AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The churn of bubbles as I fought to swim.
The oppressive silence that wasn’t truly silent as I struggled to survive.
I quaked as I fought instinct to leap for air and arrowed to the bottom instead.
I’d wanted this, hadn’t I?
I’d been desperate for a swim, despite not being ready for it.
But now I was submerged, it felt like drowning, not swimming.
My lungs splintered as I snatched at the shadow beneath me and yanked it into my arms.
Shoving off from the bottom, I exploded into the evening and looked down at the girl in my terrified embrace.
I buckled beneath images of her dead.
Of yet another girl gone because I hadn’t been good enough, quick enough, strong enough to save her.
But Neri’s intelligent, all-seeing stare met mine.
She didn’t try to untangle herself from me.
She didn’t try to stand.
She merely floated in my arms, hair swaying around us like seaweed, water raining over her lips as she parted them and sucked in a delicate breath.
For a moment, I couldn’t separate fact from fiction.
I couldn’t stop seeing the nightmare of dead things and fallen families, but then Neri reached up and placed her small hand on my sodden t-shirt, pressing her fingers directly over my thundering heart.
I lost it.
With a groan, I dropped her back in the water and waded to the sandy shore. My ankle screamed as I rolled it a little on the uneven bottom; the weight of my shorts and clinginess of my t-shirt felt claustrophobic as hell.
“Wait.”
I froze, but I didn’t turn around.
“Aslan, are you...are you okay?”
That word no longer affected me, but her voice did.
Her innocence did.
Everything she represented and everything that I’d lost.
My chin dropped and a wash of pure rage worked through me, tainting my grief, blotting out my fears. I should keep walking. I should get as far away from her as possible but...
I found myself turning.
I found myself hurting.
So.
Fucking.
Much.
