“I-I can’t swim,” I choke out in fret, confident Lennox’s hotheadedness has him forgetting that tidbit of information I shared the first time we played twenty secrets.
I never thought I’d see a beach, much less swim at one, so I never took swimming lessons. My father couldn’t afford to fix the pool at the trailer park, and I didn’t want to tack more after-school activities onto his already stretched budget.
I don’t even know if I can float.
As my eyes stray away from Desiree, Holden, Cody, and over two dozen partygoers standing on the shore, glaring at us, I beg, “Please take me back to solid ground.”
“No,” Lennox replies, his tone a mix of angry and frustrated. “We’re staying out here until you start using your damn head.”
“My head! What about yours? You’re the one acting like a nincompoop.”
He grunts but doesn’t deny my claim.
He can’t since it’s honest, and he hates lying.
When Lennox loosens his grip around my thighs so he can plaster the front of my body to his, I kick out my legs like I have an idea on how to keep us afloat. In reality, I’m so eager to hurt Lennox as he did me yesterday morning, I’m willing to drown if a knee to his balls frees me from his clutch. My mood is already at boiling point after a run-in with his father. I don’t need extra Cabarello murkiness added to the goop.
“You can’t keep us out here forever,” I mutter when all he does is grunt through the pain of my leg constantly colliding with his crotch. “Soon you will have to take me back, then Cody and I will recommence ourdate.” I over-emphasize my last word to hurt him emotionally instead of physically. “And there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.”
When he huffs out a laugh, I splash him in the face with salty water. My attitude is at an all-time high until he removes one of his hands holding my body flush with his so he can clear away the water I hammered him with. Instead of endeavoring to get away from him, I clamp my legs around his waist, moaning when the tenseness of the situation can’t have me missing the impressive bulge beneath his shorts.
“I wonder how eager the Virgin Slayer would be to take you for abreatherif he heard that.”
I splash him some more. “I was groaning, you imbecile!”
“Sure you were, Cocoa.”
I don’t know how he does it, but even with us floating in the middle of the ocean like buoys, he thrusts his hips upward, discrediting my lie with one mind-hazing grind of our pelvises.
His obnoxiousness weakens the furious storm in the lower half of my stomach two seconds later. “Perhaps he did hear your moans. He’s already called in defeat.” With a faint head shake to hide his smug grin, he mutters, “That was easier than I thought.”
I don’t know what to respond to first. The cockiness on his face when he nudges his head to Cody, who is making a brisk retreat from the beach, or the fact he’s acting as if I am a virgin when he knows I’m not.
I go for both by shouting, “I’m not a virgin!” I scream my confession loud enough for the world to hear, but regretfully, Cody has trekked back toward his house too far to hear it.
When Lennox’s lips crimp, impressed with himself, I whack into him as I did during his stomp through Cody’s house, except this time, I don’t reserve my strength because I don’t want to maim my best friend. I beat the living shit out of him, then I slam my knee into his groin.
“Fuck!” Lennox groans before his grab for his crotch sees him releasing me from his hold.
In case you’re wondering, I can’t float.
Not even a little bit.
The instant Lennox’s arms wedge a gap between us, I commence sinking toward the bottom of the ocean. In my panic not to drown, I scream out the last of the air from my lungs instead of reserving it, too scared I’m about to drown for common sense to prevail.
My lungs commence their fight for air at the same time Lennox’s white face and massively dilated eyes block the moon’s rays. My name ripples through the salty water I’m choking on a mere second before he slings his arm around my waist.
As he races us to the surface, I don’t fight him. I sag against him like a deflated balloon, then frantically gasp when he breaks us through the water’s surface a couple of seconds after that.
“Get a medic!” he screams toward the beach when the salty water gurgling in my throat causes me to wheeze, cough, and splatter. “Hold on, Sum. I’ll get the water out of your lungs soon. I just need you to hold on.”
Before half the water he’s mentioning streams from my mouth and nose, Lennox places me onto the warm sand, rolls me onto my side, then whacks the living shit out of my back. It brings up the buckets of water I swallowed instead of air, but it does little to settle the salty blobs threatening to stream down my cheeks when I remember I wouldn’t have been on the verge of drowning if it weren’t for him.
After yanking away from Lennox with a viciousness I doubt he’ll ever forget, I belt into his chest with the same aggression he used on my back. He wasn’t hitting me to hurt me. I can’t say the same. “I almost drowned! You almost killed me!”
I hit, slap, and claw at him until the tears brimming in my eyes are so close to falling, I need to leave before they do. When I stand to place some much-needed distance between us, I sway like a leaf on a hot fall day, but before I land flat on my face, Desiree curls a towel around my shoulders and guides my shaky steps to her car parked at the front of Cody’s house.
When Lennox tries to back up her campaign, I end his efforts by snarling, “Stay the fuck away from me, Lennox. Just stay away!”
