Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“Wha— Donny!” I try to say, half smothered in his barrel chest as he heaves in and out for breath. We’re in the shallow end now so I stand on my feet as I push him away enough to get a breath and look him in the eye.
“Christ sake, Donny,” I say in exasperation. “I’m fine! You can’t control every little thing I do. I told you I know how to swim.”
“We don’t know what you do and don’t know how to do,” he exclaims, still irate. “You can’t be taking chances with yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That wasn’t a chance. I can swim. You just saw.” I fling out an arm towards the pool. “I can only find out if I can do things by doing them. Are you going to freak out if I try to see if I can ride a bike? Or a motorcycle?”
His eyes darken as he glowers down at me. “You are not riding a motorcycle. You’re twenty-five more times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident as a car accident.”
I roll my eyes again. “That’s not a real statistic. You just pulled that out of your ass.”
“It’s close enough.” He glares. “No motorcycles.”
“Fine.” I stick out my tongue, chest so light and happy at getting to be silly with him. “But you can’t stop me from swimming!” I dive towards the bottom of the pool again, swimming just past his grasping hands.
We swim for a long time, goofing around like we’re kids and occasionally tangling our bodies together. I’m fully naked but he kept his boxers on.
After about half an hour, I accidentally snort in some water and cough a little. I don’t want Domhnall to know, so I swim over to the side for the towel but can’t quite reach it. Domhnall chuckles and swims up beside me. He easily hops out of the pool to grab the towel from the bench, but I gasp, hands flying to my mouth.
The whole time we’ve been swimming, he’s kept his chest to me, but as he climbs out—
“Domhn!” I cry. “Your back!”
TWENTY-NINE
BROOKE
Domhnall immediately whips around, his features unreadable. “It’s nothing.”
I’m still in shock from what I just saw. I climb out of the pool. I need to see it again. Some of those wounds looked fresh. Oh my god, he probably shouldn’t have even been swimming.
“Donny, who did that to you?” I demand, trying to walk around to see the horrific scarring again. I only caught a glimpse, but it was his entire back, fresh angry stripes barely scabbed, laid over old, raised pink scars. I’ve never seen anything so horrific. Tears immediately spring to my eyes.
But when I try to look again, Domhnall just keeps turning, as if determined to keep his broad chest to me.
“Donny,” I demand. “Let me see!”
“It’s fine,” he says, still dancing away from me every time I almost manage to get around him.
“It’s not fine! Some of those are fresh. Who did that to you?” Tears flood down my cheeks but he’s still not letting me see.
“I did it, okay,” he finally snaps, yanking back yet again when I try to get around him. His admission certainly stops me cold in my tracks.
My mouth drops open. I don’t understand. “Why?”
He shakes his head, jaw locked so hard it looks like it might break. “I— I don’t—” His head just keeps shaking as he backs away from me.
I rush forward and try to take his hand, but he pulls away.
“Donny. What the fuck?”
“I’m fucked up, okay?” he finally barks out. Then lets out a caustic laugh that sounds more like an explosion of pent-up breath, flinging out a hand towards the house. “If that wasn’t more than apparent. Your da used to whip me back in the day and now I fucking do it to myself.”
He turns away from me and bends over his knees, finally exposing his horrific back to me again, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “Fuuuuuck!”
“Donny,” I whisper, tears still clogging my throat. I reach out a tentative hand towards him. One of the recent whip wounds split open when he bent over. I don’t know how he slept on his back last night. “C’mon. Let’s go inside and I can help bandage these—”
But he just stands back up in a quick motion, hands on his head and features twisted like he’s hearing some sort of siren that’s too loud. Then he sprints past me and dives in the deep end.
“Donny!” I shout after he disappears under the water. I rush to the edge. He’s there at the bottom of the deep end, just sitting, and not coming back up. Immediately, I dive in after him.
All I want is to grab his arm and drag him to the surface. But whatever frame of mind he’s in, I know it will only get me resistance. So I just swim down until I’m in front of him and do my best to sit on the bottom of the pool with him.