Paper Heart ✔️

Chapter 41 | make this quick

We reach the swimming hole to find Danielle and Justin already inside the water. I'm not really up for swimming today especially with Hero this irritable.

I take a seat just before the water and take off my shoes to put my feet inside. This is helping to ease my stress. Hero sits beside me and I can feel him glance at me every so often.

"You've ever skipped rocks before?" He asks.

I shake my head and watch as he stands up and grabs something from off the ground.

"Come here."

He reaches for my hand and helps me up, he then hands me a small rock and picks a few more off the ground again.

"I'll show you."

He takes a single rock and moves it low to the ground before tossing it across the water. It skips multiple times until it finally sinks in.

"Looks easy enough." I say, internally doubting myself. Hero grabs my hand and positions the rock.

"Bring your arm behind you." He tells me. "Throw your arm out in front of you and throw the rock, but not too hard."

I follow his instructions, my rock flies out of my hand but only does a single skip.

"That was good." Hero chuckles, his smile is enough to tell me he's enjoying this, finally.

"Okay I'll try again."

I pull my arm back and swing it while releasing the rock. This time it skips about four times which gets me very excited.

"I did it!" I cheer.

Hero nods and tosses his rock, it goes a lot longer than mine did but I'm still proud of myself.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" I say.

Hero's eyes squint as the sun shines against his face.

"My dad."

He skips another rock.

"Henry?"

Hero shakes his head. "Tommy, my biological dad."

So his dad finally has a name. Tommy Adams?

"He used to take me fishing with him all the time except all I did was complain the entire time so he taught me how to skip rocks to distract myself."

I laugh lightly while smiling at Hero.

"I guess I haven't changed much." He shrugs.

"The only thing my dad and I ever did was read together." I tell him. "When his lungs got worse he couldn't read to me as often as I hoped so I started reading for us."

Hero's eyes shy away again.

"You haven't changed much either then?" He says.

"I don't know, I think I have." I admit.

"Because of Wyatt?"

I look at the water. "Wyatt never changed me, his death did."

We both get distracted as Danielle and Justin climb out of the water. They look so happy while Hero and I are over here awkwardly trying to make conversation. It was never this difficult before, I think it's because I have more to lose this time.

"You guys should have came in, the waters great."

Hero grabs my backpack and throw it over his shoulder.

"We're leaving." He says.

"You aren't going to wait up for us?" They ask.

"No, it's already getting late."