Drowning in You
Authors: Rebecca Berto
Tags: #relationships, #love story, #contemporary romance, #hopeless, #new adult, #abbi glines, #colleen hoover
Drowning in
You
Rebecca Berto
Copyright © 2013 Rebecca
Berto
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may
be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by
copyright law. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote
short excerpts in a review.
The characters and events
portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the
author.
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ISBN: 978-0-9874566-1-8
Cover design
copyright © Sarah Hansen of
Okay
Creations.
Cover photo copyright ©
Jacqueline Barkla
Formatting
by
JTFormatting
Table of Contents
Prelude: From a
note tucked under her pillow
10.
Sensuality and Sizzling
Secrets
17. Run, and You Shall Find
Trouble
27. At the Heart of the
Hollingworth
33. It Goes a Little Something Like
This
From a note tucked under her
pillow:
Dexter Hollingworth “killed” my
parents.
1. Killer Crush
Charlee
As per all the fourteen- to
eighteen-year-olds at our school, I started crushing on Dexter
Hollingworth around the age of fifteen. There was one girl who
hated him, but she was into girls.
From the football field
sidelines to graduation day and beyond, my best friend Rosa and I
have wanted him. But guys like Dexter don’t notice girls like us
who spend most of our time talking about cool people like him.
At twenty years old, I still
“love” him.
I love the way his body
personifies what a male God should be without looking like
Fabio.
I love the way his perfect
tanned skin is inked and how he wears those aviator sunglasses and
how he’d use up his lunchtimes to teach the little kids in our
school guitar lessons.
But I
hate
the way I love
him.
I hate how Dexter was the one
controlling the ski lifts at Mason’s Ski Resort the day my mom was
killed because it also put me here, in this position, praying to a
God I’ve never believed in to spare my dad’s life.
In this hospital room, the air
is as quiet as the still of night and my dad’s languid breathing
and drawn-out, heavy movements remind me that my perfect family
life was never meant to be forever.
If I’m being honest, it seems
like things are already over. Dad’s skin keeps a yellow color—at
best—from the IV drip. His meds help with the simple tasks his
heart and other organs can’t. My thoughts wander again. I don’t let
myself consider the alternative—that maybe it’s wishful thinking. I
go with this:
“
Dad,” I say,
jealous my little brother, Darcy is holding our dad’s hand—the hand
he can squeeze with. “Look at you.” I wink.
“
Is she okay,
Dad?” Darcy asks, sounding as though he’s confused.
“
Charlee?” The
confusion is contagious, but Dad’s patient zero—not
Darcy.
There are bars that raise and
lower around Dad’s bed, and they’ve been raised forever. Surely
they must be there because they’re too hard to put down in their
scratched, old state. My dad doesn’t need silly bars around his
bed! My dad owns Roycroft Engines.
“
I think
you’re squeezing Darcy’s hand too tight,” I say.
“
Wha-at?”
Darcy says. He’s staring at me with squinted eyes, probably
thinking
what’s wrong with my sister?
She’s supposed to be the adult.
It hurts smiling like this, the
creases halfway up my cheeks. But maybe it’ll work. “Isn’t that
right, Dad?”
Dad’s eyes are like I remember
them now. There’s vibrancy in the rich brown color, like my eyes. I
bet he’s thinking is his daughter crazy? He tilts his head to the
side—
Injured people don’t understand
things like this. Injured people don’t get what’s unsaid. Dad’s not
that injured.
—
as it clicks.
Dad shakes out of Darcy’s grip and waggles his finger at him. “That
nurse…”
“
Lisa
Hollingworth,” I say.
“
Yes, Lisa.
That nurse Lisa said motor function is good. Squeezing someone’s
hand uses up a lot more strength than you think, son.”
Darcy’s mouth flops open and
stays that way. He checks out Dad, who’s nodding, and me—should I
nod?—so I nod also.
“
Squeezing
your hand probably takes Dad twenty muscles and millions of brain
cells just to do something like that.”
“
No way!”
Darcy grins and punches the air. “Dad, that’s cool.”
And just like that, Darcy has
that same face on as he had when Mom told him she had to wait three
hours in line to buy Desert Warcraft and yeah, she really, really
got it for him.
That face is why I haven’t
downed twenty sleeping pills yet. God knows these last weeks have
felt like months, which actually felt like years. That makes me the
most ancient twenty-year-old alive.
Why, Dexter? Why did it have to
be you in that seat, in that room, at that time?
“
You just wait
until he kicks your butt at Desert Warcraft.”
“
They have
that here, too?”
I coax Darcy’s shoulder. “No,
Darce. At home. Dad will have to come home soon with all these
improvements.”
“
Charlee…” Dad
says, shaking away the words with his head as soon as he’s said
them. As if I’ve taken a joke too far.
Darcy forgets Dad’s silly slip
in our charade after a second and says, “When, Dad? Maybe
tomorrow?”
“
Char—”
“
Slow down,
cowboy,” I say. I laugh so hard my tummy hurts. It’s my tummy
hurting when I laugh like this, it’s not my heart ripping and
combusting into a million pieces, each a shard of glass tearing my
soul apart.
No, Charlee, this is what it
feels like to
really
laugh.
“Maybe in two weeks, though,
Dad? Huh? Two weeks?”
I prod Dad
with my gaze. Hopefully my long blonde hair hides my face from
Darcy so I can telegraph a message, making my brain work so hard it
hurts.
Dad…do you see this face? Can you
see what I’m saying here? My eyes don’t usually pop out of their
sockets like this.
“
No, no.” Dad
sighs, coughs.
It racks his whole body. For a
moment, I am afraid he’ll spit up blood and Darcy will think I’m
lying to him, but, no. It sounds like it was only spittle.
No blood.
“
Charlee is
forgetting I’m still injured.” Dad watches me impassively, the same
way you’d regard a passing stranger.
Darcy slumps into his chair.
“So not for a long time.”
“
Darce—” and
Dad waits until Darcy stops picking at the arm of his chair and
stares at him “—go get that nice lady, Lisa, and tell her I’m ready
for my medicine in a few minutes, will you?”
Darcy whirls
to me, Dad, then back to me. He has to leave? Why does he have to
miss out on this chat?
I know you guys are
gong to talk about me the minute I step out
. That’s what his face says.
“
Where is
she?”
“
Just pop down
to the reception desk. Should be there.”
Darcy drags his feet out of the
room, arms crossed over his chest.
Dad and I look at each other at
the same time and I need to speak first or else I’ll cop it, I know
I will, and I need to explain that I was just being silly and I’m
doing the best I can to be nice for Darcy.
However, getting in first, Dad
says, “I’m never getting out of here.”
He doesn’t rub my shoulders or
pull me to the bed so he can lean in, trembling with the effort, to
kiss my forehead like he used to before a bedtime story. There’s no
contact, no connection.
I want my mom. I don’t want to
be Darcy’s mom.
There, I thought it. Did you
hear that, Dad? I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready because Mom
shouldn’t be dead and you’re not dead yet. You hear me?
He just says, “Charlee? You
hear that?”
I bop my head
up, left, down. It started as an
I-don’t-know
but I’m not sure what I
did in the end. My brain didn’t compute his message. Refuses to
compute it.
“
Oh, Charlee.”
Dad sighs a ragged breath.