Riptide Affair, page 20
“How's it going, ladies?” Ashley's eyes are hidden behind a pair of aviators, but she looks tired. I don't blame her, seeing as how set up started at the butt crack of dawn, the party will rage until midnight, and I know for a fact she didn't get off work until two this morning.
“The usual, please,” Laura says, taking a seat next to me. The girls have me boxed in so I can't make a break for it. They're smarter than I give them credit for.
Ashley lines up four lemon drops in front of us and Laura is the first to grab hers and raise it in the air.
“To being human,” she declares loudly, causing me to hide my face. “May our friends support us no matter what, and may our men be strong enough and wise enough to know a good thing when they see it.”
Everyone within earshot issues a “Here! Here!” as glasses clink all around, but I throw mine back without tasting it and toss the empty glass at Laura's chest.
“Subtle.”
She licks her smiling lips. “Sorry, sweets. Subtly isn't an attribute I hold in high regard.”
“You don't say.” Kate snorts out a laugh before waving for the bartender. “Hey, Ash? Three more. Keep 'em comin'.”
“Only three?” I ask. “What, are you cutting me off already?”
“Not you,” she says. “Some of us are only here to babysit. Not all of us need to be hungover for work tomorrow.”
“Not all of us need to be hungover for work tomorrow,” Laura mocks in a shrill voice that sounds nothing like Kate. “My God, you're a buzzkill.”
Kate rolls her eyes, smirking as she passes out our second round. “Drink up, kiddies. I'm hoping one of you loosens up enough to actually crack a smile.”
All eyes point to me. The brooder.
“And what about the rest of us?” Laura asks, already tipping her glass to her red-painted lips.
Kate leans back in her seat, eyeing our friend. “I'm hoping you pass out soon so I don't have to drag your naked ass out from behind the DJ stand.”
Laura whips a finger toward Kate's face. “One time that happened. Let it go!”
Harper laughs. “Well, there was also that time you got naked and were doing keg stands at a frat party.”
Laura shrugs. “So?”
“So, you weren't in college,” Kate points out. “You didn't know anyone in the fraternity. You were driving by on your way back from McDonald's and decided getting naked and shitfaced would pair well with your double quarter pounder.”
With the attention off me and my heartbreak, I find it easier to kick back and shoot the shit with my friends. “Oh, and then there was the time you stripped off your shirt at a Cardinals game and wrapped your arm around a senior citizen to try and get on the kiss cam.”
“Dude, she told me to!” Laura insists, but we're all too busy laughing to hear her. “It's not my fault Gertrude knows how to have a good time, unlike some people.”
We laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Pulling out old stories and dusting them off, rediscovering inside jokes we'd all forgotten about over the years, and getting rip-roaring drunk, the day speeds by, and the next thing I know, my entire body feels loose and fluid, I've shed my shirt, leaving me in my bikini and jean shorts, the sun is dipping below the horizon, and my heart doesn't hurt.
“Merrin! This one's for you!”
I turn in my seat, facing Ashley down the bar as she approaches, a drink held high in her hand. When she places the plastic martini glass in front of me, I stare at it like it's about to bite me.
“Um. I didn't order this.” I turn to glance at Kate. “Did I?” I can't remember. Maybe I did...
Ashley shakes her head. “No. The guy at the end of the bar ordered it for you.” She jerks her chin in the general direction of about twenty people gathered around the tables.
Laura leans in, intrigued. “Which one?”
“Tall guy. Black shirt. Cowboy hat.”
As covertly as I can manage in my tipsy state, I slide my eyes down the bar until they collide with the man in question. He's easy to spot since he's a head taller than anyone around him and he's staring me down. No smile. No flirtatious wink. Just staring.
“Yeaaaaah, I don't think you should take that.” Laura grabs the glass and shoves it back at Ashley, sloshing it on the ground in the process.
“What?” I grab the stem of the glass to stop her. “It's not like he mixed it. Ashley did. You think he roofied me telepathically?”
She pries my fingers off the glass. “Accepting it sends the wrong message, and that's not the kind of guy you want to be giving mixed signals to.”
I groan.
She's right.
Even shitfaced, she's still got her wits about her, and I seem to have lost mine sometime between round three and eight.
“Fine.” I cross my arms and glare at the pile of empty shot glasses in front of me. Then my body screams, letting me know that all that liquid is ready to evacuate. “Going to the bathroom. Be back.”
I slide off my chair and Laura reaches for me. “Hold up. I'll go with.”
“Believe it or not, Laura, I am perfectly capable of peeing on my own.” I push a finger against her forehead, causing her to stumble back in her chair, and I laugh. Harper laughs.
Kate just glares at the two of us and shakes her head. “Just go in the bushes inside the treeline. The port-a-potties are fucking disgusting already.”
Not happening.
No way am I squatting in the woods with the entire of town of Blackjack within earshot.
The port-a-potties luckily don't have a line, but the only one with a working door is only a few feet away from the waters edge and it feels like I may topple into the river with one wrong move—or that could be the booze talking, I'm not sure—but I manage to do my business, gather my discombobulated thoughts, and sober up the teensy-tiniest bit before trudging back toward my friends.
After I leave and pump two dollops of hand sanitizer into my palms, I hum to myself, enjoying the high of drunkeness, as I head back, weaving through tent poles and discarded trash bags.
“That drink was for you.”
It takes me a second to pinpoint the voice, another second to realize it's directed at me.
Turning, I find creepy Stetson dude from the bar leaned against a tree, hands in the pocket of his jeans.
Alarm bells blare in my head as I glance around, noticing that the crowd is starting to dissipate.
“Uh. Thanks. But I'm not really a martini girl.”
He steps away from the tree, and I take a step back, toward the dock. “What kind of girl are you then?” His voice isn't as low as I expected it to be. It's not threatening at all.
I move to take a step around him, closer to my friends, but he shifts to stand in front of me, blocking my escape. The alarm bells increase in volume, creating a ringing in my ear. My hackles rise, and for once I'm grateful I didn't get so sloshed that the voice inside my head that warns me of danger was silenced.
“It was just a drink.” He ducks his face so close to mine I can tell what brand of whiskey he's been drinking. “A generous gift for a beautiful woman.”
The bells turn to sirens, deafening me.
“Th-thank you,” I stutter out. “Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to my friends.”
His smile turns malicious. “Oh, you mean the girls back at the bar who started talking about you as soon as you left? I don't think they're missing you.”
Lies.
It doesn't matter what they did once I left. What matters is they're waiting for me now, and they are my safety net. My tribe. My home.
“Please move,” I grit through clenched teeth.
“Let's go for a walk.” A calloused hand grabs hold of my wrist and I immediately jerk my arm to get him to release me, but his fingers dig in harder, tugging, pulling me along the gravel.
“Hey! Let go!”
My feet refuse to cooperate, and soon my toe jams on a hard piece of wood. It creaks beneath us, moving like it has a center of gravity all its own, and my eyes adjust to the darkness enough to realize we're no longer on solid land. We're on the dock. The empty dock.
“Relax, Beautiful.” His arm wraps around my back, fusing our fronts together even as I thrash around, trying to free myself, but my arms are pinned. A rough hand finds my shorts and a second later he squeezes. Hard. “Beautiful and exotic,” he rasps, smoothing his hand lower, touching places I didn't invite him to touch. “Not like the other girls.”
A wildfire of anger releases inside of me, and I dig my fingernails into his sides as deep as I can. “Back off,” I growl. “Get your fucking hands off me.”
He does. His hands release me, only to slam back on either side of my skull, holding my head in place while dry, cracked lips bash against mine. I screech, clamping my mouth as tight as I can to deny him entry, all the while pushing and hitting and striking his torso, struggling against his relentless grip that's making my head feel as if it's about to split in two. He's strong. Easily overpowering me. His fingers digging into my scalp so hard I know escape is impossible. Fear flickers, but my anger refuses to let it take the spotlight. Far past the point of being pissed at his surprise attack, I do the only thing I can think to do.
My lips part and he groans, thinking I'm giving into his advances...right before I sink my teeth into his bottom lip and bite down as hard as I can.
I stumble back, not on my own volition but because he shoved me away, and even though I'm prepared for it, I still barely manage to right myself.
“Fuck!” His hand goes to his mouth and even in the dim lighting of the faraway party and the full moon, I can see the blood smeared along his palm. “You fucking bit me!”
“Merrin!”
My wide eyes whip up and relief fills me when I see Kate rushing toward the dock, looking like a woman on a mission as I try once again to shove past the Stetson-wearing jackass, but his eyes are no longer cloudy and filled with lust. They're downright murderous.
“Fucking bitch!”
Before I can react, before I can gauge his intent, rough hands are colliding with my shoulders, sending shockwaves of pain through me, and I'm falling...
“MERRIN!”
Kate screaming my name is the last thing I hear before cold water encompasses me on all sides and I'm so shocked I gasp, dragging in a lungful of water. All I can hear is the white noise of bubbles, rapids, and the nearby falls. Flailing, I panic. The burn in my chest is unlike anything I've ever felt.
Except, that's a lie.
I have felt this before.
Once.
When I was underwater, fighting against a seat belt, watching my last living relative die as we sank to the bottom of Blackjack Creek.
I don't know which way is up. Which way to kick. To flail. Do I reach for something? My body continues sinking, roughly pulled from side to side, up and down by the current. I search for lights. Listen for a voice. But I see nothing. I hear nothing.
All that registers is the pain in my lungs—the fire.
So much fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jared
“MERRIN!”
A feminine scream pierces the air, bringing what remains of the party to a dead halt. But it's not the scream that has me standing from my seat and searching the night. It's the name.
Merrin.
I break out of the circle of gawkers, my eyes catching on a flash of white as Kate sprints to the dock. Another second passes before I see the gleam of the broken moon dancing on the water's surface.
“She can't swim!” Kate screams at a tall man in a cowboy hat. “She can't swim!”
The party, my friends, the music—everything else fades away and my ears begin to ring. My heart races, trying its damnedest to tear its way out of my chest, and then, I'm running.
Feet pounding the ground, I shove past anyone who gets in my way. As I'm nearing the shore, Kate kicks off her shoes and dives into the black water. I'm just about to follow her in when a man stomps down the dock, headed my way, with blood trickling over his lips and a rip in the pocket of his shirt.
That's all I need to see.
The pieces click together and I know what happened. And I see fucking red.
“Jared!” Brian shouts from behind me. “Jared, stop!”
I don't stop. Not until I slam into this cowboy-wannabe, tackling him until we both go down on the dock. He grabs hold of my shoulders, fighting to gain the upper hand but I have surprise, adrenaline, and fucking vengeance on my side. My knuckles scream out a war cry as I strike, over and over again, pummeling the shit out of this piss-poor excuse for a human being, until someone grabs me by the collar and rips me away.
Everything is still red, even as Brian and a guy I don't know hold me back by my arms, leaving me to snarl down at the sack of shit writhing in pain on the ground.
Serves him fucking right.
“What did you do to her?”
Painful hacking turns into drunken laughter, and I know if they let me go, I'll kill him.
“What did you do?!”
“Nothing she didn't like, Superman,” he slurs.
I'm just about to rage, to rain my wrath down upon this man, when I realize...
Merrin.
“Brian, let go.”
“No way, man,” he says, mouth close to my ear. “You don't need to wind up behind bars. Not tonight.”
Whipping my head around to face my baby brother, I whisper her name—her precious, beautiful name—and his eyes widen.
“Where is she?”
I'm about to answer when...
“Help!” Kate's voice sounds from below as she coughs, flailing her arms to keep both her and Merrin afloat as she reaches for the dock. “Help me!”
Merrin...
Brian lets go, but the nameless jackass keeps his grip tight.
“Let go!” I roar.
He must have at least some shred of self-preservation, because he does as I say, allowing me to rush to the side of the dock and reach for Merrin.
“Give me her arm.” I lie flat on my stomach, my chest hung over the side, arms reaching for the limp body weighing Kate down.
Merrin.
Brian helps me grab her and pull her onto the dock and her body hits the ancient boards with a sickening thud. That's when we see...
She's not breathing.
My brain misfires at what I'm seeing, but instinct urges me forward and I press both hands to her chest and begin CPR. Her body shifts with every pump of my hands, but that's it. No sound. No flutter. No movement of her own.
Kate kneels at her head, cradling the back of her skull in her hands, pressing their foreheads together. “C'mon, Mer,” she whispers. “C'mon, wake up.”
A crowd forms around us and dozens of cell phone lights stretch out, illuminating Merrin's pale body, but no one speaks. Harper drops to her knees at my side and grabs hold of my shoulder. I don't divert my attention away from the task at hand, nor do I shrug her off as she begs me to do something, anything, to save her friend's life. Kate continues holding Merrin's head, praying, only moving away to let me breathe into her mouth when the time comes.
Still, she doesn't stir, and my chest screams in protest.
How did this happen? Merrin's a smart woman. She would never put herself in a dangerous situation. The girls were here. I was here. And yet...here she is, cold and lifeless beneath my sweating palms.
You cannot die on me.
You can't.
You are not done here.
Across the dock, Laura screams, and I spare a split second to look up. Trapped in the arms of two men twice her size, kicking and clawing at the bloody mess of a man I left behind. “I will fucking kill you!” she screeches. “You are dead! Do you hear me, asshole? Dead!”
There's too much going on. I can't focus. Can't think. “Just breathe, baby,” I whisper. “Please. Just breathe.”
Breathe.
Breathe.
I beg you.
Take a breath.
My heart waits, at a standstill, anticipating what's to come. Eyes searching for a sign of life, I find none. Ringing in my ears replaces all the background noise until there's nothing left to hear but the high-pitched hum trying to deafen me.
Every muscle in my body is strung tight as I vaguely register this feeling—terror—and I'm not sure how I'm remaining upright. Not sure how I haven't cracked. Not sure how my eyes are still dry. Except, on some level, I do know.
There is no other option. I have to keep going. Keep breathing for Merrin, willing her to rouse, to open her beautiful brown eyes and cast them to the night sky.
To live.
She has to live.
I refuse any other outcome.
Because I can't even begin to imagine what a world without Merrin in it looks like. And I don't want that world to exist. Whatever happened before...it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. So long as she lives.
I may hate her...but that doesn't mean I stopped loving her.
“Breathe, Mer. Dammit, breathe!”
I pump harder. So hard, I know I'm breaking ribs, but I don't let up. If I do, she'll die. I know this. And I'll be damned if I let her leave this life the same way her father did.
Suddenly, the night isn't so dark, the air isn't so cold, and the world isn't a miserable fucking place to be, because Merrin moves. Her head tips back and water sputters out of her mouth. Brown eyes open, glazed and unfocused, and I fall back on my ass, completely spent. Utterly exhausted. And so goddamn relieved.
“Merrin!” Kate gathers her friend in her arms like a child, rocking back and forth, sobbing.
Harper grabs my head and presses a kiss to my temple, but I don't feel it. She's crying too. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The ringing in my ears is replaced by a siren, and everything around me snaps into focus. Through her veil of sopping wet hair, I seek out Merrin's eyes, and when I see she's searching for me too, I feel like I can finally breathe. Finally feel. In fact, I feel...fucking everything.
Relief.
Rage.
Joy.
Betrayal.
Bliss.
