Page 64 of Swallow Your Sorries

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And clammy.

3

And dead.

I rip my hands away, shaking off the skin-crawling sensation my mind’s making up. That my mind’s forcing me to remember.

But this is different. She’s not dead.

I watch her eerily peaceful face carefully as I count, looking for a flutter of her eyelashes, a twitch of her blue lips.

They look so familiar.

A nearly identical shade of blue.

But they’re not the same.

This isn’t the same.

It can’t be.

Not again.

I let out a breath, cross my palms and get back to work on her sternum, pushing the intrusive thought away.

I can’t do this again. I can’t see the life slip out of someone in front of me again.

I want to hurt her. I need to hurt her, but not like this. There’s zero satisfaction if she’s gone.

I push harder. “You have to wake up. You weren’t even under for two bloody minutes.”

With every push, I feel a blow to my own chest.

“Come on Dove, get up,” I whisper, my voice cracking with desperation. “You can’t leave me too. You can’t—”

Dove?!The word had slipped out so comfortably. She isn’t a dove of peace and hope. She’s a damn vulture. A marker of death, who’s playing her role a little too well now. I bite my tongue and shake the sentiment away.

“I didn’t give you permission to go.”

That’s more like it.

I drive my palms harder. “Answer me and. Stop. Fucking. Faking.”

Her fingers twitch, and her eyebrows crease, giving me all the motivation I need. With one final push of my palm, water shoots from her lips.

“Elle,” I whisper, as her stomach contracts and she attempts to roll onto her side. I support her as she does, my lungs finally working again as she goes into a coughing fit, expelling less and less water with each one.

When she finally stops, my spine gives out, and our foreheads touch as I all but collapse on top of her, careful to keep my weight on my forearms.

“You came back,” I say with a sigh of relief. My hands find their way to the sides of her face, my thumbs stroking her ice-cold cheeks as if the little act can warm her up. It has to warm her up because I can’t bear to keep touching her if it doesn’t. “Of course you did. You can’t leave me too.”

I don’t know this girl and yet this attachment I feel towards her is unmatched, lust aside.

She was there that night.

She’s the only other person who was therebothnights.

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