Page 54 of Love Thy Brother
The glimmer from the star was my only point of focus. The only sign I had that I wasn’t entirely underwater. I hooked it to my fucking soul and raged against the sea. Pushing and thrashing, snatching air wherever I found it. Clinging to the pain every wrenching wave sent through my body to keep myself moving.
My knee slammed into craggy hardness.Rocks.Relief and fear fought for dominance. If I’d hit rock, I was still close to land. If I hit it with any more force, I’d be crab food.
I fought to orient myself, colliding with the rock again and its jagged edges. I was still in deep shit, still choking on salty water, my lungs and chest a fire of deathly needles I couldn’t escape. My hands growing numb. Despite the death-defying desperation I had to reach River—tosurvivefor the sole reason of making sure he did—I pictured myself bloated and pale, washing up in the harbour beside Solomon Bosanko’s mackerel boat.
It was too easy. Like kissing River had been tonight. A cruel trick that became a solid circumstance I couldn’t avoid. I was going to die here.
And so was he.
My face hit something that wasn’t rock. Something soft and granular, particles filling my mouth.
Sand.
It was so unforeseen I jerked away from it, falling back into the waves, losing any semblance of dry land with a gulp of lung-fisting salt.
Spluttering sand, I realised my mistake and kicked forward again, throwing my body hard, fully expecting to miss and drown like a flipper-less fish anyway.
But someone grabbed me. Strong hands wrapped around my shoulders, hauling me from the foamy death lagoon, and the noise of the angry ocean left my ears as abruptly as it had arrived.
I fell into a wet heap, brutal, hacking coughs kicking the shit out of my diaphragm, a belly of sea water pouring from my mouth.
It hurt. Christ, itreallyhurt, but as I heaved and gagged, tiny sips of air reached my lungs, pushing the frantic fog to the side.
Some fucker still had their hands on me. Lost to the fight, I pushed them away, but sinewy arms replaced them, locked tight around me, and it was only then that I heard my name.
“Rubi.Rubi.Fucking hell. Cough it up, boo. Jesus, I thought you were gone.”
Boo.He’d called me that since he was a toddler who couldn’t manage two syllables. Eventually, it had morphed intoRooboo, but boo was the one that had stuck.
I love him. Hardly a new revelation, but as we solidified, shattered not dead, I felt it more than I ever had.
“Come on.” River grabbed me again and dragged me upright. “We need to get to the steps before the tide comes all the way in.”
His words made sense but felt a million miles away. His voice, though. It was ragged and rough and held so much fucking power over me.
It gave me strength. I drove my feet into the sand and steadied my legs, letting River propel me before instinct took over and I surged ahead, forcing one foot in front of the other until we reached the steps drilled into the sea wall.
River stumbled.
I caught him around the waist and manoeuvred him to the foot of the steps. He gripped the metal, but his legs seemed to freeze, and he tossed me a wild glance we didn’t have time for.
“Go.” I gave him a push. “I’m right behind you. You ain’t gonna fall.”
Probably not what he was worried about. River wasn’t scared of heights or getting wet. Or even dying half the time. But whatever. The sea gods were coming for us if we didn’t get moving.
River started to climb. I followed, my numb hands barely holding on, my cold muscles screaming with the effort of hauling my heavy body in the opposite direction of gravity. Falling had taken a split second. Recovering that distance seemed to take hours, my only solace taking note of the fact that River’s jeans were now so perfectly moulded to his body that if my dick hadn’t gone into hiding from the cold, I’d be carving trenches in the sea wall.
He reached the top and slithered away before stretching back to grip my hands and drag me the rest of the way up.
I was a weighty motherfucker, but River was Hercules trapped in a smaller man’s body. The sea ladder disappeared, replaced by the sandy grass behind the sea wall.
We rolled beneath the barrier we’d toppled over to escape the speeding car. River landed in a mess of long limbs and wet clothes, and I used the last of my energy to halt my momentum so I didn’t land on top of him.
Still reached for him, though. Couldn’t help it. I needed to feel his heaving chest to believe he was breathing.
“Fuck.” I fought for my own air. “The hell just happened?”
River coughed and wrenched his upper body from the ground. He caught my flailing hand and gripped it hard. “I don’t know. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
