Summer's Temptation (22 page)

Chapter 22

I
drift in a sea. Alone. The water’s warm, a constant temperature that soothes the panic boiling beneath my wet skin. I’m in danger from something. I can’t remember what. If I don’t figure it out soon, I’m afraid I’ll be stuck in this ocean forever.

The ocean’s calm and ripples serenely around my shoulders. I’ve been treading forever, but strangely, I’m not tired, just bored. To pass the time, I hum a song I haven’t heard since I was a child. It entertains me while I wait.

I think this might be a dream, but it’s so real, I can’t be sure. The sky is bright blue with no clouds, just a warm sun beaming down. If it is real, I wonder if I’ll get sunburned. I turn my head to check my shoulders. Still olive, not pink. I hum louder; my voice carries across the water.

How long will I have to stay here? Where is here? Will it get dark? I don’t like the idea of being in the ocean at night. Alone. Scary things could lurk beneath the water. I guess they could lurk now, but for some reason, I don’t have the sense to be afraid.

I hum and wait and tread. The sun sinks lower toward the horizon. The panic that has been bubbling beneath my skin begins to escape. My stomach tightens and my fingers tremble, but I keep humming. It soothes me.

“Nice song,” a man says.

I startle and turn in a circle, looking for the owner of the voice. An arm slips around my waist, and I gasp.

“‘Rainbow Connection’?” he asks.

I nod, twisting to see him.

“I always liked that song.” His eyes match the color of the sea.

“Where am I?” I lean into him. He smells familiar. Musky and sexy.

His feet kick next to mine. “Somewhere I don’t want you to be.” His warm breath shudders against my damp skin.

A pleasurable tremble creeps up my spine. I wonder what this man would do if I kissed him. Turning in his arms, I lock my hands around his neck and tip my head back. His lips are only an inch above mine, and his Caribbean blue eyes glow.

“Kiss me,” I say quietly.

One corner of his mouth curves up in a smile that’s so familiar, I know I’ve seen it a hundred times before.

“I will,” he promises. “Over and over, but not until you come back to me.”

I pull away slightly, putting enough room between us that I can take in his whole face. Tears wet his eyes. They trail down his cheeks until they reach his chin. One by one, they splash into the ocean, but they don’t seem to mix. The tiny droplets swirl gently around us, a darker color than the blue water they swim in.

“Don’t cry.” I press my forehead against his. Our breaths mingle.

“Come back to me, Cassie.”

Hearing my name jars me in a way that makes my body quake. “This is just a dream. I’m with you. I’m touching you. Kiss me.”

He shakes his head, and his lips move temptingly near mine. So much sadness surrounds him, I don’t dare press mine to his without permission.

“This isn’t real,” he says.

The sadness in his voice makes my heart break. I squeeze him tight. “I can feel you. I can see you. I can smell you. That’s real enough for me.”

“Not for me, Cassie. Come back.”

I peer around the vast expanse of water. There’s no boat to whisk us away or land to swim toward. “If I’m dreaming, how do I wake up?”

He presses a kiss to my forehead. The warmth of his lips seems to last forever. Finally, he pulls back and unwraps his arms from my waist. “Swim toward the sun. Don’t stop until you hear my voice.”

“Okay.” I nod. “Okay. I can do that. I can swim forever in this place. I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”

“You don’t have forever,” he says, his voice breaking.

“What do you mean?”

He fades, his body dimming to ghostly. I reach for him, but my hands go right through him. I see the ocean through him, and it terrifies me.

He smiles sadly at me. “Don’t let the sun set, cupcake.”

He fades away, and I’m alone again. Drifting.

I turn toward the sun. It’s sinking; time’s running out. If I can just touch the heat of the sun, I’ll wake up. I know it.

I have to see him again. I have to kiss him. My heart pummeling my chest, I swim toward the light. My arms plow through the water with more force than I ever thought them capable. The sun grows larger, and the bottom of the orb hits the horizon.

I don’t stop. I keep pushing until my arms burn, until I have nothing left and I’m gasping for breath. When I peer up, the sun’s halfway set. He said he’d kiss me if I come back to him. I want to know what his lips feel like pressed against mine. I paddle harder. My legs kick and push through the water, desperate.

Everything hurts. My chest rises and falls heavily. My calves cramp. I can’t keep going. Only a sliver of sun sits above the waterline. I’m failing. Somehow, I know I’m going to lose everything. But I won’t stop fighting until the last of the sun is gone. I can’t. I draw in a great breath and dive. Water races past my face, my shoulders, my legs. It gurgles in my ears and splashes up my nose, but I keep going. I pop to the surface. The sun’s nearly gone. One last attempt, and it’s over.

I dive again.

Below the water, a great orb of golden light rises beneath me. I must touch it. I dive deep. It rises to meet me. We collide in great explosion.

As the blast rips me apart, I hear the sweetest voice say, “Don’t die, Cassie. God damn it, I love you.”

Pain roars through my body like a tidal wave of freshly honed razors. Every muscle clenches.

I’m awake. This is the reality he talked about, and it hurts like hell. The bastard. I want my ocean back, where everything was serene. I don’t care if it’s dark. I don’t care if scary things lurk beneath the water. I just want the pain to stop.

The scream of an ambulance siren reaches my ears, followed by pounding feet. People speak in strained voices. I’m in too much agony to concentrate on their words. My leg is elevated. Shards of pain shoot up to my crotch and down to my foot. I want to scream so loud and furiously, no one will ever touch me again, but I can’t. My body refuses to so much as whimper. Even my eyes stayed fused shut.

I think I hear Tyler. I hold onto the sound, worn and raspy, still familiar and calming. Someone moves my leg again. I gasp for breath and silently scream. It hurts too much. Way, way too much. Everything from my hip to my foot is on fire. I want the blaze to travel up so it can consume me and end my misery.

Someone shouts. Ice floods my veins; the pain in my hip dulls. Like a cresting wave, numbness flows down my thigh, eating all sensation. The surge streams to my calf, lifting the pain as it pours by. When my foot deadens, I want to cry from the relief. The pain’s gone, and I draw in one last conscious breath and drift.

When I wake again, my head’s heavy. Pain grips my leg, but it’s duller. I can’t help but wonder if my ocean would wash away the last of the anguish, but I don’t know where it is any longer. I think that’s a good thing. Sobbing fills my ears, soft and feminine. Something touches my palm. For a moment, the comfort of the flesh pressed into my hand makes me forget how badly I hurt. I squeeze.

The sobbing stops on a sharp inhale. “Cassie?”

I try to open my eyes. The lids are like sandpaper grinding against my eyeballs, another pain to add to the torment of my leg. I manage to lift them, though only half-mast.

“Oh, sweetie!” my mom wails. Tears stream down her cheeks, her eyes red and swollen.

Behind her, my father stands stoically, his hands curved around my mother’s shoulders. I’ve never seen him cry, but the puffy bags beneath his eyes are evidence of spilt tears.

My eyelids droop. I force them back up, trying to hold onto my mom and dad for as long as possible. I’m afraid when I close them, I’ll never see my parents again. I want to tell them I love them, but I’m pulled back under. Everything darkens. They disappear, and so do I.

I know when I’ve woken for good by the return of all sensation. I smell bleach and lemon and something else I can’t place, something flowery and familiar. I hear beeping and whirring and dripping. I taste metallic bitterness. Scratchy sheets brush my skin. The pain in my leg’s an echo in the background of my mind. It’s bearable, and I’m grateful.

Opening my eyes, I stare at the ceiling. It swirls. Pretty colors, like pink and lavender, pool at the edges of the wavy patterns. That doesn’t seem quite right. Ceilings aren’t supposed to be colorful or move. I blink, twice, and the tiles turn white and stationary. Better. Much, much better.

Too comfy to move, I take a deep breath and explore my mouth with my tongue. It still tastes of eroding pennies, and I swallow, barely able to round up enough moisture to make my throat move. My tongue darts out, seeming to have a mind of its own, and licks cracked lips. ChapStick. That’s what I need. I wonder where I can get some? Water would be nice too. With ice. And maybe a little lemon to get rid of the coin taste.

Beside me, something shifts. Whatever it is, it grabs my hand. My brain is so woozy, it takes me a moment to find my neck muscles and turn my head in the right direction.

My mom sits next to me. She’s clasping my hand and stroking my knuckles with her thumb. “You’re awake.”

I think she tries to smile because the lines around her mouth deepen, but her lips only twitch at the corners. I nibble a bit of dried skin on my lips, my fuzzy brain figuring out what I should say. “Where am I?” My voice croaks from disuse.

“Hospital,” she says, squeezing my hand gently. Her brown hair’s a mess, sticking up on top and ratty at the bottom.

She’s not one to fuss over her looks, but I’ve never seen her this unkempt, and it makes me wonder just how bad off I am. My creaky mind sobers in a hurry, and the scene at the lake comes rushing into my brain with a tidal wave of fear. The snake. The pain. The panic. I’d been sure I was going to die. Maybe I am dying. My chin trembles, making speaking nearly impossible. “Am I dying?”

She cups my face, leans down, and presses her forehead against mine. “No, honey. You’re not.” She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “We thought we lost you. Twice. Especially when you went into shock, but praise God, we didn’t.” She kisses my cheek. “You’re not allowed to die before me, okay?”

I’m going to live. I’m so relieved, I feel like laughing and crying all at the same time, but the tears win out. They come faster and faster until I can’t stop. My mom holds me while heavy sobs shake my body. After a few minutes of bawling, I think I must have cried out all the pain medicine because my leg throbs.

“The bite?” I ask. “How bad is it?”

“It’s swollen,” she says, pulling back.

The lines on her forehead are the deepest I’ve ever seen them. I think I’ve aged her ten years in… I don’t know how long. “What day is it?”

She moves toward the end of the bed. “Monday evening.”

I’ve been unconscious for twenty-four hours. I gaze around the room. The blinds are open, and the sun is setting. In a chair by the window, my sister’s curled into a ball, sleeping.

My mom grasps the edge of the sheet. “The nurses kept getting on me for covering your leg, but I was afraid you’d get cold.” She shrugs sheepishly and lifts the sheet.

Cool air sweeps past my leg, and she tucks the sheet next to my calf. I gasp. Not a normal,
oh, my God
gasp. More like a
holy-mother-of-sweet-baby-Jesus
gasp. I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe two punctures surrounded by angry red skin. Certainly not this.

My calf’s propped up on a pile of pillows, and I swallow back bile as I stare at it. My mom had called it swollen, but that isn’t a broad enough adjective to describe my leg. Bloated. Inflated. Engorged. Those don’t do it justice either. It looks like a purple sausage stuffed into a casing ten times too small. I’m scared the skin will split if I so much as touch it. Even my toes are puffy, and they angle in different directions to make room for them all. As if that’s not bad enough, thick black ink-lines bisect my calf and thigh in uneven intervals with dates and times scribbled next to them. I’m a living whiteboard.

I swallow a sob.
Will they have to amputate?
I know I should be grateful to be alive—everything else I can work through, even a lost leg—but I want to walk again. I want to wear high heels and be a normal college kid strolling across campus. Not a student learning to use a prosthetic because of a stupid snake.

I wish I had killed the damn serpent instead of running. I imagine smashing my foot on its skull and savoring the crush beneath my heel. I was just sitting on a damn rock. It wasn’t like I tried to hurt it. My whole body clenches, sending a shooting pain up my calf. I moan and blow out a puff of air. No revenge fantasy will make this better.

My mom squeezes my hand. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie.”

I try to stifle a sob, but it won’t stay tucked in my throat. It comes out shrilly. My cries sound like wet choking as I try to stop them. “Will they… have to… cut it… off?”

Through the tears blurring my vision, I see my mom startle, her chin jerking toward me. Her eyes are wide and full of compassion. “The antivenin’s working, honey. The doctor says it’s all swelling. You’ll have a scar, but he said you can start physical therapy in a week to get it back in working order.”