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The pull between us. The magical, breath-stealing magnetism that says we could be outstanding together.
We could be everything.
But I can’t ever be sure. And I can’t afford to be wrong.
This time I get to spend with him is too sweet, too precious to me. I can’t risk misinterpreting him, reaching for more and ending up falling on my face in front of him, like I have so many times before.
My tongue pokes out again, tasting salt on my upper lip.
“Yes, please.”
Connor walks up to me and passes the bottle, standing so close I have to step back to take a drink. As I bring the bottle to my lips, he doesn’t move, I’m not even sure he breathes.
He just watches. And it’s different from how he’s looked at me any time before.
His jaw is taut and his eyes seem to grow darker the longer he looks. The muscles in his forearms are strung tight and straining. Like he’s holding himself back . . . but only just barely.
I like how he’s looking at me. No—I love it. It makes me feel beautiful and needed. Craved.
Then he says my name. It comes out on a low breath, hushed but sharp—like a warning.
“Violet.”
But it only makes me want him more.
“Yes?”
My chest rises and falls but I can’t catch my breath.
And we stand there, just inches apart, gazes locked. And it would be so easy for him to dip his head and kiss me.
I’m right there—waiting and wanting and already his.
All he has to do is want me back.
But then a sound tears through the air, streaking through us, making our heads turn in its direction.
“Did you hear that?”
“Was that a—”
And it was—it was a scream.
I know because it comes again, piercing and terrified.
“Help! Help me!”
“That way,” Connor says, and we both take off running without another word.
Sprinting off the path, into the foliage, kicking up leaves and jumping over fallen branches, heading downhill toward the lake. Once we clear the trees, we have an unobstructed view of the water. There are people on the other side, a fishing boat anchored far off in the distance—but the shoreline closest to us is rockier, less popular, and empty, except for a single square blanket bunching in the breeze.
In the water, I see a hot-pink tube, the kind little kids wear around their waists. But this one is empty, just bobbing with the waves on the surface of the water.
And there, toward the center, there’s a flash of orange. A bright orange bathing suit, on the still form of a small girl. She’s floating, facedown.
“Help!”
The scream comes from another girl—I can’t tell her age—swimming with furious splashes toward the child.
We run down the hill. Connor kicks off his sneakers and tosses me his phone.
“Tell 911 we’re at the east dock. Mark the time.”
You only have minutes to start CPR on a drowning victim, to stave off the damage from lack of oxygen and circulation to the brain and heart. Icy water can buy extra time, but this water isn’t cold enough. The longer a victim is down, even with CPR, the less likely it becomes that anything you do will bring them back.
Connor pulls ahead of me, his long legs propelling into a blur. He crosses the dock and dives off the edge into the water.
One of the first things I learned after moving to Lakeside is that the lake at the center of town is shallow around the edges—but just a few feet in, it drops off.
And it drops off deep.
Like a cold black hole, it’s deep enough that you can’t touch the bottom and make it back to the surface on one breath. And there’s debris down there—fallen trees and tangled brush and thick snagging branches that rise up in spots—trapping your feet and making it feel like some sinister force is grabbing for you and trying to pull you down.
By the time I’m off the phone with 911, Connor is carrying the prone child, who looks maybe three or four years old, from the water, with the other, older girl a few feet behind him. She’s twelve or thirteen, and I inanely wonder if she could be a classmate of Connor’s son, Brayden.
“I was counting to see how long I could stay under at the dock,” the older girl cries. “She was right there! But when I came up she was gone. I went under to find her but it was too dark, I couldn’t see her. And then she popped up but she wasn’t moving!”
Her face collapses into a sob as I move her back.
“Here, honey, stand over here while we help her. What’s her name?”
“Serena.”
Connor lays the little girl on her back on the dock, rubbing her chest and shaking her shoulder.
“Serena! Can you hear me?”
She’s unresponsive.
He presses two fingers to the carotid artery in her neck, checking for a pulse, while turning his head and leaning his cheek close to her mouth and nose—so he can feel if she’s breathing and see if her chest is moving.
