Chapter One
Aaron
Ah, the sweet sound of silence… is what I would be saying if the serene mountain air wasn’t filled with screaming.
I can’t catch a fucking break.
I slammed the door of my truck and took off running towards the lake, where the screaming was coming from. This was supposed to be a vacation from my search and rescue job, but if the yelling was anything to go by, my break hadn’t started yet.
My feet smacked against the packed gravel trail as I sprinted toward the dock.
As I came around the corner, there were two heads in the water, one with blonde hair and one with black. The distinct fluorescent orange of a life jacket surrounded the black haired one. The blonde one disappeared under the surface, reappeared only to go under again.
Fuck.
I had to act fast.
I was a strong swimmer, but I still paused long enough to toe off my shoes before running off the end of the dock and diving into the water. The heavy denim of my jeans threatened to pull me under but I wouldn’t let it.
The blonde had gone under again while I was running, but resurfaced, raising their hand above their head just as I reached them.
I grabbed the victim by the shoulders and side-stroked towards the dock, keeping her head above water.
“Hey, what the fuck?” the person I was attempting to save said.
She turned around in my arms and I immediately recognized the face.
“Skye?” I said, panting, water running down my face.
“Aaron? The hell are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m… I thought I was saving two people from drowning. I could hear you screaming all the way from the parking lot.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re always so dramatic. I was screaming because I accidentally dropped my brand-new camera in the lake.” She nodded to the camera in her hand. “When I jumped in to get it, Kyle jumped in after me. He’s still learning to swim.”
“Who the hell is Kyle?”
She pointed towards what I had originally taken for a black-haired person in a life jacket.
It was a cat.
A cat wearing a fucking life jacket.
Just paddling around as if any of this made sense.
I realized I was still holding on to her and let go… reluctantly.
Not because I liked her. She was my best friend, Cliff’s sister so wanting to touch her was ten shades of wrong.
I just didn’t want her to drown.
The adrenaline had begun to wane and my anger had started to rise. I pulled myself up on the dock, my jeans and t-shirt soaked through and tried to catch my breath. My skin was chilled from the lake water and the rough wooden dock bit into my palms.
“Start from the beginning,” I barked.
She set the camera on the dock beside me, then swam towards her cat.
“I’m here to write an article on tourism in the area. While I was taking pictures I accidentally dropped my new camera in the lake. When I jumped in to get it, Kyle—”
