Page 103 of Forbid It

“Well, from where I’m sitting, it looks to me like she came to win you back.”

“I can’t believe this. Aren’t you supposed to be on my side in a break up?”

She blinks at me. “No.”

I cover my head with my eyes, my fingers brushing at the sensitive side of my head. It’s dark behind my hands, and I feel like I can finally breath for the first time since that fucker’s boot hit my head.

One thought rolls through my jumbled thoughts. “She was at the game?” I ask, still hidden in the palm of my hands. She can’t have been. I saw the box and it was empty. She wasn’t there.

“She was,” Iwan says quietly. “Got a last minute ticket, apparently. Sat way up in the back of the stands.”

It doesn’t make sense. She never travels with the team, her father doesn’t need her to. He wants her in the crowd for the home games, he doesn’t fly her out so other teams can take advantage of her presence in their stands.

The only reason she’d do that is…

Cassie was here. She flew across the country to sit in the worst seats in the stadium to watch a game she barely takes an interest in, for no other reason than to see me.

“I love her.”

“We know.”

“Tell me she’s still here,” I implore my brother.

“No,” Iwan tells me. “She went home this morning. The nurse told us you didn’t want visitors. She said she didn’t want to make your recovery any more difficult.”

Fuck. I grab my blanket and attempt to swing my legs off the bed, but my mother stops me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I look at her incredulously. “You literally just ripped the shit out of me for letting Cassie go, and now you want to stop me from getting her back?”

She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t mean right now! You have a concussion.” She yanks the blanket from my hands and nudges at my shoulder until I lie back down. “Get back in that bed.”

46

CASSIE

The sun is setting on the horizon, but the water is calm underneath my board. My arm dangles in the water, the ocean running through my pruning fingers. The waves have stilled enough that there will barely be enough to get me back to shore without effort, so I hover here, just out of sight of the shoreline.

It’s peaceful, with the waves lapping gently underneath my board and the occasional bird high in the sky. Out here, all alone, there’s nothing to distract my mind from wandering back to the way Robbie looked at me in his hospital room. Or rather, how he didn’t look at me.

I know I fucked up, I know I pushed him too hard, but there was a tiny part of me that forgot all of that. Instead, I was distracted by all the blood and his loopy smile as he held my hand all the way out of the ambulance, awkwardly stumbling out after him as I kept up the pace with his gurney. I didn’t even get a chance to apologize. I didn’t even get a chance to say any of the speech I’d been rehearsing over and over again.

He didn’t want to hear it. I’ve already broken what we had and there’s no one out here to see the tears gather in my eyes or the ugly grimace that pulls at my face as I finally let a jagged sob escape.

I squeeze my eyes closed as I tilt my board and slide into the water, immediately enveloped in pressure and silence. My tears can stay up there on the surface, down here I can just exist. I stay under for a few seconds, just to see how long I can hold my breath.

Everything is quiet, the sun from the surface barely illuminating my way. My board is still attached to my ankle so instead of surfacing I swim towards the shore, my board pulling along behind me. I swim until my chest burns, and I breach the surface with a loud gasp, finally filling my lungs with fresh air.

I wipe my hair away from my face and just about hear the sound of my name being called.

“Cassie!”

I glance towards the shore, blinking through the fading light as I see the figure close to the shoreline. Fully dressed and up to his knees in water, Robbie appears like a mirage on the horizon. Maybe I deprived myself of oxygen for a bit too long.

“Cassie?” he calls again, his voice unmistakably hoarse. I blink the water from my eyes and swim until I’m close enough to put my feet on the sand.

“Robbie?” My steps are uneven and battered by waves as I stumble towards him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he bites out furiously.