In This Moment(24)

For five minutes, I want to forget this half-life. I just want to push all of the phantoms away and get completely lost in the gaping beats and the burn of vodka moving through my veins.

But when I open my eyes, I’m back in that car with the salty, dark water spilling in all around me.

Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of the world ripping apart.

The water covered my shoes and weighed down my arms. Everything was shifting and dark. How long had we been like this? Minutes? Hours? Only seconds? I coughed, choking on the fear and the bile creeping up my throat. “Help!”

My hands flailed out violently and smacked into something solid and slimy.

Jilly…

I was weak. I groaned loudly and tried to move. It hurt to breathe.

“Jilly?”

Her limp body was thrown forward over the steering wheel. Her head was angled toward me but her wet, dark hair was splayed across her face so that I couldn’t see her eyes—just the tip of her nose and her chin. Her right hand was curled stiffly on the dashboard. One shoulder was bare where her blue shirt was ripped. I could see red but I didn’t know if it was her blood or mine.

I gripped the edge of the open window. Glass crunched beneath my fingers.

Oh my God. My brain chugged to life and the fuzziness began to clear. Oh my God.

“Help!” I gasped and pulled frantically against the slippery metal of the seatbelt clasp with numb fingers. “Jilly?”

I waited for her to lift her head. I waited for her fingers to uncurl. The seatbelt buckle gave way and I ignored the fierce crack of pain that ripped up my arm and I scrambled forward through the sloshing, heavy water, reaching and—

Cole’s voice pulls me back to the present. His cool fingertips are resting on the hot skin of my neck, just beneath my ear. “Are you alright, Aimee?”

I can tell by the strained look on his face that it’s not the first time he’s asked the question. I close my eyes again but the lights are too bright. It’s like I can feel them through my eyelids.

“Damn it. You’re completely wasted. How much have you had to drink tonight?”

I push him away, blinking and muttering under my breath.

Cole picks up my discarded glass and sniffs it. He looks angry and I cringe. “Jesus Christ, Aimee. There’s enough vodka in this drink to obliterate me and you weigh about twenty-five pounds. What the fuck were you thinking?”

When I don’t respond, he starts asking Mara questions about what we’ve been drinking and whether or not we’re planning to drive home. I dip my head back into the cradle of my arms and breathe in through my nose. The world slows down around me—it goes dark and soft and strangely mushy. With a breathy sigh I close my eyes and feel the table and the chair and the ground beneath my feet fall away.

I am a raft.

I am falling.

I am floating.

“I don’t drive.”

Did I say the words out loud or in my head?

Hours pass. Or maybe it’s seconds. Who knows? Who cares anymore?

There’s a flicker of blinding light and I realize that I’m being picked up. Cole shifts my head against his solid chest and quietly directs me to put my feet down on the ground. I teeter to one side, but his powerful arm is wrapped firmly around my waist. He’s talking over my head to some guy that I don’t recognize. He says something about a car. Then he’s smoothing the loose hairs away from my face with his thumb and telling Mara to pick up my purse.

Hmmm… I let my whole body sink into his.

It registers that I should probably be embarrassed that I’m such a disaster, but more than anything, I think about how nice Cole smells. I nuzzle my face deep into his shirt. I make a sound. “You smell really good.”

He glances down at me with those star-bright green eyes and I can’t help but smile. “Oh yeah? I told you before that I use Ivory soap.”

“No, that’s not it… It’s not soap.” I wave my hand and flutter my eyelids. “You smell a little like… chlorine. Did you know that?” I sigh. “I miss it. I love the smell of chlorine.”

He laughs and the sound of it moves over my skin like liquid. “I’m training for a triathlon in Gainesville in a few weeks, so I did swim this afternoon. Maybe I didn’t take a long enough shower?”

“Hmmm… I like it. A lot.” I twist my fingers in the fabric of his shirt. “And you’re tall, aren’t you? I didn’t know that track stars were so tall.”

He chuckles some more.

Encouraged, I continue, reaching up to pinch the swell of muscle at his shoulders. “And you’ve got very nice muscles, Mr. Everly. I kind of want to bite them.”

“Miss Spencer, you are extremely drunk right now,” he replies, a wide smile busting open on his face. “But you’re a nice and very flattering drunk so I’ll take it over sullen and mysterious any day.”