Chapter 2: A Little More Light

The figure out on the end of the dock was slim, the torn-out sleeves of his tank top hanging off his broad shoulders like the last torn wisps of a cape. The light skimmed gold and orange across the glimmering surface of the water and she squinted against the glare as she came up the dock. She ignored the Jet Ski that hadn't been tied there this morning. She'd drive it back to the marina once it got full dark, and hopefully the rightful owner wouldn't have missed it yet.

It had been the memory of the look on JJ's face that had drawn her here. When she'd been crying in her mother's arms, and Pope had been surrounded by his family, and JJ'd taken a step back. Like now that his best friend was gone, his place was alone. It's how she knew he'd still be here, crashing at the Chateau. He hadn't said, but she was pretty sure he hadn't been back to his dad's house since they stole the keys to the boat and he came out of the house unbruised but looking sicker than when he went in. Hell, for all she knew, his dad hadn't even sobered up enough to realize that the Phantom was gone.

Kiara hopped over the empty space on the dock where the last storm had ripped another board out. Without John B to patch it all back together, the Chateau was starting to show as many holes and empty places as the three of them.

She dropped down next to JJ, inhaling out of habit, but he didn't smell like that delicious cologne he'd lifted from the mainland department store last year. The one she always teased him about bathing in. Today it was only sweat, and a little exhaust from joyriding that stolen Jet Ski. She'd never admit it, because she'd never hear the end of it, but she liked the smell of JJ's sweat better than the other boys'. Wasn't sure why it didn't get musty like John B's or thick like Pope's. It just smelled right somehow.

His long flop of hair blew across his forehead, but he didn't look up as she gripped the edge of the dock, her hand less than half a board's width away from his.

"You break up with Pope?"

"Fuck you, JJ."

He smirked, his lips twisting but the crinkles not spreading all the way up to his eyes. "You did, though, didn't you?" He cast her a look, the open, honest kind he never gave her when anybody was looking. "I saw you when you kissed him."

"Who'd you steal that Jet Ski from?" she asked, changing the subject.

"It followed me home, ma. Can't I keep it?"

"Great time to be stealing stuff, with SBI still crawling all over the island."

"What are they going to do to me? Take away my birthday? I can barely remember when it is anyway." His voice had gone black, singed around the edges like a fire had roared through.

"September 28th." She ducked under his arm, the curve of his elbow hooking over her shoulder like it knew its place, even as its owner dodged her a surprised glance. "I wasn't trying to mess with Pope's head. I think we all just…needed something."

"Like a little D to make you forget about the B?"

The joke made her throat hurt. Must have done the same to him, because his deliberately light voice rasped on the way out. He didn't even smell like booze, and when JJ was too depressed to drink beer, they were really in a bad place.

"Pope's okay," she said, answering the question JJ was really asking. "We talked."

His arm was warm around her shoulder and she didn't move away, even when she felt the sting of a mosquito biting the back of her neck. She watched the sun, sinking toward the sea, and she waited for it to be swallowed up by the bottomless ocean, just like it had devoured her friends.

JJ's ribs expanded under a breath, pressing into her side, and she thought of all the times she'd almost kissed him. Of how many Jet Skis he might steal if it'd been him she had her five-minute fling with. Of the ridiculous, exuberant, misguided gestures he might throw himself into if their fling stretched to ten minutes, or fifteen.

The corner of her mouth tipped up. "What would happen if I fell for one of you guys for real?"

"Making out," JJ said without hesitation. "Lots and lots of making out."

She laughed, his arm squeezing lightly around her shoulders.

"It would have been John B," JJ said, and he sounded more like himself than he had since the storm. "If he'd made it. He was the best of us. Heart of gold and all that. That's what you deserve, our little Queen of Lost Baby Turtles and Saved Whales."

She turned her head and he was smiling, his cheekbones high and eyes clear as he looked out at the sea.

That's what you deserve.

She kissed him. Part of her didn't even realize she was doing it until the scrape on his lip rasped over hers and she lost her breath. Her heartbeat twirled up, up, up so fast she couldn't follow and she swayed on the edge of the dock, her normal unbreakable balance all gone in an instant.

He gasped for breath, breaking the kiss. "Whoa, Ki!"

She fought a jerk of frustration. She wasn't done yet. There had been a thing and had that been her imagination or had there been some kind of tingle, something extra when she kissed him that—

"Shut up, JJ."

She grabbed him by the tank top and kissed him harder, and oh WOW there it was and it was bigger this time. She could feel his chest acutely and realized her nipples had pebbled hard under her bikini top and tank top and they were so sensitive and his chest was harder than she remembered from their last wrestling match on the floor of the—

"Okay but—" he gasped out between kisses, his eyes wide. "Um, I mean should we be—"

"Shut up, JJ," she hissed, pushing him flat on the dock and starting to follow him down.

A sound escaped him, like the start of a whimper quickly smothered and she flinched, remembering the blooms of bruises across his ribs. Darker in color than she'd ever seen bruises. Like they went deeper than most.

Her hands went from gripping his shirt to cupping his face, fluttering ineffectually. "Sorry, shit, I forgot and I didn't mean to—"

He laughed, the flash of his grin bright and happy, like she'd almost forgotten he could look. "C'mon, girl. I can't feel a thing above my waist right now, are you kidding?"

She rolled her eyes at his crudeness and laughed. Classic JJ. The thought made her pause. She'd just kissed JJ. She sagged to the dock, her legs folding to the side as she tried to catch her breath. What the hell was she thinking, risking her boys like this when she only had two of them left? When their group was so fragile. She'd just forgotten, for a second, that he was a Pogue. Or maybe remembered, if she was being honest with herself, because she couldn't stand to kiss anybody else. Not anybody that didn't have the same anchor of pain living in their chest, the regret whispering in their every dream and thought, waiting with claws poised for the rare moment when she'd forget for an instant that they were gone. And then someone would laugh like Sarah, or lope by on the beach with a long, easy stride like John B's after his latest growth spurt. And she'd remember she was never going to have another summer like this one, with all of them together. Not ever.

She turned away and looked back over the water, hugging her knees.

When John B kissed her, her heart had kicked up, like it was her first time at Spin the Bottle. A little flicker of awareness like oh yes, he's a boy and you're a girl and he's starting to grow out of all that gangly and get…pretty. Especially around the eyes. When she kissed Pope, there was a desperation to it. Like she wanted to remember when they were the anchor of the group, their brains reminding the others when to stop and think. She wanted to feel that love she'd seen in his eyes when he'd given her his confession. But she couldn't feel it past the aching thump of her own heart. All she could feel was how very, very much she didn't want to lose any of them.

And all of that had burned away in an instant when her lips had touched JJ's bruised, chapped ones.

JJ sat up, hooking his hard chin over her shoulder like he had when he was younger and he wanted her attention.

"We can forget it, you know." His voice was low, almost too soft for a rumble. "What we just did. I know with losing John B, we're all a little crazy right now. Nothing has to change, I promise."

She hadn't known anything for sure before this moment but the jolt of fear at his words woke her right up. She'd been acting on impulse, then chasing that little sparkle of extra feeling to see if it had been real. And then going back for more because it felt good. But for everything she'd just told Pope about how it wasn't worth it, that she wanted them all in her life more than she wanted to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with any one of them…now she knew that was a lie. She wanted something that put a kink in her chest and the light back in JJ's face. She wanted it with the ferocious single-mindedness with which she'd known her own mind since she was a child. And she knew if she was going to get it, subtle wasn't going to do the trick. Not with JJ.

She slid her hand right down his shorts, squeezing the line of his erection through his threadbare underwear. "Can you forget this?" And because that fear was still pounding through her, whispering that maybe he wanted to forget her, she leaned forward and kissed him again, fiercely. "And this?"

"Whoa, girl." All the rumble was back in his voice and it quaked like gravel inside a bass drum. But he didn't say it like he meant slow down. He said it like he meant damn. He said it like he meant yes.

He licked his lips, his gaze dropping to her mouth.

And now that she wasn't just brazening it out, she felt him. In her palm, flexing thicker at her touch. He was still hard, because of course he was. Swim trunks didn't hide much, and so it was no secret to anyone on the island that JJ spent 75% of his waking hours with a boner. But he'd never been hard for her. Or if he had, she hadn't known it quite so intimately as she knew it now. She went suddenly shy. But she hadn't kept up with the boys for this long by backing down, so instead of retreating, she gave him a long, slow stroke.

Her body reacted, rippling awareness all down her legs like she was the one being caressed and she had to press her teeth together so she wouldn't pant.

"Unnggg," JJ groaned, his teeth pressed together, too.

She swallowed. "JJ, I think I…"

"Oh, I definitely."

She laughed, the tension in her chest breaking. She had no idea what she'd even been about to say, how she could encapsulate the oh god, did you feel that, is this really happening doing somersaults underneath her solar plexus. But somehow, she could hear how he was answering everything she didn't know how to ask.

"And if you don't take your hand out of my pants," he warned, "I think I'm gonna fall in love."

She snorted into laughter.

"Oh, I'm serious," he boasted, craning his head to try to see her as she collapsed forward, laughing against his chest. "I'm about to propose marriage right here, right now."

Somehow in the midst of her laughter, her hand had slipped out of his shorts, and her head had found that place on his shoulder where she slept sometimes when he barged into the hammock after she'd totally already claimed it. They just felt like them again. Only with a warmth in her chest that hadn't been there before, and a crazy smile tugging at her lips, and a tingle in her palm where it lay over the line of his abs.

"Kie," he said, his breath stirring the tiny hairs at the crown of her head. "Do you really want…"

She lifted her head. "I really want."

He touched her chin, leaning in slow and watching her warily, like he expected her to laugh in his face for falling for the joke. She held very still and when he blinked, the vulnerability was back in his eyes. That crack in his bravado she'd seen so clearly when she'd stopped the car in front of his dad's house.

He swallowed. And then his lips were brushing hers and she let him take it slow, feeling her out like he wanted to be sure, sure, sure that it was real. That she was letting him do this. That she wanted him to do this.

She tried to let him lead, but her hand came up and cupped the back of his neck, unable to resist holding him, at least a little. He made that sound again, that cut-off whimper as if he was in pain, and her chest twanged. Then his tongue swept over hers and it was rough and almost too physical. Like the way he always used to get carried away with the horseplay with her until she yelped that one day, shouting at him and stomping off home before he could see her tears. Then he'd brought her candy every day for a week, and a new backpack she made him return because it still had the ink tag from the marina store on it, underneath a hibiscus-print bandanna he'd knotted crookedly on to hide it.

But now, his raw physicality thrilled something in her and her hand balled in his shirt, pulling tight as he came down over her. The boards of the dock were scratchy against her back as he licked his way into her mouth, and this was deeper than she'd ever been kissed. She wasn't sure she liked it, and then she really liked it. And then she had to stop herself from digging her nails into the skin of his back, and he had to stop himself from thrusting against her hip, and they both laughed, husky but not quite pulling apart, when they realized they were doing it.

"Fuck," JJ chuckled, leaning his forehead against hers. "John B's never gonna…" and then his voice died and something in her withered like a flower that had already stolen as much time in the sun as it was ever going to get. JJ hung his head, planting his hands wide to either side of her and panting like it was hard to breathe with the weight of his ribs crushing in on his lungs. She knew the feeling.

Kiara brushed his hair back from his forehead and pushed a kiss against his cheek. "C'mon." She scooted out from beneath him and grabbed his hand, jerking her bikini top straight where it had gotten tangled under her shirt. "Let's get in the Cat's Ass."

He almost laughed at his nickname for the hot tub, but it stuck somewhere on the way out and came out sounding more like a cough. But his hand tightened in hers as they approached the gap where the board was missing, and he gave her a tug like she might forget to hop over it. "Careful."

She gave him the "Be serious" look and he gave her the "sorrynotsorry" look and it almost put the light back in his eyes, and then she felt twice as bad for wanting JJ to smile when John B never could again.

She ducked her head so he wouldn't see her eyes starting to water—she hated the boys to see her cry—and busied herself tugging the cover off the hot tub. One of the clasps had broken in the wind of the last storm and she picked leaves out of the water as JJ jogged up to the house.

The delivery guys had somehow accidentally placed the hot tub right on top of her favorite spot in the Chateau's tree. Where the branches spurled out just right to make you feel embraced, and quiet. Safe.

It was the exact spot she always used to sit, sketching in her journal or planning out fundraisers on her phone. But now the hot tub was there, the one JJ had gotten for his friends—his family, he'd said.

Just as she thought the word, the Christmas lights blinked on. There were a bunch of strings of them that he'd wound round and round the branches until the tree was alive with color. It was weird to see electricity work without the roar of the generators, now that the power was back on. Too quiet, almost. She looked up as JJ jogged back toward her, stumbling as he tried to pull off his shirt before he made it all the way there.

"It's not even dark yet," she pointed out, shimmying out of her shorts and whipping off her shirt without letting herself look at him. It was no big deal. JJ had seen her in a bikini like a billion times. "Why'd you turn on the lights?"

He didn't even pretend not to stare, his eyes traveling over the curves of her body in a way that made her stand a little straighter, that didn't make her want to cross her arms the way she usually did when it was one of the pastel-polo'ed idiots from the Figure 8 doing the looking. She was pointedly not looking, but her peripheral vision informed her that JJ's shorts were still thin, and he was still hard. Quite a bit harder than he had been, if memory served.

She turned and stepped into the hot tub and he joined her with a splash, crossing the tub with a single easy pull of his arms and taking his place next to her. The heat of the hot tub was already sinking into her skin, unwinding the tension in her bones.

"These days, a little more light can't hurt," he murmured, and bent his head to chance a kiss to her hair.

"Yeah." She laid her head on his shoulder, hoping he'd do it again. "A little more light can't hurt."