Page 85 of Summer Love

My head breaks the surface. I open my mouth… and the second wave slams me down.

The leash pulls the other way. My shoulder scrapes the sand. There’s water in my throat, in my nose, and I cough—stupid reflex.

I come up, just in time to suck in a mouthful of air.

Third wave.

No breath left. No direction. I don’t know where the surface is. My arms beat at nothing. The pressure comes back, the cold, the black. And the water gets in. Through my mouth, through my nose.

I screwed up.

The fourth wave rolls me. I’m not swimming anymore. I’m not fighting anymore. Everything goes muffled, soft, slow.

I’m going to drown.

Hands close around my hips. A hard yank—and I break the surface.

Air rushes in all at once. I cough. I spit. My lungs burn.

“Hold on to the board!”

Jace.

He shoves his board against me. My fingers clamp onto the rail. I cling to it like it’s a life raft. Jace is behind me, one hand on my back, the other on the board.

“Hang on. Don’t paddle,” he orders. “I’ll push you.”

He guides me toward shore. Between the waves, through the whitewater. I’m still coughing. I spit out water. My arms are shaking.

Finally, my feet touch the bottom.

Jace pulls me by the elbow. I stumble. My knees give out in the shallow water. He catches me by the waist, sets me back on my feet, pushes me toward the sand.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he explodes, standing in front of me, his eyes too green in the morning light. “It’s rough out there today, Summer. You can’t see that?”

He throws an arm toward the ocean. I keep coughing. I can’t speak.

“You haven’t surfed in six years! You paddled out to the peak like you did it yesterday! You stood up too late. You didn’t watch the sets. You weren’t ready.”

He clenches his fists.

“Did you forget everything I taught you, or what?”

The line isn’t calculated. But even through the cold and the rising tears, I hear it.

“Everything I taught you.”

My lips tremble, and the tears come—hot, salty, mixed with the seawater dripping from my hair.

I burst into sobs. I’m shivering. I’m bent double on the wet sand, crying like a little kid.

Jace doesn’t say anything else. He crouches down.

He unclips the leash from my ankle, his fingers warm against my frozen skin. He coils it, sets it down in the sand. Then he gets an arm under me and tries to lift me.

“Come on. Up.”

“I can’t,” I rasp.