Chapter 12 Twelve Inches #5
I looked up to see him still standing across the pool, but he was watching us, a slight frown on his brow. I remembered the exact same look on his face when he saw Preston bringing me hot cocoa the day after our first kiss on the swing in the snow, a million years ago.
I turned back to Preston and shook my head. “Why would I go swimming with a pig when I already have a gentleman?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s a gentleman,” Preston drawled. “But does he cum at the mere sight of your tits?”
I gulped, trying not to show how shocked I was by his words. I was never going to mention what I’d seen in my life, and I’d expected him to do the same. Pretending it didn’t happen was the southern way.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Because he’d never be inside another girl right in front of me.”
Preston bent quickly, dropping his black trousers, and for one breathless second, I thought he was going to stand up and be completely nude.
But then he straightened, and I saw he’d left his boxer briefs up. I could also see he was sporting a semi, and a little tremor made my knees clamp together.
“We’re going to jump holding hands,” Destiny yelled from the balcony. “Take a video!”
“Know what I think?” Preston asked, that infuriatingly smug smile on his face again, his attention never wavering from me. “I think you’re just as bad as me, and you’re pissed that I know it.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I said with a huff, turning my face toward the pool, where Devlin was still watching us.
Preston bent, bracing his hands on the arms of my chair and caging me in.
He leaned in, so close I could smell the spicy, masculine scent of him that made some twinge of memory flit through me before it was gone; could see the golden threads of hair on his tan forearms catching the light.
I took an unsteady breath, fighting the urge to close my eyes and breathe him in and pray that he’d do the impossible, that he’d press that infuriating mouth to mine.
His breath feathered across my cheek, and goosebumps swept over my body. “See, I think you are,” he said, his voice a silky purr caressing my skin. “I don’t think he’s the only one who’d rather be fucking someone else.”
A gigantic splash went up from the pool, and everyone cheered.
I was grateful for the distraction. Preston shoved off the chair and straightened to standing.
Destiny was thrashing around in the water.
Colt shot up from under the surface and everyone cheered again, laughing and exclaiming about the dive.
“Destiny,” Colt bellowed, and he started swimming toward her, his strokes desperate.
Preston leapt past me, sprinting for the water and diving in.
I sat frozen, my whole body rigid.
Time seemed to loop, rewinding back a few seconds.
Preston’s strong, lean body slicing into the water.
Preston freezing beside me.
The panic in Colt’s voice.
The way her arms looked as she flailed around.
Preston’s muscles flexing as he pushed up from the chair.
The splash as they hit the water.
And…
Something else. It seemed to echo back in my head the way the voices echoed off the water. Another sound, almost lost in the noisy splash and the echoes of the water.
I swallowed hard, the alcohol in my stomach churning. It couldn’t be.
The voices of the others seemed far away as they changed from merriment to panic when they realized something had gone wrong, that the party was over and something much darker had just obscured the sun that had shone over our privileged lives for so long.
“Get her out,” Colt was screaming. He had hold of Destiny under the arms, but they were in the deep end, where their feet didn’t touch. She wasn’t splashing around now. Her head was hanging forward, the long strands of her hair trailing into the water like threads of ink.
Preston shot out of the pool, heaving himself up on the edge and leaping out quickly, graceful as a Darling, every muscle in his strong body in motion at once.
He reached down for her.
The blue water rippled around them, the lights bouncing off the pool house, the house.
The whole world seemed to be underwater.
Her black hair floated out in the blue, and slowly, red began to billow around them.
I saw it then. The mark on the side of the pool, a full foot from the edge.
A splatter of red, just a smear, no bigger than a fist.
Preston pulled her out, and Devlin was yelling for someone to call 911, but I couldn’t move.
I just sat there, staring at the splash of crimson surrounding Colt like an incrimination, spreading outward into the pale blue.
He climbed out of the pool and knelt beside her, and I finally lurched out of my chair, tripping on my dress.
I fell to my knees on the wet tiles, crawling toward her in some sort of insane desperation.
I heard myself screaming, but it seemed far away, mingled with the screams of the others.
And then I was at her side, lifting her head, screaming for her to look at me. My beautiful dress that made me look like a bride was wet and dirty and stained with her blood, and I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything except her, and why wasn’t she opening her eyes?
Time.
Stopped.
I don’t remember what happened after that except that the family came out, and there were people everywhere.
Lindsey fainted, and Preston and his dad got in a fist fight, and it took Devlin and the two senior guys to pull them apart.
I just knelt on the tile, water and blood soaking my dress, and I held Destiny’s head with Colt, and together we cried and prayed until the ambulance arrived a few minutes later.
Someone pulled us away, and everyone stood back, silently watching. Devlin wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I could feel him shaking, and I clung to him like he was my anchor, even though I knew my anchor had just been sliced cleanly away.
More paramedics arrived, and for a long time, a whole crew of them worked on her and tried to wake her. Finally, they said it was too late, that she was already gone and there was nothing they could do. They zipped her up inside one of those black bags, and somehow it made sense.
She’d always been larger than life, too big for life, so of course life had left her first.