Totally Opposed (Love In Play #3)

22. Alan

Chapter twenty-two

Alan

The pool water isn’t cold, but it isn’t warm either, and as I take each step down the stairs, my grip on the rail tightens. How does something that happened so long ago hold so much power over me even now? There is no slide here. I can touch the fucking bottom of the pool, but my heart is racing a million miles and my brain is screaming at me to get out.

Ryan dives in from the other side, and I suck in a sharp breath, watching as he glides under the surface towards me. He’s completely at home in the water. His head pops up and his face is alight with joy.

“You’re doing great,” he says, wading over to the stairs as I take the next step down. I’m only as deep as my waist, and as the water shifts side to side, it tickles the soft skin of my stomach.

“I’m not.”

“You are tough. Facing fears is hard. It’s okay if it takes a while to get there.”

He stands, and the water glistens, rolling down his chiseled chest.

“I think you need to come closer,” I say, and he walks towards me and holds out his hands.

“Whatever you need.”

I reach out with my free hand, and when his fingers tighten around mine, it does actually help, and I let go of the rail and take his other hand.

“See, you’re doing great,” he says, and I force my feet to move in closer to him.

“I didn’t tell you what happened for me to get like…well, this. Did I?”

He shakes his head.

“It was forever ago. I was ten, I think, and me and my brothers were at a party for one of their friends. I was supposed to be staying with Mom and Kelly in the small pool, but I followed my brothers everywhere back then.”

Ryan guides my hands out at the sides and back in as I speak, swishing the water around us in a soft rhythm.

“I used to follow one of my cousins around like that.”

“Well, that day I should have listened to my mom. The pool we were at was a big one, It had diving towers and slides, and I thought it was a good idea to follow them up the stairs of the giant slide. Because it’s a slide, and I’d been on slides before. No big deal, right?”

He smiles at me softly and keeps moving our arms through the water, my feet following him as we step side to side.

“I wasn’t a bad swimmer either. I mean, I could swim. I wasn’t like a proper swimmer, but I could get to the edge of a pool with no problem, and it never occurred to me that when the slide shoots you out at super speed, it plunges you down, deep into the water. It was so cold, my chest went tight the second I hit the water, and when the surface grew further and further away from me, I kicked and tried to make myself rise, but I just kept sinking deeper. The chlorine filled my nose and burned and then just when everything started to go dark, Nial was there. He jumped in and grabbed me and pulled me up out of the water.”

“Wow, thank god he saw you.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t like it is now, with lifeguards at every edge of the pool. If he hadn’t pulled me up, it would have ended very differently for our family that day.”

“Well, no wonder you don’t like pools. Fuck, I’ve never had anything that scary happen to me. I have no idea how to help you,” he says, his grip on my hands tightening just a little.

“This helps.”

“What?”

“Having you here with me. Seeing you swim, seeing how happy it makes you. I guess it kind of makes me want to see the water as something more than the thing that almost killed me.”

He pulls me in close, and I let go of his hands so that he can wrap them around me. My fingers link behind his back, and when his chest presses against mine, my cock responds.

“Okay, now all I can think about is how much I wish we were both naked right now.” I laugh, and he smiles that cheeky grin.

“If I didn’t care about my membership here, I’d say let’s do it. But at least your mind is on something else, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you want to try to go deeper?”

“No. I mean, yes. I don’t want to, but I think I can.”

“We’ll take it slow,” he says, leaning up and kissing me. His lips are cool and have a slight chlorine taste. I’d rather have the memories of his mouth on mine brought to the surface whenever I smell chlorine than that day, so I deepen the kiss and breathe in deeply, trying to replace the bad with the absolutely freaking amazing.

He moves us deeper, my eyes closed, my mouth busy tasting him, and when we finally break our kiss, I find the water is up to my neck.

I take a deep breath. My heart rate starts to pick up a little, but I can’t let this fear beat me. I sweep my hands down his arms to his hands and hold on tight.

“Don’t let me go,” I say, and he nods.

“I won’t.”

Then I do something I haven’t done since I was a ten-year-old boy at a pool with his brothers. I let my knees bend and let myself slip under the surface of the water. My eyes and mouth are squeezed shut tight, and I count in my head. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. I have to get to ten. I know I can get to ten. Ryan doesn’t move a muscle, and when I finally reach ten seconds, push up out of the water, and see his smiling face waiting for me, I kiss him again.

“I can’t believe I did that,” I say, breaking our kiss. My heart is pounding so fast as the adrenaline sweeps through my body. I went under the water and I’m okay. I’m better than okay. I feel amazing. Like I can do anything. “I’ve never had any issues having my face under the water of the shower, but the idea of being under the water in the pool was never something I thought I would even want to try. But it wasn’t as scary as I thought.”

“Did you want to do it again, together?”

“Yes. Oh, I’ll try to open my eyes this time.”

“Just be careful. The chlorine might sting your eyes if they are open too long. How about we go for five seconds with our eyes open?”

“Okay, ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

I count down, and then we both go under the water. My eyes close on instinct, but I force them open, and when I see his brilliant bright blue eyes smiling back at me, I am so glad I did. I forget about counting and let go of his hands to take hold of his face and kiss him under the water.

Big mistake. Everything I’ve seen in movies is a lie. Kissing underwater is fucking hard. The second I open my mouth, the water gushes inside, and my nose wants to breathe, so I snort back a little before breaking away and pushing up out of the water, coughing and sputtering.

“Are you okay? Oh my god, I’m sorry, are you alright?” Ryan asks, patting my back as I spit and sputter, and he leads me towards the edge.

I want to tell him I’m okay. It just got up my nose, but the sting of the water burns, and all my focus is on clearing it.

Finally, I suck in a few deep breaths and relax against the edge.

“I’m okay. That was stupid.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? I’m the idiot that tried to kiss you underwater.”

“Yeah, but I know how hard it is to do that, and I should have stopped you.”

“You’ve kissed many guys underwater?”

His cheeks blush, and he bites his top lip. “No.”

“Why do I think that’s a lie?”

“It wasn’t a guy that I kissed. It was before I came out. We’d been dating for a year and she was on the girls’ swim team at school, so we were always in the water. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I didn’t freak out completely and jump out of the pool.”

He runs his hands over my shoulders and down my back.

“You said you could swim before. Do you remember how?”

I shrug. “Is it like riding a bike?”

“Maybe. I guess it depends on how much you knew to begin with. Do you want to start with floating?”

“So, I don’t have my feet on the ground at all?” Just the idea of it sends my stomach into knots.

“Yeah, but I’ll be right here.”

“Holding onto me so that I don’t go under. Because while I’m fine, and I am fine. I don’t think I want to go under again just yet.”

“I’ll make sure you stay floating. You can trust me.”

His words wash over me like a calming haze, and I let him lead me away from the edge into slightly shallower water that comes up to our chests.

“Now, I want you to let the water lift your legs. It wants to. Your body wants to float. It’s our brains that keep our feet on the ground. I’m going to put my hand behind your back and you’re going to lie back onto it. All you have to do is trust me.”

If I wasn’t already soaked through, I’d be covered in sweat. I hold one of his hands tight as the other slides down to rest on the small of my back.

“Okay, lean back,” he says, but my feet don’t move.

“I can’t.”

“You can, you just have to let go. Let the water bring them up. Relax into it.”

I asked for this. I wanted to face this fear. To overcome it. Come on. You can do this. He has you. He won’t let you go under. You just went under yourself and were fine. This is floating. Babies can float. Come on. I take a big breath and fill my lungs, then when it releases, I let my feet go out from under me with it. Ryan’s hand is pressed firmly against me, and my fingers dig into him as I lean further back.

“You got this,” he says, and I feel like I might, then my toes break the surface of the water and my ass begins to fall, and I can feel his hand trying to lift me higher, and instead of laying back like I know I probably should, I try to sit and I start to sink.

But just like he promised, I don’t go under. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me to him. My legs wrap around his waist and close behind his back.

“Oh, I like this better than floating, let’s practice this,” I say, all traces of my fear gone, replaced by a hungry desire growing stronger as my groin slides down over his mound and semi-hard cock. “I think you like this better, too.”

“You’re so bad,” he says, moving his hands to my ass and lifting me higher. “We can’t do that here either.”

“Aww, but I was just starting to relax.”

“I thought you were doing great before.”

“I sucked at floating.”

“Backwards floating yes, a little, but you will get there. How about we try floating forwards?”

“How about we keep doing seated floating? I like this.”

“I thought you wanted to be confident enough to skinny dip at your ranch?”

“I can skinny dip like this. I think this is the perfect way to do it, don’t you?”

“As much as I would love to have your wet naked body wrapped around me in a pool, I’d also love to swim with you.”

“Okay, fine, let’s do forward floating then,” I say, and I let my feet slip from around his waist to stand in the pool again. He holds my hand the whole way to the edge. Actually, since stepping fully into the water, he’s always had a hold of me in some way.

“Okay, take the edge of the pool,” he says, and I reach out with one hand but keep the other holding his.

“This will be easier if you hold the edge with both hands. I know, here, how about this,” he says, and he moves to stand against the edge in front of me and rests his free hand on my side, sending a shiver through me. “Take the edge, I’ll keep a hold of you, too, and then when you are ready, let your legs lift behind you and if you can get them both up to float, I’ll let you kiss me.”

“Ohhh, I like incentives. Okay. I can do this,” I say, and I release his hand to take the edge on his other side. If I leaned forward and kissed him, I don’t think he would stop me, but I said I would try, so I step back, his hands softly resting at my sides, and then I let my feet lift from the slick floor of the pool. They don’t float as fast as they wanted to when I leaned back, but they want to rise. I try to lift them higher myself, and as I swish them upward, my body moves back and my face nears the water. Ryan ducks down, too, the water sitting just below his shoulders, and with a final little kick, my legs are up and I’m floating in front of him.

“I knew you could do it,” he says, and he closes the short distance between our faces and kisses me. I don’t know how long I am floating, only that by the time the alarm sounds on his phone over on the chairs, and he breaks our kiss, my face tingles from his three-day-old shave and I love it.

“Does this place have private showers?” I ask, and he smiles.

“It does.”

“Good, it’s time we got out and I thanked you properly. We have a game tomorrow, and I want to make sure we win.”