“I’d rather you not throw up on me, but I’m not scared of a little mess.” His voice is a deadly calm. He walks to the back of the house and goes out our gate and through his, not even slightly out of breath from the weight of me and the suitcase.
“Set me down,” I yelp.
“I’ll set you down when we’re safely inside.”
“I hate you.” I kick him, hoping to get his balls but not getting so lucky.
“You’re getting awfully repetitive,” he says. “I think we should save those words for when we’ve had sex again. Otherwise, it’s just monotonous.”
He tosses me on the couch like I’m a bag of potatoes and stands over me, arms folded across his chest.
“We’ll never have sex again so I’m saying it until it sinks in.”
“You’ll never be able to act like you don’t want me, Gabi. I know the truth now. I felt it in the way your pussy squeezed me like a vise.”
I flush and hold up my hand. “It had been too long since I’d had sex, that’s all. It meant nothing.” I sit up. “Obviously.”
His eyes flash and his cheeks mottle, like he’s on fire within.
“I don’t want to be here. The walls are closing in and this is the last place that feels safe to me.”
“Okay, where could we go that would help?” he asks through gritted teeth.
I frown at him. “Why would you want to help me?”
“My father will kill me if I let you run away. That’s what you were trying to do, isn’t it?”
“How about you don’t tell him anything and we’ll call it even? I’m not going back to school. Ever.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and there are twelve missed calls from Ashton.
“You don’t strike me as a quitter.”
“You saw the video, didn’t you? That’s why you were fighting…” My eyes flit up to his for a moment and it’s enough. The answer is apparent. I bite my lip to keep from losing it again and avoid looking at him. I put my legs on the floor and face straight ahead. “I wish I could figure you out.”
“Pretty simple. My dad wants in your mom’s pants. I keep you safe, your mom is happy…my dad is happy.”
Disgusted, I get up and walk to the window. Their view is even better than ours, a clearer shot of the water behind their house and even closer to the beach. Raf keeps talking, but I tune him out. As much as I hate to admit it, the hurt is deeper than I expected to feel, the way he talks about me like I’m a means to an end.
I can’t think about the pain. There are too many other hurts to knock me down right now, like the fact that what I thought was a private experience between Luke and me is all anyone will see now when they look at me.
My lips tremble and I move to open the screen door. It’s locked, but I quickly figure out how to open it and slip out, while Raf is still talking. Once I’m outside, I run. Across the deck, down the steps, out the gate, and when I hit the sand, I feel like I’m on the homestretch. I vaguely hear Raf behind me, but it doesn’t matter. My first steps in the water are relief. I take step after step until I’m sinking underneath the waves and let the tide pull me out.
Weightless.
The water tugs on me for a little while, but then I feel the urge to swim. It’s as if I’m taken over by superhuman strength that I didn’t know I had. I’m not the best swimmer, my days in Vegas mostly spent sunbathing if I ever went near a pool. We didn’t have a pool, so this shouldn’t feel as good as it does.
Until it doesn’t.
I’m swimming, feeling like I’m owning the world and finding my freedom.
Until my strength is zapped.
I’m fine one moment and flailing the next. I forget every hurt, every wrong done against me, every pain I’ve felt since losing myself to Luke, who never cared about me at all. The struggle to distance myself from the feelings where Raf is concerned. Because I do…I feel so much. I feel everything.
In that moment, none of it matters.
My arms and legs are weak, and I take a huge, gulping breath, swallowing water in the process. I sink underneath the water and feel a sudden surge of peace when everything goes dark. The roar of life underneath the water is comforting and I let it sink, sink, sink with me like an anchor. I close my eyes and don’t fight the lull in my body. I welcome it. I’m tired and this life is too hard. I don’t want to struggle anymore. I don’t want to fight to be heard, to be understood. The peace is a welcome relief and I succumb to it.
I don’t know when I realize that I’m out of the cocoon of the water. If I’d known, I would’ve fought it harder. But it’s too late when I take a deep breath and I’m on dry ground.
I keep my eyes closed, trying to get back to the solitude that is in the deep waters, but I hear an incessant beeping and feel the bright lights on me even though my eyes are tightly shut. This isn’t peaceful. I feel the rush of activity around me, feel the weight that comes with knowing I will have to wake up and function in real life again. When the waves lapping around my mind cause me to drift under again, I welcome them wholeheartedly.
I feel a hand in mine before I ever open my eyes. Solid and strong. I don’t give it much thought because all I want to do is go back to sleep, but the hand squeezes mine when I start to move and I know I’m breaking the surface of reality. I
