Dead Ringer

24

Breathe.

With a jerk, something wrapped around my waist and pulled. Water whirled past my ears as I rushed through it, and then I broke the surface in a coughing fit of chaos.

"Jesus Christ, Maisye!"

I flailed against the hands that dug into my hips, splashing wildly and accidentally whacking Ciar's bare chest. I froze, slowly dragging my gaze up to his eyes and trying to look as threatening as possible while gasping for air.

"Put me down."

His grip tightened. "Are you gonna try and drown yourself again?"

"That's not what I was doing." It might have looked like it, but I wasn't trying.

He didn't believe me. That much was obvious from the thin press of his lips. I had to avert my eyes from his icy blue ones, but it didn't help that my gaze landed on his muscled shoulders, which glistened with beads of lake water.

"Ciar, let me go," I whispered.

"Not until you tell me what just happened."

I swallowed. "I...I heard her."

I closed my eyes, waiting for the moment he realized I was clinically insane. I had the bills to prove it. All he had to do was ask.

"Tilda," I said. "Tillie. I heard her voice."

He finally let me go, almost like I'd burnt him through the cool water. "What is this, some Twilight shit? Risking your life so you'll hear a voice telling you not to do it?"

I hugged myself as he turned his back and waded a few paces away, water rippling around his ribs.

"She wasn't telling me not to do it," I mumbled. "She was telling me to breathe."

"Yeah, well do you think maybe she meant air?"

With a tremendous slosh, he heaved himself back up onto the dock. His underwear clung to his legs, a waterfall cascading off them back into the lake as he let the excess drip off. In the faint light, I thought I caught the line of a scar running from the small of his back to just above his hip. He shook out his hair, spraying droplets everywhere, and then settled on the edge of the dock with his feet submerged.

"It was just something she used to say." The second he'd pulled himself out, the water had become less of a caress against my skin and more of a suffocating squeeze. I grabbed for the dock too, dragging myself up awkwardly and rapidly staining the wood in the process.

Goosebumps zinged up my arms as the combination of lukewarm air and the chill of evaporating water sent shivers down my spine. I knew Ciar noticed, but he didn't offer anything. Not that he had anything, sitting there just as exposed as I was.

We sat for what felt like hours. The night was humid, but a stiff breeze whistled through the trees bordering the lake, whisking away the moisture from our skin and our undergarments. I waited for him to say something, anything—even a snide comment about my apparent death wish.

Nothing.

I glanced over at him, his foot propped on the dock and his arm laid casually across his knee as he stared across the water. The moonlight bounced off the lake behind him, illuminating his profile from the other side.

I reached for the camera beside me, raised it to my eye, and framed him up.

The snap of the shutter was quiet, barely a whisper, but his body jerked. "Did you just—?"

I nodded. "Mhm—hey!"

I yanked the camera back as he grabbed for it, and he half-collapsed, draped over my lap. When he didn't move, a tiny thrill rushed up my spine as I wondered whether he'd been aiming for the camera at all.

We stared at each other for several long seconds, his neck craned awkwardly to look up at me, and then we both realized how the air had shifted. He sat up, just a little too slowly, as I forced a snort of laughter and chided myself.

What are you thinking? You're here for Donovan. And Ciar hates you.

"Haven't had my damn picture taken since my mugshot," he grumbled, looking back out at the lake.

"Street racing?" I blurted.

His head snapped around so fast I practically heard the crick in his neck. "How'd you know that?"

I swallowed, hoping he couldn't hear my racing heart. Whatever had passed between us a moment ago had vanished like a spirit into the ether. Even if I hadn't known his family's dangerous reputation, I would have inferred it now from the intensity of his narrowed eyes and the tension coiled into his muscles.

"Lucky guess," I whispered.

I waited far too long for him to look away. He searched for something in my face—a hint of a fib? A twitch that might betray me?

But he finally turned away again and let out one tiny puff of something like humor. "Rumors never die, do they?"

"You're wrong anyway," I mumbled, and he looked over at me with raised eyebrows. "I took your picture the night of the accident."

His sharp laugh made me jump. "I don't think that counts, Flash. I'm still blind."

I rolled my eyes, flushing, and we fell back into silence. I counted the seconds, and when I passed sixty I couldn't take it any longer. I pushed myself to my feet and reached for my clothes.

Tilda's clothes.

It suddenly felt wrong to slip into them, but it also felt wrong to keep sitting half-naked beside Donovan's brother.

And it felt more wrong that his eyes burned into my shoulder blades, following my motions as I dressed.

"She's not worth it, you know," he said. "Whatever just happened here. She's not worth killing yourself over."

I stopped, feeling the sting of his words like a punch to the face. "She was my sister."

He stood too, uncurling himself from the dock and stepping into his jeans. The sound of his zipper split the night, much louder than it should have been.

"Did you know she got arrested once?" Ciar said, turning back around to face me as his shirt settled over his shoulders.

I folded my arms, covering the bare patch of my stomach like the cool night was the reason for my chills. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because she wasn't perfect." He bit his lip, but he couldn't keep it from curling into a hopeless, humorless smile. "You love her, I get that. It doesn't mean you should let her destroy you."

He looked away the second he said it, cutting me off from whatever flickered in his eyes, but I still felt it. The darkness around us pressed closer, even though the moon still shone above, and suddenly it felt more like winter than the start of summer.

If he noticed too, he didn't say it. His shoulder bumped me as he brushed past, his head down and his hands deep in his pockets, and I could only watch as he started to walk back the way we'd come without another word.