AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Also," she said, "there should be a penalty invoked if Party B decides to void the contract during the execution of the exception. How about, if watching you convinces me to surrender, I have to . . ."
She made a suggestion. One hell of a suggestion, which meant he was about to put on one hell of a performance.
"Agreed?" she said.
He grinned in answer.
"Good," she said. "Now, anytime you want to invoke the self-amusement exception, you need to tell me. Verbal notification is required."
"Fine. In case you can't tell . . ." He gestured at his open zipper. "I am officially invoking--"
She jumped backward off the rock and plunged toward the water.
Fuck.
Two - Liv
There is a moment, as you jump from a ledge over a swimming hole, when you may wish to reflect on that decision. That moment is not after you've actually made the leap.
In my defense, I didn't dive into the uncharted waters. I knew better. I just jumped. And the waters weren't entirely uncharted--we'd poked around before climbing to the overhang, and I knew the water was more than a few feet deep. What I did not properly measure was the height of the overhanging rock. It was high. Really high, as I only fully appreciated once I'd stepped off it.
I hit the water with my knees bent, hoping that would help absorb the impact of hitting the bottom. Except I didn't hit the bottom. I kept plummeting, down to an unreasonable depth considering this was a small body of water on a mountainside.
When it became clear I wasn't going to strike bottom anytime soon, I stopped my descent with a few strong strokes. Then I looked up and saw darkness. Complete darkness.
A twinge of panic darted through me. I shoved it back. I hadn't fallen that far, and no matter how much Ricky had been grumbling, he wasn't going to let me swim alone.
I started swimming upward. When the view above didn't lighten, I squelched a fresh lick of panic. Just keep going and--
My head broke the surface, and I gulped air. But everything stayed dark. Pitch black, no sign of the late afternoon sunshine I'd enjoyed a few minutes ago.
Then I caught a voice. A young woman's, her laugh carrying a note I recognized as well as my own. Not surprisingly, given it was my own, in a way.
I'd fallen into a vision of Matilda.
"Gotcha," a man's voice said. Then, "Cach," and a splash as Matilda laughed. A moment later, another splash, as if Matilda had dived and resurfaced.
"If you want me to kiss you, I need to be able to catch you," the man said.
"No, if you want to kiss me, you need to be able to catch me."
The man swore in Welsh again. Everything he said would be in Welsh--I just heard English. As for the man, I knew his voice as well as hers.
"Gwynn," I murmured, and my chest constricted as I heard other voices, these from much more recent memories. Too recent.
"This isn't true, Olivia. You know it isn't. You dream of some fairy prince and say I'm him?" A brusque laugh. "I didn't expect you to fall for romantic nonsense like that--"
"You aren't my fairy prince, Gabriel," I said, barely forcing the words out. "Not by any stretch of the imagination. You aren't Gwynn, and I'm not Matilda."
I squeezed my eyes shut and banished the voices. All the voices.
Sorry, Matilda. Sorry, Gwynn. I don't want to hear either of you right now. Probably not for a very long time.
To my surprise, the vision went silent. Everything stayed dark, though, and when I strained to listen, I caught the sound of water lapping against rock, the noise echoing as if I was in a chamber.
Or an underwater cave.
I swam carefully, one hand always in front of me. Sure enough, after a few strokes, my fingertips grazed rock. I felt around. Yep, definitely rock. And if I couldn't see daylight, that meant the exit was underwater. The problem with that? Finding it when everything was, well, dark.
