stung, and she could tell he knew it by the breath he sucked in directly after. Grace shifted in her seat and let a corner of her towel slide down her arm an inch. They were engulfed by silence for a moment, and she wondered why he didn't just get up and leave. Or why he had stayed in the first place. She wouldn't have. The only time they were alone in the same room was when they set the table each night for dinner, and that was more for their façade than any burning desire to be around each other.

Or, at least that's what she told herself. She wasn't sure what it was like on his end.

Something about him being just a couple feet out of her reach was getting to her. They used to greet each other with wide smiles and open arms, or no greeting at all when they'd spent the day together. They'd kill hours and days upon days hanging out, her tutoring and teaching him how to cook, him driving them around to parties and her academic decathlon matches if only to make faces at her from the crowd. It was part of the reason why, the April after their fight, when Noah sat her down to discuss breaking things off, she'd been okay with it. She was miserable without Nick, and Noah could tell. He didn't think she was upset about losing a friend anymore. He thought it was something else, something she didn't want to delve into, and so they broke up.

She wasn't anywhere near as devastated about the breakup as she was about their fight, and it was that thought that stuck with her through the year and the entirety of Cassie and Sam's wedding, even though, try as she might, she wanted it to go away. Like she needed anymore regretful thoughts.

"What do you want?" she blurted, twisting in her seat to face him head-on. The towel slid down her arm more.

He blinked for a moment. "Wha—I just wanted to come outside for a second."

She didn't even say anything.

He huffed and ran a hand through his wet hair (something her eyes were drawn to, yet again), continuing, "I don't know, I guess...part of me kind of wanted to talk before we go our separate ways."

"Our separate..." She knew what he was referring to, but seriously? It had taken him this long to reach this point? She reached it again and again every single day! "Nick, we've already gone our separate ways! What do you think the past eighteen months have been?" she questioned, hands flying to convey her burst of emotion.

His jaw dropped and stayed there for a moment before he could speak again. "You—we had an agreement, alright? Stop acting like this is my fault, we knew what we were doing—"

"You're the one who was so dead set on faking everything instead of actually trying to work things out, okay?" Grace pointed out, one hand gripping the chair's arm. "That was you, not me!"

"Well it's not like you tried to challenge me on that front!"

"Because I was letting you make your own decisions, Nick!" she countered, eyebrows drawing together in her frustration. She could tell he knew where she was going with this. "I've been trying to evolve because I've been beating myself up for the past year and a half over some shitty things you said to me, and I wanted to be a better version of myself, okay? Can you say you've done the same? Can you honestly say that?"

She expected him to throw the jab at his narcissistic tendencies right back in her face, to poke and prod at her until they were having another screaming match and storming off in different directions. Instead, all he did was stare at her, eyes soft with astonishment. "Did you just swear?" He regarded her in awe openly, the expression akin to how he looked when he comforted her when she was sad. When he said she was unique, and her heart had threatened to flutter its wings and leave for good.

Grace didn't know what he meant at first, and then she realized she had, in fact, cursed. And that's all he was focusing on. The latter annoyed her further, and she placed her arms across her chest, the towel barely hanging onto her frame. "Yes, I suppose I did. Teenagers cuss, okay?"

"But you don't."

That was only partially true, because when they were friends, she didn't. That was left up to him. And it pushed another button of hers knowing that the bad habit had likely developed from her subconscious need to be close to him, to have some kind of connection.

"How would you know?" Her eyes crinkled as soon as she said it. She hadn't been prepared to argue over this tonight. She'd been trying to accustom herself to her Nick-less life, as she had been for awhile now, and this was almost a burden. Almost. If nothing else, her chest would thank her for the weight this was lifting.

"This is a two-way street, alright? You don't know everything that's going on with me either." He shook his head. "God. You're just as pushy as before."

"You mean caring? Because I'm not." She tried to cinche her arms closer together, but the towel felt uncomfortable and she ripped it off completely, angrily tossing it down onto the pile of t-shirts. "Not anymore," she finished, arms back over her chest. "To you, at least."

"Caring is like knowing what college I'm going to, not shoving your opinions down my throat as always," he retorted, his chair making a loud screeching noise when he turned toward her more.

Her eyes were crackling as she leaned forward. "You're going to Middleton, Nick! Which is exactly what you've bitched at me about!"

The chair scooted back at he got to his feet in a flash, body looming over hers. For a nanosecond he seemed dumbfounded, undoubtedly from her vulgarity. "People change, Grace! I'm not the same guy I was when I yelled at you about that!"

Grace stood up as well and uncrossed her arms, clenching her fists at her sides. "No shit! So maybe you should stop acting like I'm still that pretentious know-it-all who only wants the best for you because, trust me, I don't care anymore!"

False. So completely, utterly, unbelievably false, and he still looked like he'd been punched in the gut. Her face flared up and she wondered if the house's lighting would catch that. "Wait," she said quietly, hoping she could backtrack. "That's not what I meant." How could he think that was what she meant?

How many times had she been lying in bed and heard a car door slam around three am, and her heart would speed up? How many times had she climbed out of bed and carefully drawn the curtains open just enough to see him in his driveway? How many times had she mumbled quiet prayers thanking God that he wasn't drunk and that he was alive and well and had made it home? How many times had she wanted to yell out the window, to talk to him, to fling herself into his arms just so the feel of them around her wasn't merely a memory?

She shouldn't have said it, but he shouldn't have believed it. Her mind had been chalk full of him for so long, with so many worries for him, overflowing with wishes for smiles and reconciliations that it was absolutely insane he hadn't realized any of it.

"No, that's exactly what you meant," he supplied, eyes betraying the hurt his body wouldn't show. He stumbled back a step. "The tables have turned on us, huh? I'm the recluse afraid to leave home and you're the self-centered prick?"

She'd heard him swear before; plenty of times. While watching movies, when meeting obstacles while driving, during their old tutoring sessions—especially those. This wasn't the first time she'd heard that word, not even close, but this was the first time such a word was directed at her, and to specifically wound her too. She stepped forward to fix the gap he had created. "Do not call me that."

He was breathing heavily. "Then don't act like one!"

"Don't force my hand when you won't be a man and just break up with your girlfriend!"

He made an indignant noise, eyebrows shooting up. "I never asked you to do that! I was going to break up with her, but just because it wasn't according to your schedule—"

"Because it made! No! SENSE!" she exclaimed, coming farther into his personal space. "You were letting Courtney make plans with you to go to parties and tell me about double dates we'd be having, and I had to listen to her get excited about her boyfriend—her supposedly loving boyfriend," she said pointedly, almost glaring but not quite at him, "who's taking her out on dates and listening to her stories and being a super sweet guy! And I knew that none of that was true."

He stared down at her, shaking his head. "It wasn't the right time."

She nearly laughed. "You're kidding. Not the right ti—"

"It wasn't!" he cut in, angrily locking eyes with her. "I don't care what you say; there are timely ways to go about shit like that, and you weren't letting me—"

"You were never going to do it!"

"I couldn't do it when we were on a date, Grace!" he yelled, chest almost touching hers when he moved forward.

"You're acting as if there's a good time to do that!" she said forcefully, stretching to her full height against him.

"Kids?" a voice called out from inside the house, and Grace's pulse spiked.

"Mom," she mouthed at the same time his lips formed the word, "Cassie."

It would have been the perfect chance to split off and let their argument simmer down, but Grace looked out to the dock and jerked her head towards it once. He nodded gruffly and they maneuvered around the wet towel and makeshift towels, hopping over the four porch steps and speed-walking down to the dock.

"There's this thing," Grace began again, huffing slightly, "I don't know if you've heard, called sitting someone down. You should've done that. THAT is how you break up with someone."

"Nuh-uh, no," he disagreed, head shaking. "That's just your experience with Noah. I don't care if he bought you a bouquet of roses and gave you a handcrafted heartfelt letter summarizing what your relationship was like—"

"Not that it's any of your business," she prefaced, relieved to see they were nearing the dock at a steady pace, "but he sat me down and we talked, like adults, about what we should do next and why were breaking up, and it was fine, Nick. And effective." She whipped her head to the side to glare at him.

"What happened, anyway? He get sick of your controlling attitude, too?" he spat, eyes locked on the water.

Her mouth opened and closed and she didn't know what to do because that was sucha far, far cry from the truth that once again she felt like screaming. She came to a stop at the end of the dock and turned to face him, expression open and laying all of her emotions out on the line. "No, because not every person who gets close to me feels the need to rip my heart out," she seethed, unsure of how angry she actually sounded when the truth was still so raw.

He finally dragged his eyes away from the water to fix her with an appalled look. "I was hurt too, Grace! You weren't the only one hurt! You broke up with my girlfriend!"

"You were going to break up with her anyway!" she yelled incredulously. "I can't believe you're still bringing that up as if it's definitive proof I was in the wrong!"

"I was dating her!"

"You didn't even like her anymore!"

"I never liked her to begin with!"

If she didn't remember they were surrounded by water, she would have taken a step back. Her eyebrows furrowed and her thoughts slowed. "What?"

He seemed to think he had made an error because he did take a step back and divert his eyes. "What?"

Grace shook her head back and forth as she tried to catch his eye. "Whoa, whoa, you just said you never liked Courtney."

"No I didn't."

"You didn't even like her and yet you asked her out and…" She trailed off, a thought occurring to her and trying its best to work up her fury again. "Your argument is even more invalid! Why are you still mad at me when you didn't care about Courtney?"

He barely glanced at her, but she still caught the look her gave her. "I have a lot to be angry about, Grace."

She let that slip by. "Why were you dating her, Nick? Why'd you ask her out?"

He was quiet for so long that she didn't expect him to answer at all. When he did, it was in a low voice. "You know when you do things without thinking them through, kind of spontaneously?"

She blinked. "That's not what happened."

"Yes, it is."

"Nick, that's not what you did!" Thoughts started bombarding her, trying to put the pieces together. She knew he was lying, but what did he have to gain from that? So many details of his time with Courtney were burnt into her memory both before and after they were officially dating, and she knew his statement was off.

"Trust me, it is."

But her mind wasn't fully there in the moment with him anymore, and she started thinking out loud. "But you were asking me for advice—"

"Grace, no—"

"You picked her flowers—"

"Whatever you're about to say, don't—"

This didn't make sense. None of this made sense. "That's why you asked me to tutor you, so you could ask to talk the next day—"

His forced-nonchalant tone changed to frantic, if only by a little switch in volume. "Grace just stop, seriously—"

Something was ringing in the back of her mind and she wanted to go after it, unaware of where it would lead her. "The tutoring, the talk, the flowers; Nick, you had it all planned out!" she exclaimed, whipping her now mostly-dry hair around in his direction. "You were going to ask Courtney out—"

"I was going to ask someone out!" he snapped, eyes staring into the depth of hers.

Her gaze flickered over his face, brain not making the connection right away. "Yeah, and that was Court…" She felt her expression drop just as it clicked. He was still looking at her, pain very evident on his face as she realized what he'd always known. "Oh, my God," she whispered, hand rising to cover her mouth as she looked elsewhere.

"Yeah," he said, mimicking her hushed tone. He turned away.

Grace could've sworn her face was burning up tremendously as she silently lined everything up. Stephanie might have had little luck in guessing whom Cassie romanticized, but she was a hundred percent right about Nick. She'd read all the signs correctly, and in the end Grace had brushed them aside, and…

"Oh my God, and you—when you tried to," she fumbled, the hand hovering in front of her mouth. "You tried to tell me and I just freaked out…"

The moon was shining around his head like a halo, a dark contrast to how he looked like he currently felt. "Yeah, you did. But it doesn't really matter now, so…" He wasn't meeting her eyes.

Just then did she grasp the full extent of this situation. This wasn't just some guy saddened by her accidental rejection. This wasn't just Nick Radford, her ex-best friend that she still loved with all her heart. This was Nick Radford, her step-brother, the guy she hadn't talked to like this for over a year, the guy who occupied most of her thoughts, the guy she seriously didn't want as her step-brother, because that made everything so much harder.

"Is...are you mad at me about that?" she questioned, hand pressed firmly against her mouth and cheek now as she sheepishly looked at him.

When they made eye contact, he seemed so sincere. "Grace…I would never be mad at you about something like that." The tenderness that seeped into his voice made her want to cry. "I mean, yeah, it sucked of course, but—I got it."

She wondered if he really did, because it had torn her apart. "If it makes you feel any better, I was really conflicted afterwards," she admitted, partially laughing towards the end.

One of his eyebrows rose. "Wait, what do you mean conflicted?"

She bit her lip before beginning. "Well, it's just that when Courtney came to my house and recounted how she turned you down, she kind of—"

"Said she thought we had something, yeah." He sounded very, very tired suddenly. "I know. She told me your reaction—in depth, by the way—and how it was 'all a miscommunication.'" She could practically hear the air quotes, and it pained her just thinking about it.

Grace cringed. "Yeah, that screwed with my head. After she left, I...honestly didn't know if I did the right thing." She lifted her eyes and was surprised to find him looking back at her. "So I'm sorry," she finished, mind racing a mile a minute at the blank look he was giving her. She wanted to see the grinning, teasing Nick Radford that had visited her in her dreams the past year and a half. She wanted that Nick Radford in front of her, cracking jokes or engaging in one of their sentimental chats. She just wanted him to be less serious, about this, at least. Normally she was okay with serious, preferred it even, and they definitely needed to have a talk, but it was late and Cassie was probably looking for them and they still might act like this never happened tomorrow and—

"I'm sorry I said all that shit about you," he said, eyes never leaving hers. He looked at her intently. "You always do things for the greater good and to help others, and I didn't see that and only focused on what I was going through instead of what I was putting you through."

Her mouth felt incredibly dry. He just—it'd been a literal year since they had argued, and now he apologized? She thought they were so far overdo that it would never happen, and now that it had...she was sad. Apologizing and thinking about the other person was one of the simplest tasks to do, and they had spent an entire year apart because they were both too prideful and hurt to suck it up.

"I'm pushy," she got out, feeling heat stirring in her stomach. "I shouldn't have butted into your business and insisted you break up with Courtney when you weren't, like, cheating or anything. It wasn't my place." She knew she had a tendency to like the view from behind the wheel much more than from the backseat, but the matter of the fact is that she understood Nick needed to drive his own life, and she hadn't let him do that.

He scoffed lightly, a grin quirking his lips upward. What she recognized as butterflies in her stomach flew up into a frenzy. "Yeah, well I might as well have been cheating," he chuckled, eyes shining in the dull moonlight.

Grace felt her face contort. "What do you mean?"

His small grin disappeared. "Oh, I thought I could joke around about it now, but…"

She tilted her head a little, thinking. "Do...do you still…?"

He hesitated before answering, "I did then. During—Courtney. I think she noticed a few times, actually."

She faked a smile, an uneasy feeling settling in her gut now that he had answered her question in past tense. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't I be relieved it's not still going on? "That must've been awful for her."

"I felt bad for Noah," he agreed, nodding. "Every time he would ask if we had a fun time hanging out, I felt like an imposter or something."

Then again, shouldn't I have been upset when Noah broke it off? That hardly affected me at all. There was an issue at hand, and it was the elephant on the dock, but she wasn't sure if she should go there or not. He had already moved on, and they seemed to be in a really good place even if it was just for the night. This would jeopardize that, and besides; her feelings would still be there tomorrow.

That's what made up her mind for her. That was troubling, and she needed to sleep on this after writing everything down in her journal to process it. Tomorrow she may still feel the same, but her brain would already be working to appropriate it and place things into boxes.

Before she could say anything, Nick shuffled his feet and decided, "We should probably head back inside." He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced around the dock. "I...I'm really glad we talked, Grace." He offered her a tiny smile, one of the many she loved.

Her stomach felt like it was about to tear open and let a kaleidoscope of butterflies hurriedly fly out. She wanted to express her gratitude, even if the future was unknown, when he spoke again.

"And I'm sorry if...things are bit weird, y'know…" He wound up mumbling and he approached her, head down, and she honestly had no clue how she was still standing. This boy was way too cute for his own good.

"I…" Love you. Grace met him halfway and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, sighing when she felt the weight of his hands on her back. "You have nothing to be sorry for," she breathed, tensing slightly when the hair on the back of his neck stood up at her words. It was an odd sensation, to know she had the same effect on him that he had on her, but she drank it in regardless.

When they untangled themselves and she felt too light without his weight on her, he took initiative and started to walk back up the dock. She sucked in a breath and and willed her legs to follow him—except she couldn't. This didn't feel like the right end to their conversation, not by a long shot. It had taken them several months to work through their fight and right their wrongs and even look at each other for more than five seconds, and now they were just going to head back inside as if nothing ever happened? I'm sorry, but we've been through way too much for just a hug.

She wasn't sure what she was doing, just like most of what happened tonight, but still she called out, "Nick!" and waited until he stopped to walk after him.

He didn't say anything, only looked at her in anticipation. He expected her to say something. She expected her to say something. What was she going to say?

The only sound was that of her feet padding across the dock until she reached him, at which point she parted her lips and waited for anything to leave them. He was waiting too, his brown eyes staring into her own orbs with slight suspense. Her mind was whirring and whirring and wouldn't quit—until it did. And she stopped thinking, and leaned up on her tiptoes, her right hand going to his neck and bringing him down to meet her lips.

Nothing. She was apparently going to say nothing.

He was kissing her back, that much she knew for certain. She felt a hesitant hand on her hip and tasted his lips moving against hers, but otherwise she had no indication this was actually happening. She'd dreamt about this before, despite all her attempts at pushing it away to the back of her mind. It never worked; it always resurfaced anyway, usually when he smiled at her in a way that made her lightheaded, or when he purposely left cinnamon on her nose while they were cooking. She smiled into the kiss, memories flooding her mind fondly.

It was dark enough that when they came up for air, her eyes had to adjust to the face right in front of her. It was a distant thought that if anyone were to look out from the lake house, they'd see them. Only two silhouettes backlit by the bright moonlight, but it would be them, and that's when it hit her: this had changed them. This had changed them completely, and she was okay with that.

And she could tell he was too, by the way he grinned and whispered, "Thank God," before diving in for another kiss.

This time, both his hands made their way to the small of her back, pulling her flush against him while her arms moved around his neck and her hands knotted behind his head, keeping him close. Their mouths pressed against each other feverishly, not because they were impatient but because they weren't. Four years. Four years and they hadn't done this once.

Nick inched closer to Grace, and she moved with him—which was a mistake, because the momentum was too much and in the following seconds she was calling out his name as they both tumbled over the dock's edge and into the lake.

He surfaced first and shook his hair out, gasping. Any heat they had created had dissolved the second they hit the water. A few moments later, Grace's head popped up and she breathed heavily, a hand wiping at her face to fix her hair. "Nick!" she said again, treading water. "I just took a shower!"

"So did I!" he reminded her, shivering. Then he really looked at her and grinned, heart warming. "You look adorable right now."

She flushed, but that was all the acknowledgment he was getting. "Please help me up," she pleaded, swimming right beside the dock's side.

He nodded and wrapped an arm around her waist, the other reaching up to hold the dock. "Grab on," he instructed, and she latched onto the dock and began pulling her body up. His hand switched to holding one of her legs as he gave her a boost. If he wasn't worried about going under he'd lift her with both hands. Once she was up, she held a hand out to him and together he was sitting beside her, both of them soaked and teeth chattering. He ran his hands up his arms once, the motion not doing anything to ward off the cold.

"That—was freezing," she noted, angling her body towards his. They caught eyes and couldn't help but laugh.

"Certainly a kiss to remember," he quipped, face burning from both the chill and the smiling.

They didn't know who leaned in first, but Grace's head was against his shoulder and Nick's head was resting on hers. It did nothing to stop their shaking, but they didn't care. They only had a little while longer before it'd be unacceptable to be outside, and they were going to take advantage of their time alone.

In the comfortable silence that followed, Grace thought back to the beginning portion of their conversation. She tipped her head back and asked, "Middleton?"

Nick sighed. "Yeah. I didn't know, but I figured there was a good chance you'd be attending, so I applied."

Her heart felt so full, and yet it wanted to shatter at the same time. She lifted her head and twisted her body to face him properly. "But I'm not going to Middleton," she explained sadly, eyes soft and melancholy.

"I know. Overheard Cassie mention it." He turned to look at her. "It'll be fine, you know," he said after watching her for a few beats. "We'll get through this."

Grace let out a weighty breath and commented, "College is the least of what we'll have to deal with." She hated feeling defeated so soon after such a magnificent high, but here she was. They couldn't deny their step-sibling status, or that she would be packed up and flown out of state in just under a week and a half. She wanted to be optimistic, but she was all realist in the moment.

Nick nudged her nose with his, a small smile playing at his lips. "Grace. We'll be fine. Eighteen months to make up for, right?"

God, her heart ached for those months lost. Grinning warmly, she leaned forward and repeated, "Eighteen months to make up for," in agreement before pressing her lips against his again, the already-familiar touch setting her on edge in the best possible way. His hand came up to trace her jawline, and her foot played with his pant leg as they both came alive.

This was the summer she hadn't let herself hope for. This was where she wanted to be today, tomorrow, and three years down the line. She was wet, she was cold, and she didn't know what time it was, but none of that mattered, and she was thankful that didn't matter. All she wanted to focus on was the lips on hers and the blissful moan escaping her as Nick opened his mouth.

This was definitely what she wanted, and she was finally getting it.

---

401 got me thinking of a different fic idea, but this one was prominent and isn't based on another "make take on [insert whatever]," and my mind got stuck on it, so here we are. i love this so much, and i hope you do too.

also on wattpad and ao3. check out my nace vids on youtube (ironicsopsychotic)!