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I move forward just as her eyes find mine. She opens her mouth to scream again, only to inhale pool water. Her panicked eyes roll back in her head as coughs wrack her body while an icy fear grapples with my heart.
Without hesitation, I rush across the slippery tiles, falling several times but heedless of the pain in my own body. My focus is on getting to the child.
When I reach the edge of the pool, I push off from the tiles to dive below the surface of the rippling water. My eyes sting from the chlorine when I open them to locate Bella, and my stomach bottoms out when I see her small prone body not ten feet from me.
I swiftly reach for her and push to the surface, cresting the water with a force that almost knocks the air from my lungs. Kicking to the edge with one arm firmly around Bella, I set her onto the tiles and holler as loudly as my lungs can manage.
“Help us. Someone,please!”
That’s all I have time to yell before I check her vitals. Her pulse is slow, but it’s present. I take a moment to shake her, distantly remembering I need to do that first, but there’s no response.
Without waiting another second, I begin CPR, trying to remember what the hospital had taught me back in New York.
I open her airway by placing my left hand on her forehead and two fingers of my right hand underneath her chin. Leaning forward, I place my ear over her lips to listen for breathing.
There’s a buzzing in my ears that I strive to dim, and my heart seizes when I realise that she’s not breathing.
At that, I raise her tiny pyjama top—noting distantly that it’s Ironman, my own favourite—clasp my hands with my elbows and fingers locked before beginning chest compressions.
I’ve counted to twelve, and my inner prayers are answered when Bella begins to cough. Hacking repeatedly, she eventually manages to dispel the water from her lungs and sags against me.
Drawing my palm back and forth over her soaked blonde head absentmindedly, I continue to whisper unintelligible words of comfort as both of us tremble and quiver on the tiles.
And I can’t help but think that everything that has happened to bring me to this moment has been to save his daughter. Tosomehowredeem myself in my own eyes.
Until I remember that what I’ve done is beyond redemption and my body curls around the small innocent in my arms.
* * *
CADEN
“Have you ever slept with Caden?” Summer’s voice is shaky, and it tugs at my heart.
“Obviously. A couple of times now.” Layla is utterly confident by comparison.
I can feel myself staring at the ground, trying to raise my head to say she’s lying, but my muscles don’t appear to be working all that well.
“You know the boys share, babes. It’s just how they are, no harm, no foul. Okay?”
I continue to stare blankly at the colourful flowers beneath me, my jaw ticking with the force of trying to lift my head, and it’s just as Layla speaks that I manage to jerk myself upright.
“Truth or dare, Mr Hotshot?”
Her face is swimming, and I can’t quite remember what I wanted to say, so I answer her question as my gaze finds Summer’s.
“Dare.” My answer even sounds off to my own ears.
“I dare you to swim to the mill and back. In under five minutes.”
My eyes meet Layla’s as though through a fog.
What the fuck was in that damn pill?
I attempt to plead with her. “My legs are tired—”
But she pops a dark brow, a knowing half-smirk on her face. “Four minutes, fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven…”
Knowing there’s no other way out, I push to stand and try to run, but it feels like a stumble. Even so, I’m at the river in a flash.
