Page 19 of No Romeo
Ignoring the terrified skip of my heart, I kept wading the tall grass until my foot touched the edge of the wooden pier. Then I froze.
How many bodies were at the bottom of that lake? How many half-eaten hookers?
Swallowing, I tugged my shirt over my head and stared out across the dark water. One hundred and twenty seconds in the stagnant body soup. That’s all I had to do.
God, this level of petty was so stupid. I shoved my shorts down my legs, tripping as I kicked them to the side.
Uneven, heavy footsteps came from behind me. “Damn at that ass…”
In any other situation, I might have been smug about that comment. But I was too worried about him coming up behind me. Knowing Hendrix, he’d probably shove me in.
I whirled to face him, the moonlit world around me blurring.
That feral, lust-drunk look he had aimed at my exposed body was almost enough to make me forget my fear for a moment.
“You know,” he said, his gaze dropping to my chest. “You could forfeit.”
“I’m not forfeiting.”
I stumbled to the edge of the pier and reached for the ladder, the scent of fish-tainted swamp nearly unbearable. I made it down two rungs before my toes sank into the warm water.
“Dead hookers, Lola.” The wooden boards groaned when Hendrix stepped onto the dock. “Bloated, rotting corpses.”
My grip on the metal poles tightened. I tried not to picture them lurking right beneath the surface, half-eaten and decaying. Then I forced myself to descend another rung of the ladder and another until the warm water lapped at my shoulders.
I shoved away from the pier, fighting my panic as I swam out. Only a few feet from the bank, something slimy touched my leg.
I flailed. “Something touched me!”
“Calm down before you drown yourself. It’s just a fish.”
The cannibal kind that ate bodies, or—itwasa body.It touched me again, and I screamed, limbs freezing.
My face sank beneath the murky surface right before I sucked in a lungful of water. Panic consumed me as I pictured a zombie grabbing my ankle and dragging me down to the depths of the lake.
My uncooperative limbs flailed uselessly as I sank farther. I was going to die because I had an overactive imagination and Hendrix Hunt had dared me to jump in this stupid lake.
I barely had time to freak out before someone wrenched me to the surface.
“Breathe!” Hendrix pulled me tight against his warm, hard chest as I coughed up gross water.
I clamped my thighs around his hips like I could climb my way out of the lake to safety. It was pure, meaningless survival instinct, right up until I registered the way every inch of me was plastered against every inch of him. I suddenly forgot all about the water and the fish and any dead bodies.
Water lapped around us as I stilled, watching the moonlight dance over the sharp angles of his face.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah…”
He brushed a damp strand of hair behind my ear, and for a single, pure moment, he looked at me the way he used to. Like he loved me. Like he was terrified of losing me.
The lost, broken part of me wanted him to kiss me, to breathe oxygen back into lungs that had been starved far longer than the last few minutes. But he couldn’t be that for me anymore. I’d tainted him, turned him into something toxic and poisonous.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking a wet trail along his jaw. An intimate touch I had no right to but couldn’t seem to stop myself from taking. “For everything.”
His eyes closed. His hold on my waist tightened. His dark brows pinched together. “Don’t fucking do this to me…”
I touched my damp forehead to his and breathed in his pain until it clawed and stabbed at my insides. My trembling fingers trailed from his jaw to his lips, brushing over them the way I wished I could with my mouth. “Hendrix—”
