Chapter 129. Six Months Of Wet Dreams

I never thought I’d see Hades again.

Not after the way things ended last summer—his voice cracking when he said he couldn’t do this anymore, the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes while he packed his swim bag like he was escaping a crime scene. We’d been circling each other for months: stolen glances in the lane next to mine, brushes of wet skin under the water that lasted half a second too long, late-night texts that started innocent and ended with both of us breathing hard into our phones. Then one humid August night he kissed me behind the equipment shed, desperate and shaking, and the next week he ghosted me completely.

So when the pool door squeaked open at 9:17 p.m. and I saw his familiar broad shoulders framed in the dim emergency lighting, my stomach dropped like I’d missed the wall on a bad turn.

I was the only one left. Adult lap swim had ended twenty minutes ago; I’d stayed behind to finish the last set of 200s because I needed to burn something out of my ches