He helps me gingerly get to my feet and holds onto my waist as I try to look around. Everything in my head feels dizzying. With each motion, my vision swims as wildly as the river.

Rory stops his argument with Kaleb for just long enough to shout at me.

“Get out of your clothes!”

“What?” I ask, even more confused than a moment earlier. But Rory has already diverted his attention back to his heated argument with Kaleb.

“He’s right,” Marlowe says to me, while the other two bicker a couple paces away about something I only half understand. “Your clothes are cold and wet, and it’s freezing out here. You need to take them off.”

“But you’re not cold,” I say. My voice feels as though I am trying to speak and swallow honey at the same time. “All you have on is a pair of wet swim trunks.”

“That’s because he’s a hypocrite too,” Kaleb calls over his shoulder at us.

“What are you talking about?” Marlowe hollers back at him. “Rory is right, she needs to get the wet clothes off or she’s going to catch pneumonia.”

“Oh please, don’t even try siding with Rory,” Kaleb says, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not siding with anyone. I’m just using common sense,” Marlowe says. “Maybe if you’d used common sense from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kaleb is getting visibly agitated now.

“She shouldn’t have come here,” Rory interjects. “It’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t have invited her.”

When I hear Rory’s voice this time, something suddenly registers. Something that just happened, and I hadn’t even thought twice about it.

He kissed me.

There, at the end, it wasn’t about saving me anymore. His lips lingered on mine a moment too long. He must have known what he was doing.

I … I don’t know how I should feel about it. I’ve just nearly drowned to death and now I’m standing among three, albeit incredibly attractive, boys who are fighting with each other and trying to get me to take my clothes off.

I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be here. I can’t see where Jess and the others are, but they must be freaking out. For all I know, the sheriff’s department is already gearing up to drag the river.

I need to go home. That much is certain. Once it’s in my mind, the thought won’t go away. Just like the spinning water, it turns over and over in my head.

I need to go home. I need to go home.

I need to go home, now.

When Marlowe walks over to join in the shouting match with his brothers, I quietly slip into the thicket of trees and try to calm my head enough to figure out the way back. I can hear the echoing sound of the boys still arguing behind me as I pick a direction and start walking. It’s difficult to navigate the woods on a good day, and today has not been good.

As I trudge through the forest shivering from my wet clothes meeting with the cold air, I hear the boys’ conversation stop. Everything becomes eerily quiet until the only thing I can hear is my own harsh breathing.

“Jesus!” I scream, catching sight of Kaleb walking right up behind me. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” I answer.

“Let us take you home,” he says.

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“You’re not good, you’ve just been through something traumatic,” Rory says from my other side, his figure practically melting from the trees.

“Which part?” I ask sarcastically. “Nearly drowning, or waking up to you kissing me?”

Tags: Eden Beck Wolfish Paranormal
Source: readsnovelonline.net