Torrential (4 page)

It feels painful now.

My thoughts are coming unhinged, spiraling out. There’s an intense pressure on my chest. Crushing. The cold is overwhelming. I’m floating, endless in the dark. I can’t tell if I’m so far down that I can’t locate the moonlight dancing on the surface of the water, or if it’s just that my eyes are closed.

I’ll see her again.

She’ll be disgusted at what her son has become.

Bright lights flicker somewhere in my vision. My lungs are starving. I know if I breathe in, that’s the moment. I will die. But I have no choice. Numbness creeps over my fingertips. I inhale.

I was right.

Dying is painful.

MAY

When I reach the place I’m pretty sure I saw him last, I stop, my panting deafening. “Sebastian?” I cry, my voice echoing over the surface of the water. No response. It’s the loneliest moment of my life.

But I can’t give up. I take in an enormous gulp of air and dive, kicking straight down, my chest constricting against the pressure of the water. I open my eyes, the salt water stinging, but of course it’s almost totally dark. I swim dow
n and try to feel around with my arms, which are pale in front of me, until my head is bursting and I need air.

I resurface and gasp for a second. One more time.

This time, I dive deeper, farther down than I’ve ever swum before. My ears pop. The water is a thick dark shape pressing into all corners of my vision. And then I see a darker shape drifting below me.

I grab blindly and feel something smooth and limp. My hand closes around his wrist. There are popping lights in my vision and he weighs a thousand pounds, I can’t possibly drag him up, we’re both going to drown here—

But somehow I manage to bring us both above the surface of the water. I take enormous breaths as we reach air, nearly crying with fatigue and fear. Sebastian’s completely motionless, his eyes closed and his head falling back. It’s all I can do to keep him above water. I have no idea how I’m going to bring us both back to the beach.

“Don’t you dare be dead,” I choke out and slip my arm around his chest, holding his body against mine as I do my best to butterfly-kick towards shore. Twice I sink beneath the water and
resurface coughing, Sebastian weighing me down. I didn’t realize how tall he was—I think even taller than Tanner.

I really, really don’t want him to be dead.

It feels like the beach is a million miles away, but the bottoms of my feet hit sand right when I’m sure I can’t swim another inch. Thank God. I loop my arms under Sebastian’s and heave him out of the water, but I’m trembling all over and the best I can do is get him onto the wettest part of the sand.

I’m terrified when I look at him—he’s defi
nitely not breathing, and his skin is white. There’s no trace of the arrogance I saw before in his still face. Sprawled on his back in the sand, he just looks vulnerable. I get control of my shaking fingers and reach for my phone to call 911, but it was in my pocket when I jumped in the water, and the screen won’t light up.

I feel for his
pulse—he has one, but it’s weak. I took a CPR class in high school, and I pray I remember how to do it right as I push down hard on his chest, once, twice, and I few more times before I cover his mouth with mine, breathing into him until his chest rises.

“Come on,” I gasp as I return to the chest compressions. “Breathe.
Please.”

He’s still not moving. He’s dead. I wasn’t fast enough.

And then his body jerks.

I let out a sob
of relief as his eyes flutter. He makes a choking sound before he starts coughing—hard, ricocheting coughs that shake his entire frame. He rolls onto his side and vomits seawater into the sand, raking in dry gasps between retches. I put my hand on his shoulder to steady him. He doesn’t seem to notice, focusing instead on breathing in and out, his eyes shut. When he finally looks at me, his gaze is unfocused. “Why are you crying?” he mutters.

I scrub at the water under my eyes.
“I—I guess I was scared.”

He shakes his head a little, and his eyes focus. He recognizes me. “What are you doing here?” he asks sharply, and then puts a hand to his forehead. “What happened?”

“You—um—” My mouth is completely dry. Every single one of my muscles aches. “You were drowning, I think. You went under. I had to jump in after you.” I pray he doesn’t ask why I was watching in the first place.

He stares at me for a moment, shock momentarily disrupting his expression. “You jumped in—after me?”

By this point I’m blushing too hard to really talk, so I just nod, glad it’s dark enough that he can’t see me. I’m shaking all over and my hair hangs in wet, stringy clumps, my white tank top clinging to my chest in a way I’m pretty sure is not PG-rated. This is probably the most awkward situation I’ve ever been in. I never thought saving someone’s life would make me this uncomfortable.

But I watch him take another breath and I’m just so incredibly glad that he’s alive, that I’m not cry
ing over a corpse on the beach, that the embarrassment floods out of me. “Sebastian, I’m really happy you’re okay.”

He narrows his eyes at me with something like suspicion, although I can’t fathom why. Oh—maybe he’s not okay. “You are okay, right?” I lean in anxiously. “
You’re breathing all right? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“None,” he says, and I realize that he’s right, that I forgot to hold up any fingers at all. I really need to sleep.

But first I have to make sure he’s taken care of. “Can you walk? I kind of got my phone wet, but if we can get back to campus I can borrow my friend’s phone and we can call an ambulance—you should probably get checked out…”

I trail off, because he’s struggling upright, panting hard as he gets up. Again I’m struck by how stunningly gorgeous he is, the way his muscles shift with every move. His hair is in his eyes, but he doesn’t bother to brush it away.

He takes one step and collapses in the sand with a grunt.

“Sebastian! Are you okay?”
I grab his shoulder, maybe a little over-zealously, because he shakes me off immediately. “Look, let me run back to campus and I can call an ambulance. They’ll bring a stretcher.”

I get up, ready to sprint even though my leg muscles groan,
but he seizes my wrist. His head is tipped downward so his hair conceals his eyes, but I hear the ragged tone in his voice as he says, “Don’t tell anyone. Please.”

He sounds like he’s never said “please” in his life.
Suddenly I recognize that imperceptible shift in his voice. He’s just as embarrassed as me. I kneel beside him, making a vow to be as little of an idiot as possible. Gently, I say, “Why can’t you stand?”

He clears his throat. His voice is still raspy from the saltwater.
“Leg. And arm. Muscle cramps.”

“Better than a shark,” I say cheerfully. He doesn’t ask. “And it’s no wonder, if you go swimming this late without stretching, after swimming all day.
Which leg?”

He hesitates, then jerks his chin at his left leg, which is stretched on the sand. I’m not sure if he’ll let me do this, but I obviously can’t carry him back to campus, and if he won’t let me get anyone…I brush my fingers over his skin to see if he shoves me away. He doesn’t. “Here?” I say quietly, my hand hovering over his upper thigh.

He nods once.

I begin massaging his thigh, pressing my thumb in small circles. The muscles are rock-hard—it almost feels like touching concrete. I put both palms flat on his leg and rub harder. His jaw tightens against the pain, but he makes no sound. “They taught us how to do this at my old swimming camp,” I say, barely breathing. I’m massaging Sebastian Crane. Any second now, an anvil is going to fall out of the sky and flatten my head. “
If we loosen the muscle and then stretch it, I think you’ll be able to walk.”

He says nothing, just watches the movement of my hands as I alternate pressure, first pressing down hard and then returning to a near-caress. My heart is beating almost as fast as it was when I was rescuing him. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my neck, warm. Water drips from his chin and lands on my hand. And just like that, several bursts of electricity run down my spine, heating me up so fast I have to jerk away.

It’s just his leg, May.

He doesn’t notice how quickly I’m breathing. He stretches his leg, his muscles straining, and tentatively tests it against the ground. It’s shaky, but it holds if he keeps most of his weight to the side. He rolls his shoulder and winces. Then he glances up at me. For a second our eyes lock, the moonlight reflecting in his. He looks away
. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” he says.

“Sorry?” I guess I was expecting something else. Maybe a thank-you.

“Are you deaf as well as a moron?” It’s the same thing he said earlier, and it jolts me until I realize he’s said it quietly, without malice, as if acknowledging the last time we spoke. “Don’t tell anyone about this. That’s all.”

He starts to limp gingerly toward the pathway to campus, leaving me standing openmouthed. Sebastian Crane has got to be the strangest person I’ve ever met. But there’s something I can’t stand about the sight of him walking off alone at three in the morning. He almost died, and it’s not like he
has any friends to check in with. Nobody will know what he went through. And I seriously doubt he’s going to do the smart thing and go to the hospital.

I run to catch up and, before he can stop me, slip under his arm and wrap my own arm around his waist. “Lean on me. It’s probably really painful to walk on that leg, right?
We can go back like this.”

“Why—” he starts, but I talk over him before he can say anything else cutting.

“It’s not safe to go swimming by yourself this late at night. Don’t do that again, okay?” I’m rambling. He’s a lot taller than me, but I stand on tiptoes to support him. At first he refuses to put any weight on me, but when he stumbles I catch him, and eventually he relaxes a little, though I can still feel how incredibly tense he is. Screw the thigh massage—he needs a full-body.

The feeling of the side of his chest against mine sends a few more of those electric tingles down my back.
This is not the time for that.

“
Will you be okay by yourself tonight? I have a roommate, but I think my friend Tanner’s roommate is out tonight, so you could crash in his bed. Or—I mean—if you still don’t want to tell anyone else and you’re worried about being alone, I could stay with you. Like, I could sleep on the floor. I brought a sleeping bag—”

We’re halfway down the path and I’m still talking panicked nonsense when he pulls away so suddenly I nearly fall over. It’s still dark despite the million stars, and I stumble to find my footing. “Um—Sebastian?”

He coughs sharply. “I don’t understand. Why do you care? I snapped at you earlier today.”

“Well...” I say hesitantly, starting to shiver as the breeze quickens. I’m still soaked. “
That’s not really a big deal when you almost drowned. That must have been awful for you. Don’t you need…” I’m not sure what I think he needs, but I know if that happened to me, I would need a hug.

“I don’t need anything except you to swear you won’t spread the word about this. It could damage my reputation.” His voice has settled back into its old coldness. “And do yourself a favor—don’t go diving in the ocean after strangers. It’s dangerous.”

I’m absolutely stunned. Anger flares in me quicker than I can tamp it down. “If I hadn’t, you would have died!”

He shrugs as if I’d said something unimportant. “Just don’t tell anyone.” He begins walking away. And something in me absolutely refuses to let him.

Then I remember Opal’s bet.

“I won’t tell anyone if you hang out with me for the rest of the semester,” I say in a rush.

He stops. For a moment, the only sound is the breeze through the grasses and the growling of the ocean as it tumbles up the sand. Then he says, “What?”

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I plow on. “
Yeah. Um. Just for the semester. You have free time, right? You can spend it with me and my friend Tanner. He’s kind of a loudmouth, but he’s a good guy. I just transferred here, so I need to make new friends anyway. Oh, and you should probably know my name, since I don’t know if you caught it before. I’m May. May Young.”

He steps up so close to me it takes my breath away. I can see the strong curve of his jawline, his elegant cheekbones. His eyes glitter like a wolf’s. “Are you threatening me, May Young?”

My heartbeat catches in my throat. “Yes,” I whisper.

He towers over me. I have no idea what’s about to happen, but he just lurches slightly,

and I realize how exhausted he is—there are deep, dark circles carved beneath his eyes. I swallow. I can’t keep him out here anymore. “So, yeah. Hang out with me or—um—I’ll tell everyone about this. And—um—ruin your reputation.” I’ve got to be the least intimidating blackmailer in the universe. “It’ll be fun, okay? I mean, I think we could be friends, and there’s no other way I could get you to hang out with me, right?” I manage a laugh.

“You wouldn’t want me as your friend,” he mutters. “I don’t play well with others.”