Goddammit.
My knees shook as I made my way back up front, sloshing through the icy water and picking up Winter who was chest deep and shivering.
I breathed over her lips, trying to warm her any way I could. “There’s like six hundred pounds of pressure on the windows and doors, right now,” I told her. “Once the pressure equalizes, we’ll open the doors.”
“When…when…” she stammered, shaking. “When does it equalize?”
The water chilled my bones. “When the car…fills up…with water.”
“If it fills up with water, we can’t breathe!” Will yelled, climbing out of his seat, his clothes and hair drenched. “We don’t want it to fill up!”
He stumbled, catching himself as his head turned right and left, manically searching for a way out.
“Damon, man…” He stood, almost hyperventilating as the water rose to our chests, slowly consuming the car. “We gotta…we gotta get out of here. I can’t… I can’t…”
He started feeling the roof and searching, looking everywhere for anything he could find, gasping in short breaths.
I turned from Winter, gripping his face in my hands. “Just breathe,” I told him. “Trust me. We’re getting out of here.”
He met my eyes, starting to break down as his chin trembled. “Please, don’t…” he begged. “Please don’t leave me.”
I clenched my jaw, shame washing me all over again at what I let Trevor do to him. How I left him.
How I would never have lived with it if anything had happened to him that night.
I held the back of his neck and planted my forehead to his. “I never did,” I promised.
I turned to Winter, took her hand and wrapped it around my belt.
“You don’t let go,” I ordered.
She shook, so scared, and her eyes watering. The car whined with the weight of the water filling it as we sank into the depths of the river, and I held her up, so she could breathe as long as possible.
“Tell me you love me,” she whispered. “Sa
y it.”
I looked down at her, fucking done with this rotten luck. We weren’t dying. I wasn’t telling her that shit like I wouldn’t have a chance to tell her later. She could fucking wait.
I held her close, nose to nose. “Someday,” I taunted, forcing a smile into my voice.
She let out a little laugh through her sob, and I wanted so badly to have her back on that motorcycle like the night I promised to show her red someday. Even when I was lying to her like I was that night, it was better than this.
She gripped my belt, my heart pounded in my chest, and Will and Winter gasped around me as we sucked up the last of the air in the car. I pushed us up, farther and farther, getting the last breaths we could as Will caught a mouthful of water, coughed and sputtered, and then we were under, and he was thrashing.
Shit.
I didn’t waste time. With Winter holding my belt, I moved to one of the rear doors and pushed, but it still wasn’t budging. I fondled the lock, making sure it wasn’t secured, and threw my weight into the door as best I could.
Winter held on, calm, but I could hear Will fighting in the water, because he didn’t get a lungful before we went under, and I didn’t know why the fucking door wasn’t opening. It was supposed to open.
Come on.
My hands shook so badly, and I was losing it. They were going to fucking die, because of me. Again.
Please.
I pushed at the door.