Chapter 2
Two
Time’s slower down here. A mumbo-jumbo of memory fragments and things I’ve tried real hard to forget.
But this time, I’m not fighting it. For once, I’m awake, fully willing, as the memory that planted this very terror flashes behind closed lids.
I let it play.
Let it wrap around me like the growing pressure of the water does.
Because this is healing, right?
Healing, even as my lungs scream for mercy and fire catches under my ribs.
Not yet.
I won’t give in.
Can’t.
Two minutes. That’s what they told me later. Two minutes I was held under.
But when they finally hauled me up, when I coughed, cried, clawed for air, it didn’t feel like minutes. It felt like forever.
Small hands flailing. Silence ringing like it was trying to drown me too. Each breath only reminding of the next one I wouldn’t get.
The nightmares after were one thing. Expected, almost. What I didn’t see coming were the reenactments. How I’d starve myself of oxygen until I spiralled into a choking fit mid-sleep.
That’s why I’m here now. Adamant to hold on for the three-minute mark, if only to prove to myself that I can do it. That two minutes underwater is nothing.
Fifty-three. Fifty-two. Fift—gone.
The count vanishes, drowned by the sudden force wrenching me up. Bitter-cold air slashes my lungs as I break the surface and hands seize me, anchoring as my chest lurches in staccato beats: up-down, up-down, too rapid to catch.
A curse skims my crown, muffled as if I’m still underwater. Another follows, closer, but I can’t track either. I’m lost in the whiplash of return, my body pitching forward on its own.
My forehead thuds against something. Broad, warm, and for a heartbeat I lean into it. I wish I could for longer, but hands sweep up my arms, catch my face, and tilt my head back.
Through the blur, fathomless lenses lock onto mine.
“Are you okay?”
It cuts through the fog, too much, too close. I blink against the frantic edge, but it’s only when his hands twitch, repositioning with rising urgency, that I find enough air to rasp, “I’m okay.”
It doesn’t have the placating effect I mean it to. Shadowed eyes deepen a shade.
Two fingers slide to my neck, catching the erratic beat tapping there. My pulse stumbles, then finds a fragile steadiness under the heat of his touch.
“You were under for a while.”
Maybe if I weren’t half-delirious, I’d catch the caution tucked behind it. But I am, so all he gets is a jerky nod, my jaw grazing the underside of his fingers in the process.
“I wanted to be free.”
I probably look unhinged with the smile pulling at my lips, but it doesn’t matter.
I did it. And I do feel free.
It doesn’t matter that it ended prematurely. Progress is still progress, and I just crossed a line I never thought I’d reach.
Fingers flex against my carotid.
“You wanted to be free,” he repeats, careful, as if he’s trying to taste the meaning.
I giggle. I actually giggle. Yep—definitely off my head.
“Yeah.” Adrenaline and euphoria is one hell of a cocktail, fizzing through me as shivers rack my frame.
He must feel them, because his touch shifts, tracing a featherlight path beneath my eyes.
“Are you staying nearby?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, and it’s soft. So soft. The complete opposite of his hand engulfing mine, solid where I feel small. “Good. Let’s get you somewhere safe, where you can warm up.”
Warm up. That sounds wise and oh-so-nice given the fact my teeth are starting to chatter like castanets.
I’m just about to rattle off directions when my already addled brain snags on something and completely short-circuits. A pendant. Just a faint glint of silver, dangling from a chain and resting flush against his chest. His bare chest. The same one bridged by wide shoulders and dripping saltwater.
“You’re the swimmer.” I don’t even try to dial back the awe, because how? How can he swim so fearlessly, with that level of unrestrained strength in the ocean?
At night.
With next to no one around.
A pause marinates before he dips his chin in confirmation.
“Yeah.” Nothing more, just that, followed by pull of him steering me toward shore.
I stumble on laden legs, and somewhere in the back of my mind, common sense whispers that he’s a stranger and I’m in no state to follow blindly.
But, surprise, surprise, this one-way path to destruction I’m on doesn’t leave room for self-preservation.
“Can you teach me?” I blurt, stopping in place as my feet meet dry sand. “To swim like you?”
He halts too, turning just enough that the moon carves him into clarity and I get my first real view of him. He can’t be much older than my twenty. Sharp lines, high angles. The only imperfection is a slight bump in his nose; otherwise, he’s perfectly symmetrical.
It isn’t his looks that hold me though. It’s his eyes—brown? Hazel? I can’t quite pin them down, nor the look swirling within them. It’s something raw, an unease humming beneath the surface, but it feels deeper than that.
He runs his own inventory of me, and I barely catch the muscle that jumps in his jaw before he smooths it away. A quick clear of his throat.
“Maybe.”
His fingers cinch tighter around mine, and the warmth that bolts through me is proof of just how cold I really am.
“For now, let’s get you to someone you can talk to. You’re here with someone, yeah? Family? Friends?”
“Parents.” I tamp down the spark from his maybe long enough to ask, “Why would I need someone to talk to?”
The column of his neck flexes, and an emotion I’ve been dodging for six weeks finally catches me head-on.
Pity.
I’d tense if my body stilled long enough to let me.
“Because of what you just tried to do.”
Because of what I tried to do…?
It takes a few beats to piece it together. At first, it’s too cryptic, too broad—but then—oh.
Oh.
The realisation knocks my heart into freefall.
I rock back on my heels, the motion tugging on his hand, but he stays holding mine. “No. Nooo way.” I laugh, but it’s awkward even to my still-ringing ears. “That’s not what I was doing.”
I hadn’t been attempting. But the way he looks at me, with that too-tender scrutiny, it’s obvious that’s where his mind has gone. “It’s just the blow, you know? Makes you do crazy things sometimes.”
Instantly I know I’ve messed up. All softness vanishes, snuffed out like a flame against stone. What’s left is a wall, unreadable. Even the warmth suffuses from his hand in mine.
Damn it. I only meant to spare him the trauma-dump.
“Yeah,” he clips, hollow. “Seems it does.”
An apology brews, but I don’t let it out. Instinct says it’ll bounce right off him judging by the complete one-eighty he just pulled.
“Never a good idea to get high by the beach, huh?”
The attempt at levity backfires. His cheekbones pull taut, and he drops my hand like it’s scorched. I’m certain he’s about to walk off—there’s even a twitch in his legs to suggest it—but he stays.
“Where are you staying? I’ll walk you.”
His tone makes it clear he’d rather be anywhere else, so I stretch my smile and give him an out. “Really, it’s fine. I’m close. You can head back to your swim… or whatever else you’d rather be doing.”
His stare is so sharp-edged I’m surprised I don’t flinch. “It’s late. You’re in a bad state. I’m walking you.” The finality in it leaves no space to argue. I just shrug and match his stride.
Your call. “Thank you.”
It’s only side by side that I realise how easily he dwarfs my five-four frame. He’s over six-foot no doubt, probably six-two, six-three. Maybe I’d be scared if at least my spidey-senses were tingling, but nothing stirs.
“I’m Brielle,” I offer, mostly to distract myself from the cold seeping into my bones.
Nothing. Just pin-drop silence, broken only by the waves.
I owe the lack of sting to my parents. I’ve mastered invisibility over the last few weeks. Honestly, I doubt I’d even be in Grove right now if I hadn’t caught them halfway through loading the car. That was my only warning to start packing.
“I’m spending the summer here. First time.
” If he won’t talk, I’ll just keep filling the space; lately, silence is something I can’t stand.
“Are you close by? You must be, since you were swimming so late… unless you walked down.” I shake my head, but the questions keep coming.
“So, are you from Grove? Or just here for the season?”
I’ve got to give it to him. It’s seamless, the way he switched. Gone is the guy with kind eyes and a tender touch. I study his profile, defined beneath the moonlight, waiting for him to crack and meet me halfway. He never does.
So my gaze drifts lower. Down the long line of his throat, the ripple of a swallow. Droplets cling to his collarbone, sliding over a chest sculpted by years of discipline, tapering to a lean waist. He looks like he belongs to the ocean.
And here I am, limbs trembling, body wired all wrong.
My fingers brush sodden silk, and I cringe. This needs off. Now.
I’m fumbling my way down the buttons, and it’s on the second-to-last one that a question cuts through like a whip-crack.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t have to look up to know he’s scowling something fierce.
“Taking off my shirt. I’m cold.” The final button refuses to catch under my pruney fingers, and I sigh. “Can you get this last one?”
Before I can try again, a hand clamps down on my arm. The air between us bristles, heat sparking where there should be none. Suddenly, I don’t feel cold at all. My gaze lifts, locking on his, so close, so consuming that it’s maddening I still can’t place the shade.
“Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”
I’m not prepared for even half the venom.
“First you pull that reckless stunt that could’ve gone sideways in a heartbeat, and now this?
” He steps back, letting the space between us breathe, but his fury quickly fills it.
“You’re barely walking straight, high out of your mind.
Do you not think about what that’ll look like to your parents when some random guy is walking you home at three a.m.? ”
His words hit, dragging me right back down to a reality where the high isn’t high anymore, and I’m crashing instead of floating. Reeling from a loss I refuse to acknowledge or accept.
My shoulders curl inwards on their own, as though my body is trying to shield itself from the way he looks at me. Like I disgust him.
And maybe he has every right to.
Sorry, I want to say.
Only it won’t fit past the jagged thing lodged in my throat.
So I stay quiet. And, for the remainder of the walk, so does he.