Hold Me Under

I've loved Sawyer Kane since I was seventeen years old and he pulled me out of Cattail Lake by the wrist, laughing, like saving me was nothing. Ten years later, he still doesn't know. He can't know — not when he looks at that water like it owes him a body.
We inherited the lake house together. His late brother's idea of a joke, maybe, or his idea of forgiveness. Either way, the will is clear: fix up Kane's Rest and sell it together, or lose it. So now I'm sharing a bathroom, a porch swing, and entirely too many thin walls with the one man I have never, not once, let myself want out loud.
Sawyer doesn't talk about the accident. He doesn't talk about much of anything except renovation schedules and the careful, foot-wide distance he keeps between us at all times — until the night the power goes out, the whiskey comes out, and the distance doesn't survive till morning.
He says he's not the man I think I remember. He says wanting me is the one thing he won't let himself have, because everything he's ever held onto, the lake has taken. I say I'm done being patient. I say if he's going to drown, he's taking me down with him.
This summer was supposed to be about letting go of a house. Instead it's about a man who's spent a decade holding his breath — and a woman who intends to be the reason he finally comes up for air.
Explicit 18+ content. High heat throughout. All characters are consenting adults.
Tropes: Friends to Lovers · Forced Proximity · Wounded Hero · Curvy Heroine · Instalove/Slow-Burn Hybrid · Small-Town Coastal Romance