Brooklyn clung to me as the light of the moon became clearer above us, her fingers digging into my skin as she held on tight but then suddenly she was gone, the rush of the current ripping her away from me and spinning her aside in the dark.
My gut lurched in panic as I felt her grip fail, my own escape becoming irrelevant as the thought of losing her again consumed me and cast my soul to cinders.
I twisted after her, her fingers brushing mine as I fought to see her in the murky water, my lungs burning with the need to take a breath as I hunted all around. But as my hand closed on nothing and my heart thundered with frantic energy, I found myself alone in the dark. Just like I had been when she’d left me once before and that empty, hollow place in my chest began to roar with a denial so potent it consumed me.
I kicked after her, my eyes wide in the dirty water and my hands grasping as I hunted for Brooklyn.
I wouldn’t give up on her. Not now. Not when we were so damn close to the escape we both craved and a life beyond those fucking walls at Eden Heights.
T he best thing about being free was the smile on my face which nearly burst my cheeks open. The worst thing though? I was sailing down a river, tossed in the current like a feather in a thunderstorm, and I couldn’t swim.
I kicked and flailed, trying to make my arms and legs do the right thing and get me moving towards the surface, but every time my head made it above the waterline, I was bitch slapped back under it by the force of the current.
A stream of bubbles poured from my lips as I was tossed around in the water, losing knowledge of my up-ways and down-ways. I was being thrown around like a half dead duck, my kickers kicking and my flappers flapping, but it didn’t do me any good.
Damn this was a shit way to die. I was in a cold wet washing machine left on the spin cycle and there was no way out. No one was gonna talk about that, it wasn’t gonna hit headlines and be splashed all over the news like my death should have been. This was humiliation at its finest. I was going to sink all the way to the bottom of the river where the fishes were going to giggle and point at me. Then they’d eat me away, and I’d be swallowed into fish bellies until I was nothing but a pile of pointless bones on a riverbed. And no one would care, not one single person up there in this big wide world would miss me. Would anyone even wonder what had happened to Brooklyn with a B?
A muscular arm suddenly locked around my waist and in the next second my head breached the surface.
I sucked down air like it was Big Red’s dick and I was his favourite slut. It tasted so fucking good and I couldn’t get enough as I drank in more of that sweet, sweet wind whistling through my lungs.
I leaned back against the huge body that had hold of me, wondering if it was the Devil himself, come to haul my ass off to hell and spank it raw. Though, as I thought about that, I couldn’t help but pout a little. Niall and Mateo had come for me – unless my drugged-up brain had conjured them into existence – but it made me wish they were the ones holding me now, ready to spank me, bend me over, and skewer me like a pinata. They got skewered, right? Lucky bastards.
I looked down at the arm gripping my body like I was nothing more than a half-drowned cat to them. But I didn’t find any tattoos there, or even the deep bronze of Mateo’s flesh. This wasn’t an arm I knew. But it was a nice arm, hairy in a manly way not a gross way. There was a lot of muscle going on and a little vein or two was on display as I tried to peek at the underside of it.
“Still,” a deep voice growled in my ear as my saviour powered through the river with his free arm, cutting through water like it was nothing but a slight inconvenience to him.
I knew that voice. It was the deep rumble of a man I’d liked to look at a lot a long time ago. A man who’d played steed for me in our attempt to escape the asylum we’d been enslaved to. The man who’d gotten me off of that bus.
“Angry Jack,” I cried, clinging to him more tightly and grinning as he grunted at me in what was definitely an affectionate way.
He said nothing more but shifted me so that I could cling to his back and I twisted my head around to look upriver, spotting the bridge we’d crashed off of in the distance, the flash of police lights lining the bank on the left-hand side while the crack of gunfire echoed through the air.
There were prisoners swimming in the water behind us, their heads bobbing up like corks in a barrel and I watched as they turned for the shore, heading towards dry land and safety.
“We should climb out too,” I urged, my grip so tight around Angry Jack’s neck that it was a wonder I wasn’t strangling him, but I didn’t like the deep dark beneath me. Not one bit. And if I let go again, I knew nothing but a watery grave and a smug little arsehole of a fish would be waiting for me down there, ready to chomp on my soft flesh.
“Swim,” he replied in what was a clear refusal as he continued to power his way through the water, ignoring the shore and heading who knew where while I just clung on to my boat man and waited to find out where he would dock.
An enormous explosion made a gasp of exhilaration speed through my veins and I twisted to look at the bridge just in time to see the blazing debris from the centre of it go sailing up into the air before it came crashing down in the water, leaving the centre of the bridge to bow and buckle as fireworks exploded above it in celebration.
“Oooh,” I cooed as I craned my neck to watch the carnage, the gunfire falling silent while the police all took cover from the mayhem. Mayhem really was the most beautiful thing in this world.
The river turned around the sharp curve of a hill and I sighed as my view of the burning bridge was stolen from me, concentrating on holding on tight once more as Jack continued to haul himself through the water like a merman on a mission.
Minutes ticked by while he swam endlessly on, and I began to shiver in the icy cold of the water.
It was as freezy as a snowman’s cock out here and I was dreaming all the good dreams of snuggly slippers and hot cheese grills and sunshiney days, when the distant whir of a helicopter engine made me look up.
“Do you hear that, AJ?” I asked. “I think it’s a helicopter. Do you think Hellfire is flying a helicopter now?”
Jack tipped his head skyward, a shriek escaping me as the move dipped me further into the water before he growled like a beastie and turned for the riverbank without another word, little old limpet me still clinging on all the way.
He made it to shore, but didn’t place me on my feet, shifting me into his hold and keeping me tucked under his arm as he strode up the rocky bank and ran straight into a dense group of trees. I couldn’t say for sure how far we’d travelled from the bus, but I did know that we wouldn’t be far enough until we were unfindable.
I shivered as the cold air gusted around us and I started to sing Cake by Melanie Martinez to stop my lips from chattering – or was it teeth that chattered?
Jack placed me down suddenly, shoving me up against an oak and clapping a huge palm to my mouth. He was as big as a tree and almost as conversational.
“Hush,” he commanded and I blinked the water from my lashes, a smile pulling at my mouth. His long, white hair was damp around his shoulders, his features hard and the scar on the right side of his head drew my attention. I liked that scar. I’d always wanted to tiptoe my fingers across it and find out how big it was. I’d bet thirteen ladybirds could line up in a row along it.
He slowly lowered his hand while I raised mine, my fingertips brushing his scar and starting their walk to remember and for a few blissful moments, he let me until the whir of that helicopter engine called to us once again and we both tipped our heads back to look up at the canopy of trees which shrouded us from view. A light wheeled overhead, and the helicopter roared away across the river, leaving us in the dark and the quiet, never to be found. Or so I hoped.