Page 137 of Between Never and Forever
“She can’t. It’s too dangerous,” I yell back, just as the water gets choppier. “You need to get untied.”
I look at Savannah, gripping tightly to one of the handles of our tube. I brace myself in the middle, trying to use my core to center our weight on the tube.
“Can you hold onto me? Real tight, okay?”
“Shit,” she says on an exhale, and she wraps her arms around me. “I swear to god if I quit using just for this to be how I die, I will rage,” she says against my chest, and I laugh once.
Then we hit the rapids, and things turn to shit.
Our position on the end slams us straight into the rocks, and I curse myself for not untying us, or suggesting we go in clusters instead of this long fucking line. We hit another one, our tube jerking violently and tilting us heavily to one side. Savannah shrieks. My knuckles drag against something sharp. The pain tells me it’s broken skin.
I can hear some of our group screaming. I can’t tell if it’s from fear or excitement. I hear Dustin or Luke whoop like a fucking idiot, but I focus on our tube. We slam into another rock, and I try to push us out of the way of another. We miss a few, but there’s always another, bigger one in the way. Sav is holding me so tightly I can barely breathe.
“Hold on,” I shout to Savannah, the river roaring around us. “It’s almost to the drop.”
We hit another rock, toppling us sideways, then two more. I right us just in time to hit another, then just before we drop under the bridge, the tube flips.
It happens quicker than lightning.
My grip is yanked from the handle and my body smacks hard against something before I’m spun out and pulled under. Savannah isn’t holding onto me anymore. I reach for her, all around me, but she’s gone. I try to call for her but swallow a gut full of water. I can’t die here in this river. I can’t.
Pain ricochets through my hands and legs and head as my body hits rock after rock. My chest starts to burn, the need to breathe stronger than ever, but I know if I do, it will kill me. I try to stand but can’t find a footing. The current is too fast, the water too deep. I manage to grab hold of something, rocks tear at my hands, but nothing stays. Everything is disorienting. I’m submerged and spinning. A washing machine. I can’t die here.
I open my eyes and see brown—dark, muddy brown—and my thoughts flit to Brynn and the weekend we spent in the mountains a few summers ago. She caught a lake trout, and the lake was brown and muddy like this. Like this, but calmer. I can’t die here. I can’t leave Brynn. I can’t lose her. I can’t be another person she loses.
I kick and reach, grappling for a hold, straining for the surface. My lungs are on fire. My body aches. I think of Savannah. She’s out here. She could be in pain like this. She could be scared. She could be dead.
That thought hurts worse than the need to breathe. It’s more terrifying than death.
I kick more, reach more, clench my jaw against the burning, visceral, overpowering need to take a breath. And then I’m falling, like a roller coaster on the down track. The drop.
My head breaks the surface and I gasp, gulping down air and kicking to stay above the water. Not to get submerged again. The current is strong, but the rocks are smaller here.
White flashes. Silver. Up out of the water, then gone again.
Savannah.
“Levi,” she screams as she crests the surface. “Levi!”
She disappears again. The rocks, the spinning. She’s almost to the drop.
I swim. Sideways, away from the center, but against the current. Every muscle in my body burns, but I have to get to her. My head pounds. We can’t die here. Not now. Not when I just got her back.
When she pops back up again, I put myself in the path of her body until she crashes into me, and for seconds that feel like hours, I crush her to me, holding tightly. Then we’re both crashing into the cold, hard cement of the bridge supports.
I flatten myself against it.
“Climb up there,” I command, shoving Savannah’s body up so she can grab onto one of the iron posts and haul herself up and out of the water.
Once she’s out, I follow, pulling myself out of the demon river and collapsing against the bridge support.
For a moment, we don’t say anything, we just pant, sucking in deep breaths. My throat feels raw. My bearings are still confused. I still feel like I’m spinning, even though I’m finally still. My back is scraped to hell. I feel nauseous and dizzy. My head pounds, and I reach up to find a gash and a giant bump forming.
“Savannah! Levi!”
We look toward the bank and find Red, soaking wet and bleeding from his forehead. My vision is slightly blurred, but I can still see him.
“Are you hurt? Are you okay?”
