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“I know you are,” he replies. And it’s not sarcasm.
He swims some more, but has to stop to cough out water every few seconds, his chest heaving with the effort. I take a breath, then another one. It’s not a fun experience (not as easy as dying was, that’s for sure). Marco has an arm firmly around my chest, my head against his hard shoulder, and he’s trying to swim towards the rocks.
“You could have escaped,” he murmurs, his lips pressed against my wet hair.
“Escaped wh-what?” I gasp, gulping water, and choking on it.
But he doesn’t reply.
I am freezing, literally freezing, about to pass out.
“M-Marco,” I gasp, water getting in my mouth and nose. “I’m sinking.”
“No.” He grabs my waist and lifts me, kicking more powerfully, until my face is once again above the surface. His, not so much. “No no no. You’re not going to die, not while I’m breathing,” he splutters, water getting into his mouth. “You hear me?”
I do hear him.
But you weren’t breathing, I think.You weren’t breathing.
And that’s when the whole world around us explodes with gunshots. There must be at least three different shooters aiming at us. Maybe more. The bullets are raining down from all directions, like hail.
“I’ve got you,” Marco says quickly, then grabs me by the waist, and dives head-first into the water.
I barely have time to shut my mouth before it gets filled with water again. Marco drags me lower and lower into the dark, icy waters, while bullets find us, even underwater, floating around us like some sort of vicious sea-creatures.
He is definitely trying to kill me, is my last thought.And so are a whole lot of other people.
And I think, for once, with the clarity that comes before death, that I am absolutely right.
***
Marco has a firm grasp on me as he holds us both underwater while the bullets rain around us. He breathes into my lips every now and then, and then, when he’s out of air, he rises to the surface, gasping and choking, and grabs a reed from the riverbank. He breaks it in two and puts it in my mouth as if it were a straw for a cup of coffee. He motions to me to breathe.
His eyes are searching mine, checking to see if I’m still breathing, if I’m still alive, wild with fear.
‘Even if I had been willing to jump in after you, which I had not…’he’d told me the day I nearly fell into the half-frozen pool. Now he is underwater with me, completely submerged in icy water, fighting for both our lives. If I wasn’t dying, I would be so smug right now. But I’m not. Every breath is a struggle.
The bullets are silent underwater, but they keep falling, no matter which direction we swim in. We don’t surface for eons and eons, until even breathing through the straw is not enough for me to stay awake.
Finally, after a few endless moments, the shooting stops. We emerge.
He picks me up bodily and climbs to the shore. I can’t move. I am frozen to my core.
“Olivia!” he keeps hissing my name, his own teeth chattering. “Olivia. Wake up!” he screams.
But I can’t.
He takes me back to our stupid romantic cabin with the furs on the wooden floors and the orange flames in the fireplace. Everything looks so different as he carries me inside, my eyes barely able to register that we’re crossing the little triangle of a door. Everything that was cozy and beautiful before now smells of death.
He dumps me in the bathtub, soaked clothes and all, and turns on the hot water. Then he starts to peel off my wet clothes.
“I need to get you warmed up, ok? I need to keep you alive,” he whispers, glancing at my face. I feel my eyes grow huge with the effort to stay awake, my lips hanging open. “Are you with me, Olivia? You’re all right, don’t get embarrassed on me now.”
“Y… you liar,” I tell him, my teeth chattering.
His fingers go still on the collar of my shirt. Then he continues peeling it off, but his hands are trembling. His buzz-cut hair is wet, and his lips are blue. Water is still dripping down his face. No one should be allowed to look that gorgeous after being shot at and drowned.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “I am.”
