Page 24 of Rejected
The cold felt like knives slashing at her skin and bones. It was impossible to breathe anyway. She could not imagine how much worse it could hurt once she was completely submerged.
I fell once into icy water,and I was drowning, she thought hazily, her thoughts fragmented, like the pieces of dark, broken ice floating on the surface ofthe water in the distance.I don’t remember it hurting so much. I survived that time. But I won’t survive this.
Just as the water came to her chin, she was pulled abruptly out of it. A pair of strong hands was around her waist, their warmth seeping into her, lifting her into the air.
“I’m here,” Teddy’s warm voice was saying in her ear, as he bodily dragged her to him and back towards the shore. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”
He was completely wet, as if he’d taken a dive into the water, his hair turning frosty with it, his shirt plastered to his chest. Jo looked behind them, and she saw that he was dragging the dinghy across the shallows with his other hand. His right arm was flung around her waist, half-supporting her, half-carrying her out of the lake.
She was still gasping for breath as they finally made their way back to the shallow water. She could not feel her limbs, but her heart was back to beating, and she was shivering so hard she could not speak.
Laurie cursed loudly, and shrugged out of his coat with an ease she had not thought possible. It, too, was drenched through, but at the ball it had fit him like a second skin, showing every slight movement of his muscles as he moved. But now, even though it was dripping-wet, he took it off with no help from a valet—unheard of—and with barely two moves of his shoulders. He draped it across her back, still swearing.
She had not heard him swear, except in jest.
But these words he was spewing… How did she not know them? How had she been reading and writing without being aware of these words? How deprived must her vocabulary be—?
“You are shaking so badly,” Laurie was saying, anger making his voice thick. Wait, it was not anger. Well, notonlyanger. It was terror too.
She would be happy he was going through some sort of discomfort after what he had put her through, except she could not quite get her brain to function.
“Jo!” Laurie was shouting, shaking her shoulders so roughly her teeth rattled. “Look at me! What in all hell are you doing?”
“I thought you would…”
“Did you think I’d drown myself because you rejected me?” His voice was colder than the water, suddenly. “Come on, Jo. You think too highly of yourself.”
He might as well have slapped her. He had gone from terrified to absolutely frigid. Mocking. Arrogant. Within seconds of being terrified for her, he’d started laughing at her.
“Teddy…”
He scoffed at the word, and Jo clamped her lips shut. She would die before uttering that name again, she vowed it there and then.
“Did you think I’d die for you?” He said, his voice colder than the water. She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Answer me.” She couldn’t. “Jo, someday you’ll find someone who will live and die for you, but by heaven,that is not going to be me. You have made that abundantly clear.”
He turned around, leaving her there, her dress soaked and heavy, her legs frozen, her heart a beating wound.
She had done the rejecting, yet at this moment, it felt very much as if she was the one being rejected.
The one left behind.
Left alone.
Gentle, ice-cold waves kept lapping at her dress, dragging her back towards the dark depths of the lake, and she struggled to untangle herself before she stumbled and fell in again.
“Come here.” Suddenly, Laurie was back as quickly as he’d left, those hands of his circling her waist as if it were nothing. “I won’t leave you.”
His lips were next to her ear, brushing against her cheek. She went abruptly weak and her legs buckled.
She turned to look at him in the moonlight, and it hit her all over again. It was an actual pain. When did this dangling, loping, bouncing boy full of angles and limbs turn into this work of art?
A work of art that was currently wrapped around her shivering, wet body. Pressed closely. She could feel all of it: the cords of muscle on his thigh. The hard lines of his body. The thundering of his heart, the pulsing of every vein… She wobbled and her knees gave out completely. Something hot and liquid was coursing through her veins, making her so weak she could scarcely breathe.
I am going to fall in.
Laurie laughed softly to himself and hoisted her up against his chest.
I am losing my mind here and he is finding it amusing. Excellent.
