Gant
Daddy? Did she just fucking call me ‘daddy’?
…
Why don’t I hate it?
I kick her soiled uniform into the water, pocket her ratty bra and make it five steps up the dock, before a thought other than Eloisa’s apparent kink surfaces.
Why isn’t she surfacing?
Why isn’t she sloshing water against the dock and sputtering pitifully as she pulls her heavy tits ashore?
Ten steps later, my boots hit the long grass, but I don’t hear her climbing onto the dock.
Turning on my heel, I watch the calm water. Not a ripple or a bubble in sight…
Bubbles.
Saliva and mucous bubbles.
Bloody bubbles.
They rise and swell and pop around her nose. At the corners of her mouth.
Then…then…there are no bubbles at all.
Of their own accord, my legs take me back to the shallow spot where I’d pushed Eloisa, but I can’t see beneath the dark teal water.
One, two, three seconds tick by…nothing.
And it’s the nothingness that overwhelms me.
Strangles me.
I don’t stop to kick off my shoes or strip out of my blazer. I don’t think at all. Freezing water stabs at my skin like a million needles as I dive in, momentarily paralysing me from the shock. When I push through the numbness, it doesn’t take me long to feel the feathery softness of her hair that wraps around my outstretched fingers, given the shallowness. In the darkness, I use it as a tether, a guide to find her lulling head, then her neck and finally her armpits, which I use in an attempt to pull her to the surface. But she’s like dead weight…
Don’t drift into the past, Gant.
Stay present.
Something’s pinning her down.Panic blooms in my chest as she slips from my arms and sinks to the bottom again. My lungs burn in protest, but I follow her, tracing her bare legs down to whatever’s got a hold of her.
A strap.
The strap to her satchel that’s loaded with textbooks she’s been lugging around all day. Most students went to the dorm before lunch to swap out their texts. She probably wanted to avoid any extra alone time in the girl’s dorms.
And whose fault is that?When I finally get the damned strap off her ankle, I pin her close to my chest and kick off the muddy floor, propelling us to the surface, which is only a metre above my head. But as we break it and I gasp, sucking in the cool air greedily, I note Eloisa’s deafening silence. She’s completely still in my arms, as lifeless as the doll I say she is.
Her head lulls to the side and from this angle, her neck almost looks broken.
Like Mum’s…
No. No!
I don’t waste time getting us fully onto dry land. Her pale legs float gently to the surface, and her head leaves an indentation on the grassy shoreline that forms a halo as I lay her flat. Focusing on her sternum, I swat away a cheap ballet charm necklace that’s already turning her skin a sickly shade of green. Crossing one hand over the other and pressing with as much force as I can muster, I begin to count.
1
Cold.
She feels so bloody cold.
2
And clammy.
3
And dead.
I rip my hands away, shaking off the skin-crawling sensation my mind’s making up. That my mind’s forcing me to remember.
But this is different. She’s not dead.
I watch her eerily peaceful face carefully as I count, looking for a flutter of her eyelashes, a twitch of her blue lips.
They look so familiar.
A nearly identical shade of blue.
But they’re not the same.
This isn’t the same.
It can’t be.
Not again.
I let out a breath, cross my palms and get back to work on her sternum, pushing the intrusive thought away.
I can’t do this again. I can’t see the life slip out of someone in front of me again.
I want to hurt her. I need to hurt her, but not like this. There’s zero satisfaction if she’s gone.
I push harder. “You have to wake up. You weren’t even under for two bloody minutes.”
With every push, I feel a blow to my own chest.
“Come on Dove, get up,” I whisper, my voice cracking with desperation. “You can’t leave me too. You can’t—”
Dove?! The word had slipped out so comfortably. She isn’t a dove of peace and hope. She’s a damn vulture. A marker of death, who’s playing her role a little too well now. I bite my tongue and shake the sentiment away.
“I didn’t give you permission to go.”
That’s more like it.
I drive my palms harder. “Answer me and. Stop. Fucking. Faking.”
Her fingers twitch, and her eyebrows crease, giving me all the motivation I need. With one final push of my palm, water shoots from her lips.
“Elle,” I whisper, as her stomach contracts and she attempts to roll onto her side. I support her as she does, my lungs finally working again as she goes into a coughing fit, expelling less and less water with each one.
When she finally stops, my spine gives out, and our foreheads touch as I all but collapse on top of her, careful to keep my weight on my forearms.
“You came back,” I say with a sigh of relief. My hands find their way to the sides of her face, my thumbs stroking her ice-cold cheeks as if the little act can warm her up. It has to warm her up because I can’t bear to keep touching her if it doesn’t. “Of course you did. You can’t leave me too.”
I don’t know this girl and yet this attachment I feel towards her is unmatched, lust aside.
She was there that night.
She’s the only other person who was there both nights.
She’s my tether between the video and the accident. Between the dance studio and now Beaulieu. Between my past and my present.
Why does that matter so much to me? And why have I wrapped her, that tether, around my forearm before gripping it for dear life?
I can’t let it go.
I can’t let her go.
“Mmm,” she moans in between gasps of air.
“Don’t move,” I tell her, as she tries to sit, as she tries to dislodge me, but I cling to her, keeping our foreheads pressed together. “Just wait.”
And we both wait until our breathing calms and synchronises.
I watch her beneath my lashes, studying her delicate features. I swear I count each little freckle that dots her cheeks and nose bridge. On her left cheek, I follow the formation of the tiny heart I’d memorised from our first encounter. Then I study each lash that surrounds her unfocused emerald green eyes before tracing the curves of her slightly parted lips. Suddenly, I’m tempted to press my lips against hers and breathe for us both.
I don’t know what possesses me, but I place my hand over her heart as if I need confirmation that it’s actually beating. And when I’ve confirmed it, I massage her soft skin, urging the organ beneath it to ease its erratic rhythm. As the minutes tick by, my coaxing seems to work, because her heartbeat slows to a soft tempo. Her nipple catches between my index and middle finger and I can’t help but roll it between them. I can’t help but lower my head, and press three butterfly kisses between her breasts, then a fourth directly over her heart in thanks.
Slowly, Elle looks up at me, her eyes hazy. But slowly, ever so slowly, realisation slips into them and her gaze goes from confused to remembrance to pure fury.
She slaps my hand away and bolts upright, only to fall back. I catch her head before it can slam into the ground and I swear I can see the dancing orbs bouncing in front of her vision right along with her, given the way her eyes cross. When they focus again, she shoves me away, and I let her.
“You...you tried to kill me!”
“You can’t swim?” I sit back on my heels, but it isn’t a question. “Why can’t you swim?”
She gapes at me for several moments. “Are you purposefully slow or just willfully ignorant? Millions of people can’t swim. People like me, who can’t afford lessons, and who don’t have summer houses by the lake with hot tubs and infinity pools to wade in.”
That’s profoundly sad.
“The pond,” I say as another memory surfaces. “When I tossed your phone into the pond, you didn’t follow me. You didn’t do anything. You were afraid of the water?”
She bites her lip, saying nothing.
“We’ll have to change that,” I say. “It’s a crucial life skill.”
“We? We?” she asks, outraged, but there’s confusion swirling in her irises.
What’s there to be confused about?
Yes, we. Didn’t I just tell her she was mine?
I hate repeating myself. Instead, I drink her in. A pure vision if ever I’d seen one.
I’d only seen her defiant, nervous or stoic, undoubtedly trying to hold in her tears, her perceived weakness from our peers. But I’d yet to see pure fury on her angelic face. I don’t care that it’s sheer hatred for me. I care that she’s able to emote anything at all. That she’s simply my living doll again, alive with all the signs to prove it.
Her pale skin is flushed pink, her breasts heaving, her nipples that I want to lean over and suck on, pointing straight at me accusatorily. I follow the shallow indentation line that runs down the centre of her core from her sternum to her navel and then to the cute little roll beneath it that disappears into her saggy panties.
Seriously. Why the fuck is she wearing them? They’re useless.
“There is no we and don’t pretend like you give a damn about my crucial life skills. You wanted to prove a point, and you did. You want vengeance, not an explanation. You crave it so much that you’d put my life in danger. I got it. You hate me and guess what? I fucking hate you too. You don’t want to hear my apology? Good, because I don’t have one to give. Not anymore.”
As if I want it in the first place.
“I felt sorry for you. Sorry that you’ve lost your mum. Sorry that I was the one who leaked that email and you were blamed. Sorry that Madame was so upset she lost control of her vehicle, with you in it, no less. I never wanted anything to happen to you or Madame. I didn’t even know that something had happened until I got here. Until I saw the crash video. It was…I can’t describe how horrible it was. Just seeing you like that…”
That snaps my eyes to hers. Since when has she given a damn about me? She didn’t even know me back then. She doesn’t know me now. Clearly.
“Because in the short time I knew you, you helped me when no one else would. You gave me a crumb of attention. A piece of your time, and the best critique I’d ever gotten at that dance studio in weeks,” she says as if hearing my unasked question. “I was truly, genuinely sorry for everything. Even after all the disgusting things you did to me, I could see, understand, why you’re so furious with me.”
“I told you I don’t want to hear your apologies.” I snap. I don’t want her fucking understanding. Her sympathies. “You can swallow them and shit them out later for someone that gives a fuck.”
“No need. Because I’m not apologising,” she says, her expression hardening. “I said I was sorry, not that I am. You’re a monster that put my life at stake even after I gave you what you wanted. I did what you said.”
“I also saved you,” I point out, eyes narrowed. “If Beaulieu knew that you couldn’t swim, you wouldn’t even be admitted. It’s a requirement.”
“I wouldn’t be at Beaulieu at all if it weren’t for you! If you hadn’t thought up this insane scheme to exact your revenge!”
“You’re welcome.”
Fury flashes in her eyes. “How’s that coming, by the way? I hope you have something better up your sleeve than just having Rin and her cronies dump food on me.”
“It’s coming swimmingly,” I deadpan. “And I’m happy we agree. Spaghetti stains and a refreshing dip aren’t quite worth two hundred grand, are they?”
Her jaw slackens, her full lips splitting into a little O but now words escape her.
“But I want to make something very clear. I don’t want you dead. Not literally. Because then I’d have to follow you into the afterlife to exact my revenge.”
For some reason, I need her to know that.
“You’re out of your mind.” She shakes her head and sits up fully. Once she does, she notices her naked breasts and I notice something beneath the left crease.
A three-pointed, indented scar is nestled between and on top of her ribs. The closest concave to me is the largest, about the size of my pinky nail. What the hell made such a weird impression? And why had it healed so horribly?
I go to touch it, but she hisses, crossing her arms as a dusky flush wanders up her neck to her cheeks. She looks so innocent; she is so innocent because, for all her titty-holding, I can still see a pebbled nipple through her fingers. Besides, she’d already shown me them so willingly, so what had changed? Her ridiculous thought that I wouldn’t be obsessed with them?
I bite my lip, tracing every bit of her curvy outline. Who would’ve thought all of that was hiding beneath a cheap polyester button-down?
She looks everywhere but at me before finally settling on the lake and then the dock. Her uniform is drifting lazily downstream, bobbing along the surface, but her book bag is nowhere to be seen.
“No,” she whispers, dropping her hands so her breasts bounce free as she pitches forward. But the second she does, and the second her fingers touch the lake’s water, she recoils, scooting back until she’s firmly on dry land. “My textbooks. My bag…You pushed it in the water.”
There’s no anger in her tone, just pure devastation. Like those books were her lifeline.
I guess they are. Beaulieu’s her lifeline. She’d made it that way.
But why should I care about how she’ll pass her classes? I have an entire semester to torture her. What does it matter if she gets kicked out at the end of the term?
It doesn’t matter.
So then why don’t I correct her, that it’d tangled around her ankle by mistake? Why do I ease into the lake and dive for her bag? For her filthy uniform?
It’s brutally heavy from dozens of five-pound books now waterlogged and nearly double their original size. When I throw it and her uniform onto the grass beside her, she gazes at the soaking-wet textbooks with equally watery eyes.
“Better spread those out in the sun,” I say before kicking off my boots and heading back towards the upper campus.
“Asshole,” she mutters beneath her breath.
“That’s daddy to you, angel.”
“You mean Dove,” she bites back.
Touche. So she was somewhat conscious then.
“Wait,” she calls when I’m halfway to the greenhouse. “A-are we even now?”
“Even?” I chuckle.
“I almost drowned because of you. My books are fucked and my uniform too. Isn’t that enough for us to stay out of each other’s way?”
“I paid for them, so technically they’re mine. You’re mine. And I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with what I own.”
Something flashes in her eyes and I watch her deflate before her lip stiffens and her expression hardens. “I didn’t ask you to pay for shit, so don’t try to throw it in my face, like all that food you ordered your lackeys to waste.”
I blink.
“That’s what bothers you? You were nearly smothered to death and you’re more worried about the waste?”
“Some of us have the foresight to see the impact after the action. Do you even ever think about other people? I used to work…so many people could’ve…” she trails before shaking her head. “Why am I even bothering to explain this to you? You don’t care. You’re disgusting. That was disgusting and not because I was the one covered in it.”
“I’m so appalling and yet you’re enjoying being here on my dime now that you know. It must not bother you because you haven’t left.”
Of course, I would never let her leave.
“I’m going to pay you back every single cent of tuition,” she says seriously. “The last thing I want or need is to be indebted to you.”
I snort. “I don’t want your money that you don’t have. Nor am I interested in a nineteen ninety-nine instalment plan that’ll last into our nineties. I told you what I want.”
“You almost had it,” she nods to the water. “My life in the palm of your hand. So why did you save me?”
“I told you I want to thoroughly fuck you and as I’m not into necrophilia, I can’t do that if you’re dead and I’m in jail. So no, it isn’t enough.”
“If that doesn’t qualify for a truce, what the hell does?”
“I promise you’ll find out.”