Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
I lean back so I can look up at him, but I remain in his embrace. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why the swim team? It seems like that’s the worst possible club for you to be a part of.”
He shrugs, still with his arms secured around me, then he looks out at the water almost rebelliously. “I’ve been swimming since I was practically a baby. I’m a strong-ass fucking swimmer. I should have been able to find her, to grab her, to pull her back to the surface before it was too late.”
My heart lodges itself in my throat, and I remember what he said to me when I gave him the muffins. When he asked if they were good enough to make him forget his mom was dead and it was all his fault.
“It wasn’t your fault, Landon. You were just a kid.”
“I know.” He nods. “But I should have been strong enough to keep my family together. I never wanted to look at the fucking water again after we lost her. I switched bedrooms because I couldn’t stand to look at the ocean every day. Didn’t even bother making the new one my own, I just… lived there like a visitor looking forward to the day I could finally leave.” His gaze drifts to me. “Until you moved in.”
Surprise causes the question to slip out. “Am I in your old room?”
He nods, then looks out at the ocean. His jaw locks, his green eyes stormy and irritable, like he’s regarding an enemy instead of a body of water. “But after the initial grief passed, when my dad disappeared on me, and… it was like I’d lost both of them.” He looks down. “I had to know if I ever found myself in a position like that again, I’d be prepared. I had to be stronger. I needed to be the strongest fucking swimmer that had ever lived. I needed to be able to hold on to what mattered to me and not let it slip away.”
It breaks my heart hearing that.
I knew Landon changed after his mom’s death. He wasn’t like this before, angry and pugilistic and controlling. He was mischievous, but he never had a chip on his shoulder. He was one of the popular kids at school, amusing and handsome and athletic. He was well-liked and friends with everybody. The whole world was his playground so he had no reason to hate it, but then, in the space of one afternoon, his whole world changed. Darkened.
He lost so much.
He was never the same after that.
I suppose I wouldn’t be, either.
He was only twelve, but even losing my mother now, when I’m basically an adult, would emotionally cripple me. I don’t know how you recover from a loss like that.
I don’t think Landon ever has.
And it’s impossible not to notice how he applied all the new mental processes he adopted to me.
I don’t know why, whether it was fated or just because I was the only one who approached him that day wanting to offer a life raft when I saw him drowning, but it’s clear I’m the thing he practiced holding on to once he lost her. I was the thing he monitored and controlled and refused to let slip through his fingers.
No amount of resistance ever would have worked. He would have torched all the lives around us and still kept chasing me because he had to. He couldn’t stop. He would get himself arrested, blow up his own future and anyone else’s who got in his way. He’d ruin his father’s life, burn every bridge with every friend he ever had, and he would have just kept coming.
I guess it’s fortunate I got hung up on him, too.
It does make me wonder, though…
Do I like being chased because that’s who I am, or because I’ve spent my formative years running from him?
I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re together now, and if I’m honest, I know we’ll be together forever. He wouldn’t have it any other way, and whether my brain is wired to accept that naturally or because Landon forced it to with his years of relentless pursuit, I wouldn’t, either.
Maybe he has always been mine and I’ve always been his, and it doesn’t matter why.
And maybe it is a little twisted, but I’ve always been protective of Landon, ever since that day in middle school. Even if I was his target, the notion of things having gone differently and him not getting me… I don’t just feel overwhelmed on my own behalf by the knowledge that I never would have known peace in my life as long as he was drawing breath. I also feel sad for him at the idea that he wouldn’t have gotten the one thing he wanted more than anything.