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Drowning.
Ashley Foley Dies in Hilton Pool, the headline will read. In fuckingCleveland.
Not even those fake tits could save her, some asshole will post and go viral.
All the bad choices that led me here line up to make my final moments as miserable as possible.
My aunt’s angry face when I plunged her family into a scandal.
Luca’s face, when he found out how far I’d go to win a stupid TV show.
Wendy’s tears.
What I tried to do to Nic and Jessie.
No. I’m not about to endure this shit. I will survive out of sheer spite. My toes touch the bottom. I push up, flail my arms.
Nothing happens.
My lungs are burning and I have no idea how long I can hold my breath and panic obliterates my shock like a bomb and I become feral, clawing at the water.
I’m dying. I’m going to die.
Something hard wraps around me. Lifts me up and up and suddenly I can breathe.
Thank god.
I sputter water out, suck air in, and cling to him, but he’s doing a bad job keeping us both above water and I go under again, convincedthistime will be the end as I inhale chlorine and kid pee. We bob back up, both coughing up water.
Suddenly, we aren’t bobbing anymore. He’s crushing me to his chest with one arm, holding on to the side of the pool with the other, and I’m wrapped around him so tight I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
I gasp into his neck as I struggle to get closer to him and away from death and I realize as the water drains from my ear he’s saying something, over and over again against my hair.You’re okay, Ashandit’s all right, baby. Other soothing little nothings.
I cry, not realizing we’re moving, or even that he managed to pry my legs off his waist and is cradling me in his arms as he climbs the steps out of the pool.
His feet slap against the concrete and I don’t care if he is Gabriel Sinclair, he saved my life. I wrap my arms as tight as I can around his neck as I sob and shake and shiver.
“YOU!”
The shout rips out of his chest, echoing across the room, and I try to burrow into the space it leaves.
“DON’T FUCKING RUN NEAR A POOL, GOT IT?”
The kids don’t answer, at least not that I can hear, but Gabriel is satisfied. He pauses long enough to wrap me in a towel and sling my sundress over his shoulder.
I can’t stop crying, can’t stop myself from shaking, but what just happened?
Gabriel Sinclair—Saint Gabriel, Hollywood golden boy—cussed out some kids.
For me.
Chapter seven
Gabe
Ashleyisshivering,clingingto me like she’ll drown if I set her down. It takes me a moment to get the shower on, to get the temperature right, and when she doesn’t indicate that I should put her down, I carefully ease the towel off her and carry her into the shower.
Heat floods back into my arms, spreading to my chest and down my legs. I hold her under the warm spray, careful to keep the water away from her face, still buried in my neck as she cries.
