#Hater (Hashtag #2) (14 page)

Rimmel

Cold, icy water reached around me like sticky tentacles, trying to claim me. My body was instantly shocked, and my skin stung like a thousand tiny needles pierced my skin.

Over and over again.

I struggled against the frigid prison, even as it sought to lock me up. I reached upward toward the flickering above me…

And then I realized.

I realized where I was.

Something far colder than the near freezing water slammed into me. I felt myself jerk like I’d been shot. I was in the pool.

I’d slipped and fallen in the pool.

Just like my mother.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, my mouth filled with more suffocating water and precious bubbles filled with air burst in front of my face.

Everything was blurry and dark; it seemed to grow darker by the moment.

And then the darkness seemed to fill with a deep shade of red. It swirled around me. The way the color snaked through the water was hauntingly beautiful. Like ribbons blowing in the wind.

I reached out to touch it, but my hand went through like I was touching a cloud.

The red disbursed and the color turned lighter, more of a pinkish shade.

Panic, stark and bleak, rose up in my chest and squeezed until I thought my ribs would crack from the pressure.

“Mom!” I called out, racing through the front door.

My hot-pink backpack was killing my shoulders—I had so much homework!—so I dropped it on the floor as I kicked off my shoes.

“Mom! Where are you?” I called again, wandering out of the foyer and into the open-concept main floor. To the right was a kitchen with an island and directly ahead was the living room with a couch and TV.

She wasn’t watching some talk show. There was nothing cooking on the stove. She was probably upstairs and lost track of time.

I backtracked and pounded up the steps. I couldn’t wait to tell her what happened today in Home Ec. Not only did Joey burn the English muffin pizzas, but he caught the oven on fire and we had to have a fire drill. Ms. Kostley was so mad!

I rushed into my parents’ bedroom, thinking she’d be there.

But she wasn’t.

“Mom!” I yelled. “I’m home! Where are you?”

Silence greeted me.

“Very funny!” I called out. “You’re a terrible hider, and I’m going to find you!” No wonder she wasn’t at the bus stop. She was playing tricks on me.

I searched the entire upstairs.

She wasn’t there.

I rushed downstairs and checked the pantry, the bathroom, even the laundry room. On my way to look in the cabinet in the living room, I passed by the large windows that overlooked the screened-in backyard pool.

I wrinkled my nose because something didn’t seem right.

I opened the slider and stepped outside. The pool water was pink.

I smiled. So that’s what she’d been up to! She was turning the pool my favorite color to surprise me. I laughed and walked over to admire the color.

But my laugh turned into a strangled gargling sound.

I stood there completely frozen in horror and disbelief.

“Mommy,” I whimpered.

She was floating in the shallow end, her body facedown and near the edge. Her long, dark hair floated out around her head. It moved gently in the water. It sort of looked like a dark halo.

“Mom!” I screamed, her name ripping from my throat as I swallowed back the bile gurgling up.

Without thought, I plunged into the pool. The water was warm like always, and I swam easily over to her side.

“Mom,” I sobbed and reached out for her shoulder.

I turned her just enough to see the large gash on her forehead, her blue bloated face, and the way her once beautiful blue eyes stared at me with a milky-white film over them. Her expression of horror.

My entire body began to shake uncontrollably. Convulsions racked through me so hard that my teeth chattered. My eyes went back to the open wound on her head.

The pool wasn’t pink on purpose.

The pool was pink because so much of her blood had mixed with the water.

I was standing in a pool of my mother’s blood.

I don’t remember how I made it out, only that I did. The white cutoff shorts I was wearing were no longer white. They were stained. Tainted.

They were the color of diluted blood.

Something plunged into the water above me. I saw the figure drop down with speed and precision. I barely noticed. At that point, I was too far gone.

I was lost.

Lost in the underwater world of pink death.

Trapped in the memories of the day I’d found my mother drowned.

I still remembered when they zipped the black body bag up over her face. It was the last time I’d seen her. The image of her lying dead in a bag would haunt me forever.

I remembered the sounds of people singing in church the day of her funeral. The pastor speaking in the front had announced her age wrong. He was wrong. And he kept saying the wrong number. Over and over again.

He said she was thirty-one.

She wasn’t.

She was thirty.

She was only thirty years old.

It seemed she deserved better than someone getting her age wrong on the day she was being buried.

Something grabbed my arm and towed me upward. The bone-chilling water scraped at me like barren tree branches in the winter’s wind as I floated toward the surface of the water.

It was still pink.

Everything in my vision was pink.

I hated the color pink.

My head cleared the water, and a strong arm wrapped around my middle as my lungs automatically sucked in air. I started coughing immediately, water sputtering out of my mouth.

I blinked against my blurred vision as commotion erupted around me.

“Help me, man,” a voice said. It was desperate and raw.

Romeo
.

“I got her,” said another familiar voice, Braeden.

He slid his arms beneath my arms and towed me up out of the water. My legs buckled, and instead of letting me fall, he scooped me up and held me against him.

I dropped my head against his shoulder and wrinkled my nose. He didn’t feel right.

The sound of splashing water drifted over, and I flinched against the sound.

“I got her,” Romeo said, and I was shifted against a chest I knew very well.

I was home.

I whimpered because he felt so good, and his arms tightened around me.

“Don’t let anyone in the house,” Romeo said, and I heard Braeden agree.

Behind us there was the sound of scuffling, but it quickly faded away. My body was shivering violently. Just like that day… the day my mother died.

My fingers were so cold they hurt, and even as I tried to bend them, they just didn’t obey.

“I got you,” Romeo said as he strode swiftly through the house.

He turned on the shower and then stepped inside. I tensed, anticipating the water hitting me, but it didn’t. He held me with his back turned against the spray.

“We’re gonna warm you up,” he murmured. A few seconds later, he said, “Should be warm enough now.”

He turned around and gentle, warm droplets of water cascaded over me. It sort of felt like stepping into a summer rainstorm after living in the harsh winter for too long.

I started to cry.

I pushed my face into Romeo’s chest and let out deep, gut-wrenching sobs. The memories of that day were still so close to the surface of my mind and they taunted me.

Was that how my mother felt the day she drowned? Had the water seemed like a prison that wanted to pull her farther and farther into darkness until there was nothing left at all?

Romeo held me tight and hunched around me, protecting my face from the shower spray. I think he murmured gentle words to me, but I couldn’t hear them over the sound of my own sobs.

Eventually, I quieted and took a shuddering breath.

“We need to get your clothes off. They’re still freezing cold,” Romeo said. “I’m gonna sit you down.”

He stood me in the shower, and I sagged against the wall. I was utterly drained and empty.

Romeo crouched down at my feet to gently tug off my boots. Then he did the same with my thick knee socks. His hands slid up the sides of my hips and he deftly pulled down my panties and leggings in one quick motion.

When those were gone, he stripped the heavy saturated hoodie from my body and went to work on the buttons of my flannel. “How many layers of clothing do you have on?” he whispered, a small smile in his voice.

It ignited something in me. A little flicker of life.

A ray of sunshine in a desolate world.

I focused on him. Everything still seemed blurry, but he was close enough that I could see him.

He was completely soaked. His jeans, shoes, jacket, and shirt. He was just as wet as I was. His normally messy blond hair was darker and flat to his head from the weight of the water.

Dark shadows haunted his eyes and his lips were pale from the cold.

“You jumped in after me,” I whispered.

“I’d jump into the pits of hell for you, Rim.”

“I’m pretty sure that was the pit of hell,” I said, no trace of humor in my tone. I meant it. That pool was my own personal hell.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, his voice cracking.

“You’re freezing too,” I said as he peeled the shirts off my body.

I started tugging at his jacket, and he paused in undressing me long enough so he could toss it on the floor with the rest of our clothes. I unbuttoned his jeans and tried to tug them down, but my fingers were too stiff for the job.

“You first,” he murmured and removed the last item of clothing from my body. I stepped beneath the spray as the warm water chased away the worst of the chill. I let it run over my hair, and in the back of my mind I wondered where my hat had gone.

Romeo was watching me when I opened my eyes. He was still dressed. “Your clothes,” I said.

“I can wait.”

“No,” I insisted. “Now.”

I watched him as he undressed. Even in my half-drunk, sorrowful, scared-out-of-my-mind condition, I appreciated the way his muscles rippled beneath his skin.

The way the water hit him and ran like streams through the deep cuts of his body made my body heat up from the inside out.

“Your turn,” I said and tugged him beneath the water.

Instead of allowing me to back up, he wrapped his arms around me and we stood there together. I laid my head against his chest, listening to the sound of his erratic heartbeat.

I dug my fingers into his back, clinging to him almost desperately. If it hurt, he didn’t say a word.

Slowly, he stroked my back, dragging his fingertips along my spine in a soothing motion. The atmosphere around us slowly changed. I began to feel more than just fear running through my insides.

The beat of his heart. The half-smile on his lips. The sound of his voice. It was my entire world just then.

He was life.

I was death.

I wanted more of it. More of him.

My hand slid down his ribcage and I palmed his hip. I felt his lips move against my hair, and I closed my eyes. The feel of us skin to skin was exactly what I needed.

“Romeo,” I murmured. My lips brushed his skin, and I moved against him.

He groaned and slipped his fingers into my hair.

“I want you,” I whispered, and moved my hand away from his hip and down toward the center of his body. I knew he wanted me too because his length was growing against me.

When I wrapped my hand around him, he made a sound low in his throat. “Now probably isn’t the best time, baby,” he murmured. “You’re drunk and you just—”

I gave his cock a little squeeze and it jerked in my hand. “I’m pretty sure that ice bath cleared up most of my drunkenness. And the other thing… It’s exactly why I need you. Right now. I want to be alive again, Romeo. I want to feel you inside me.”