Life on the Level: On the Verge - Book Three

“What?” I clap my hand over my mouth. My voice echoes in the valley. “Don’t you think it’s something you should’ve told me earlier?”

  “When?” he says. “In front of the whole camp?”

  “Ugh. This whole time I was telling Jillian to be more careful.”

  “Simmons and Jillian. Wow. No wonder he was so understanding and offered to keep my secret. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Do you want a prize?” I ask, too sassy for my own good. “Neither have I.”

  After a little bit of silence, we start to laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” I tell him.

  “You’re the one cackling.”

  “I do not cackle.”

  “Well, I’ve got to tell you, I feel a little relieved that someone else knows. I felt like the heart under the floorboards in The Tell Tale Heart.”

  “I felt like Hester in The Scarlet Letter.”

  He holds his oar across his lap to steady himself. Julie and Pete are paddling nearby, but not within hearing distance. He reaches out and tucks a stray curl back over my ear.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed about. Unless you’re ashamed of me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The Scarlet Letter is about shame.”

  “Well, I’m a high school dropout; you can’t expect me to get all the facts right.”

  He sighs, stretching his arms out against the breeze. The wind is getting stronger, and clouds appear from behind the mountains.

  “Are you ashamed?” I ask, looking off to the side to avoid the intensity of his eyes.

  “River,” he says my name in that way of his, like I’m important, like he needs to say it. “If I’m ashamed of anything it’s that—”

  He looks away.

  “Of what?”

  “That I’m taking advantage of you.”

  I shake my head, confused. “How? We’re both adults. Sure you’re three years older than me, but it’s not like anyone can accuse me of having daddy issues. If that were so, I’d date guys twice my age, and that’s just gross.”

  “I’m glad you don’t think being with me is gross,” he says, searching the dark clouds for something. “I’m just—at the end of the day, I’m still a counselor. No matter that we met beforehand. You’re someone searching for help and recovery, and instead of giving that to you, I’m thinking about ways to get into your bed every single night. I’m thinking about kissing you every moment I find. I’m thinking about never letting you go. That I care for you more than I do for my own future. I want you to be my future.”

  I want to say something. I want to tell him that I feel the same way. Except, I want to take the brunt of the hurt if something goes wrong. I want to protect his future, because sometimes I don’t feel like I have one myself. He’s too good to bet everything on me.

  But I can’t find the words.

  “All I want to do is be with you and keep you safe,”

  Hutch tells me. “I want to hold your hand and kiss you in the middle of the day, not just in the dark. Right now, we can’t have that.”

  I try to process his words as it starts to drizzle. “Hutch, I make my decisions for me. If you think that you’re taking advantage of me, you’re wrong. I picked you, okay? From the moment I saw you at the bar, I had to know you, even if it was just for one night. I wanted you then, and I still want you now. Maybe you’re the one who’s too fucking good for their own well-being. Maybe I’m the bad one, and I’m ruining your life just by being near you.”

  I can tell he wants to kiss me, but just then, Julie and Pete paddle over to us. “We’re heading back! It’s getting too windy!”

  Hutch stands on the kayak to position himself forward. The current makes him wobble, and I’m afraid he’s going to fall. He sits and we paddle forward. The clouds darken overhead, and it starts to pour. I can’t see anything ahead of us, except a little yellow kayak ahead. Water splashes all around, like hands pushing our kayak from side to side. I start to panic, and I lose my rhythm.

  “Hutch!”

  “Let me—”

  “What?” The kayak is rocking too much.

  Then it flips, and we’re underwater, and I don’t have time to hold my breath. The water is freezing and dark, and I breathe it into my lungs. I force myself to reach for the surface, but I don’t know which way is up or down. I gasp as I break the surface, but I feel the current pushing me away from the kayak. My lungs burn and my throat is raw from coughing up water.

  Pull the string! I tell myself.

  But my fingers are freezing, and it takes me a few long moments to find it. When I do pull it, nothing happens, and I start sinking. I feel something brush against my leg, and in my panic, I scream. I start kicking my legs just as arms wrap around me. I’m choking.

  I can’t breathe.

  I open my eyes to darkness.

  Darker clouds and darker water.

  Chapter 26

  Hutch is shouting my name. “River! River. Oh God, River please. Come back to me. River!”

  His voice is far away. Like we’re on opposite ends of a tunnel. A fist punches me in my solar plexus just as I open my eyes. I feel cold water coming up and turn over to retch. I sit up, gasping for breath.

  I close my eyes again, but someone is asking me to stay awake. It sounds like Jillian. Then Randy. Randy, of all people.

  Hutch wraps his arms around me. He’s trembling from head to toe. His lips are nearly blue from cold. The other campers are standing and crouching around us. The rain has stopped and given way to a cloudless sky.

  “Thank God you’re okay,” Jillian says.

  Hutch lets go of me. He’s breathing hard and fast. He runs his hands through his wet hair, then takes off. Meanwhile, I sit up and keep coughing. Jillian wraps a blanket over my shoulders.

  They all start shouting things at me. At least, it sounds like shouting. My head is aching, and I breathe in small gasps. It hurts where Hutch punched me in my chest. No, not punched—where he did chest compressions for CPR.

  When I feel well enough to stand, I take stock of the camp. Most of our supplies and dry firewood were shoved under a makeshift tent of kayaks. The actual tents sag where water has collected. Everyone goes to theirs and shakes the water off, and they bounce right back. All except for mine. A branch fell off a tree and punched a hole right through it, wetting all of my clothes inside.

  “Come,” Jillian tells me.

  Simmons gives everyone else tasks to clean up our camp area. I follow Jillian into her tent, shivering down to the bone. She gives me dry clothes and a towel.

  “I’d… kill… for… some… whiskey.” It’s hard to get a whole sentence out when your teeth are chattering.

  “Take this for now.” She opens a packet of hand warmers. I want to rub them all over my skin. But between them and the borrowed clothes, I soon feel loads better. “That was really scary.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I’ve never seen Hutch react that way,” she whispers. “He was screaming your name. Randy tried to get him off you because he was pressing your chest too hard. He was afraid he’d break your ribs, but Hutch just shoved him away.”

  “Then why isn’t he here?” I feel something well up in my chest. If my tear ducts didn’t feel frozen, I’d probably cry. Hutch saved my life, again. And then he walked away from me. After all the things he said to me in the middle of the lake. He just walked away.

  Jillian places a hand on my shoulder. “He’ll be back. He was scared. He really cares about you.”

  I nod my head and wrap myself in the blanket. “So do I.”

  “I think we can help each other out,” Jillian says.

  “How?”

  “You need a tent. We can say you’re staying in mine. But it might make sense if you sleep next to someone bigger. For body heat. We can switch after everyone’s gone to sleep.”

  “Let me go find him.”

  I leave the tent and the other campers descend on me. They tell me
how Hutch dragged me to the shore and started CPR. How my whole face turned blue, and everyone thought I was dead.

  I didn’t feel dead. I just felt heavy and cold. Like a stone, dropping down into the water. My chest still hurts, and I feel disoriented from everyone’s attention. I see Julie scowling on a log with her arms wrapped around her chest. There’s something dark in the way she looks at me, but I push it away because I need to find Hutch.

  It’s a terribly beautiful afternoon, now that the morning storm is gone. I walk along the water’s edge, over the broken branches and piles of leaves. It’s like the hand of God raked over our tiny little island just long enough to try to drown me. That’s a really terrible thing to think. Maybe I’ve just infuriated the big bopper long enough, and that was my comeuppance.

  When I see Hutch, he’s standing with his feet in the water. His arm is resting on a low branch. His wet shirt clings to his muscles, and as I get closer I can see little rivulets of water trickling from his dark curls. He turns around when my foot snaps a branch in half. He doesn’t say anything, but he stares at me.

  I’m used to Hutch being all smiles and sexy smirks. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him lost. He breathes hard, like he was the one who almost drowned. Like he’s struggling against a current I can’t see. His eyes glisten. They furrow angrily as he grips me and pulls me against his chest. He burrows his face into my neck, and then this terribly beautiful, sweet man trembles. I can feel his body shudder, and he grips me so tightly it hurts.

  I don’t feel cold anymore. Something in my heart is melting right into Hutch’s arms. He’s as solid as the great big trees that surround us. He’s as strong as the earth beneath my feet. His emotion is almost too much for me to bear, but I tell myself I need this. I tell myself I deserve someone like this. Don’t I?

  “You scared me half to death,” he says, getting down on his knees and pressing his face against my belly. “I thought—for a very real moment, I couldn’t hear your heart beating, River. You were gone.”

  I rest my cold, wet hands on his cheekbones. I could stare at him all day. If I were to drown, I would take the image of his face with me to the bottom of that lake. I bend down and press my mouth to his. My heart skips a beat, and then skips a handful more at the thought of someone coming to look for us. But right now, I don’t care. My heart hurts from this thaw. My heart hurts from Hutch showing me this kind of emotion.

  “I’m right here,” I say.

  I press my hand on his chest as he stands back up. He keeps my hand pressed there. I wish I could leave my body and look at us, standing on the shore of an island in the middle of a lake, in the middle of nowhere. I press his hand against my face.

  “I think you scared everyone,” I tell him.

  He nods slowly, focusing on my face. “Shit. I think I gave Randy a black eye.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s still in the green phase right now. Probably won’t be purple until tomorrow.”

  He shakes his head solemnly. He hasn’t come back to me 100 percent. I’m not used to someone caring about me like this.

  “Hutch, why did you walk away from me when I woke up?”

  He turns away from me. “I guess I scared myself into thinking that I had lost you. When you opened your eyes, I can’t even explain what I felt. It was like little pieces that were starting to break apart inside me came back together. You were breathing. And there they were, everyone looking down at us, when all I wanted to do was kiss the warmth back into you.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “For saving my life again. I have nothing to give you back, you know. It’s getting pretty annoying.”

  “I haven’t been shaken up like that in a long time. I’m starting to realize—” His midnight eyes are too intense. I feel myself getting lost in them. Screw it, I’m already lost in this man, and I don’t think I can find my way back. “I’d go crazy without you.”

  “Careful with that kind of talk.” I tug on his chin. “They might throw you in psych.”

  “Come here.” He pulls me into a hug. I want to do away with these wet clothes and create some body heat. I tell him about Jillian and our plan with the tents for tonight. “I don’t know about bringing Jillian and Simmons into this.”

  “It’s already done, Hutch.”

  Hutch doesn’t seem to want to let my hand go as we approach our camp. The look he gives me scares me a little bit, because no one has ever looked at me like that. It’s like he’s afraid I’ll float away if he doesn’t hold on. To be honest, I’m afraid I’ll do just that.

  • • •

  Back at camp, everything is back to normal, if a little damp. The fire’s going again, and I’m told there will be trout for dinner.

  I sleep for most of the day, which is going to throw off my internal clock completely. I dream of water closing over my head, Maddie’s dilated pupils, and Hutch screaming my name. Even though there’s no way I could remember this, I see him hitting my chest, and when I sit up I gasp for air like I’m right back underwater.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Julie. She’s unzipping the door of my tent.

  She has a bag of beef jerky and water for me. “Simmons told me to bring this to you. Everyone’s out looking for more dry firewood.”

  I rub the grogginess out of my eyes and take the bag. I chew a piece of jerky while Julie sits there gnawing on her thumb.

  “So, what was it like?” she asks.

  “Drowning?” I shrug. “Like falling asleep in really cold water.”

  “No,” she snorts. “What was kissing Hutch like?”

  I nearly choke on my jerky. Choking on food is a far less badass way to go than drowning in Flathead Lake. Still, I’m trying to figure out if Julie followed Hutch and me. Did she really see us kiss? Or does she mean…

  “I wouldn’t call CPR a kiss.”

  She makes a sour face, like she ate a handful of Warheads and is refusing to spit them out. “A mouth on a mouth is a kiss. I should throw myself into the lake, if that’s what it takes.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I snap. “You can’t hurt yourself just to get a boy’s attention. This isn’t right, Julie. You’re fixating on someone you just can’t have.”

  It’s like telling a baby she can’t have ice cream for dinner. She pouts and sucks her teeth.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, River. You know, everything was fine with Hutch before you came along. Now all he does is try to make sure you aren’t jumping off cliffs, and taking care of you because of your stupid accidents. Who’s the one doing stupid things to get a guy’s attention now? I was supposed to be the one in that kayak, not you. That was supposed to be my kiss, not yours.”

  I grind my teeth as a suspicion forms. I dig my finger into her chest. “Listen to me, Julie. If you pull a stunt like that again, I’ll make sure Helen throws you out faster than you can say ‘my name is Julie and I’m a psychopath.’ Do you understand me?”

  Julie’s eyes go wide with fright. She scrambles to her feet. That was probably a really stupid thing to do. Still, it makes me wonder. I run out to the kayak—in all the excitement, it was left right where it was pulled up onto the sand. My uninflated life vest is still on the ground. I pull the cord, and nothing happens—it’s been tampered with.

  Chapter 27

  I’m in a foul mood for the rest of the day. Simmons gives me one of his extra sweaters, from the Seattle Seahawks, which draws the ire of some of the California people. My clothes are still hanging out to dry, and I look at my Mets sweatshirt with loving and longing eyes.

  Julie keeps her distance, though I admit I have a newfound fear of her. A girl who would tamper with her own life vest to get rescued by the man of her dreams is some next-level shit. I won’t have a quiet moment with Hutch soon, so I have to keep this information to myself for now.

  I could rat her out right here and now, but I grew up seeing what people did to rats. Even though I’m no longer in some dive bar with Queens’ worst barflies and
bookmakers, old habits die hard. Besides, information is a powerful thing. That’s true from here all the way to New York.

  Because we’re still a rehab center, we spend the night’s campfire like it’s an extra-special, extra-big group session. Hutch is more brooding than I’ve ever seen him before. His dark eyes watch the crackling flames like he’s trying to figure out how to hold them in his hands. It’s the same way he looks at me.

  Simmons is the one who gets the group going tonight. He’s got an adorable outdoorsy look that really works for him. It’s like the legit version of all those guys in Williamsburg who wear plaid and have beards and want to look like loggers.

  “All right everyone,” he says in his slightly nervous voice. He doesn’t have the same coolness as Hutch, or Ransom’s fatherly tone. I think this works for him. “We’ve had a really intense day, what with the rain and River’s accident. How’re you holding up?”

  “Like a whole new girl,” I say.

  “Did your life flash before your eyes?” Jermania asks.

  “Did you see the Flathead Lake monster?” one of the younger campers wants to know.

  I smile at the ground, then can’t help but look at Hutch. “Actually, for a moment, I did think I was being pulled under by some hideous sea creature or long-lost dinosaur. It turns out that it was just Hutch, trying to pull me out of the water. I wasn’t really thinking straight or I would have panicked less.”

  Julie looks miserable as I tell my story, but I refuse to feel sorry for her. She could have gotten herself killed. She could have gotten me killed, if Hutch had been slower, or the current had been stronger. I shudder, and hold my hands out to the flames.

  “That’s what I wanted to touch on,” Simmons says. “One of the things that we come face-to-face with during rehabilitation is fear. Fear of life beyond the program. Fear of facing addiction. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the past, or dying, or of ourselves. When I was in my teens, I thought of myself as an adrenaline junkie. I didn’t fear anything. I thought I was invincible. Except my high was racing. Rollercoasters, all kinds of skateboarding. I sought out things to get my blood pumping until I felt invincible. It wasn’t until my first car accident that I realized I had to slow down. I remember a long period of the darkest sleep. This feeling that something was pressing down on my chest. That was my coma. I didn’t wake up for three weeks. I was lucky, I guess. Unlike the kids driving drunk who crashed into me.