Page 73 of Rule 4: Never Get Stranded with a Sports Reporter

But I want him to know how to be able to swim. I don’t want him to be scared of the water. I don’t want him to sit on the edge of the ocean, afraid to get too close.

“You’re not planning on us swimming on back or anything?” Cal’s voice shakes.

“Nope. Besides, we don’t know the way.” I step back, so his legs stick out.

I let him feel the waves underneath his body. He clings to my hands as I continue to walk backwards, pulling him.

He blinks.

“Nice, huh?”

His face remains skeptical, and I start to drag him in circles until he starts to smile.

“That’s enough.” I help him up, and when he looks disappointed, I know that the introduction wasn’t terrible. “How did you like it?”

“It was better than I expected.”

“Awesome. Now I’m going to have you practice kicking your feet.”

“I never should have told you I don’t know how to swim.”

I frown. “You should tell me everything. I’m here to help.”

For a moment, he looks astonished.

I said too much.

We’re doing, well, intimate things together. But that doesn’t mean this is anything besides convenient to Cal.

And that’s fine.

Next week we’ll be rescued, and he’ll go back to dating men who don’t come with baggage. Men who hold his hand and take him on dates and tell him he’s special and don’t care if anyone else can hear him.

Maybe he’ll refer to me as a closeted man he once fooled around with, and his date will recoil in horror. Maybe he’ll hastily explain he had no other options. Maybe people will figure out it was me.

But the thing I worry about most isn’t him outing me. It’s that this will end.

I’m not ready to be someone he looks at when I’ve played sufficiently well to earn a spot in the press room.

I continue to teach him to swim. We splash together in the water, and we both laugh.

Laughter turns to kisses turn to Cal wrapping his legs around my waist. I hold him up in the salty water.

Cal’s body has turned slippery, and I love it.

“This is fun,” he admits to me as we’re floating on our backs. The sun shines above us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Cal

“My skin has wrinkles,” I announce to Jason.

“Your skin will always have wrinkles when you’re old.”

“You think we’ll get old.”

He squeezes my hand. “Of course, we will. We’ll be rescued any day now. Any hour.”