Good. Let him. Maybe he’ll let us out of this shit hole.
A few minutes later,he comes back with a pair of green goggles in his hand. He gets close to the edge of the pool and crouches down, holding the goggles out to me. As I swim to him, I examine his unstable position, and I can't resist the gag that pops in my head. He’s setting himself up for it, practically begging me to do it!
I swim up to the edge of the pool right in front of him, and I do it all in one smooth motion; I plant my feet on the wall, grab onto his wrist with both hands and kick off, pulling him with me. By the time he realizes what I’m doing, it’s too late. He’s falling in, and I’m already kicking away from him as he crashes into the water. I chuckle as he hits the water, moving out of the way of his flailing limbs, watching him panic for a brief moment before he rights himself and breaks the surface. My laughter grows witnessing it all.
He sputters, clearing hair and water from his face, and I only laugh harder at the wide-eye outrage on his face.
“Why’d you get so scared?” I taunt him, still giggling as he turns red. “What? Did you think I was gonna try to drown you? I told you I’m not a murderer.”
He doesn’t say anything. He stares at me with that dumb bug-eyed pissed-off expression, hunched forward, his entire body tense. His fingers are flexed at his sides like he’s trying to hold his anger back, but it doesn't look like he’s winning that battle. I let out a high-pitched laugh before I turn around to swim away from him, but he catches me by my shoulder and spins me around to face him.
“What the hell is wrong with you!?” He yells in my face. “Why do you do shit like this! I’ve been trying all week to understand you and make you happy, but it’s impossible when nothing you do makes any fucking sense!”
For a moment, I’m just a little shocked at this explosion from him. I’ve pissed him off before, but now I’ve really done it. I’ve succeeded at infuriating him, and the satisfaction from it couldn’t be sweeter.
But I bounce back quickly and meet him with my own indignation.
“Nobody’s making you try to figure me out,Kameron.Stop trying!” I shout louder than he did, taking a step closer to him. “You’re choosing to keep me here! You’re bringing this on yourself! All you had to do was let Megan go when she asked, and you never would have had to deal with this.”
“I know how to deal with Megan!” he shouts. “But you… you’re insane! It’s impossible to know what’s going on in that fucked up, twisted little head of yours!”
As he seethes in my face, breathing so hard his chest noticeably rises and falls, I smirk up at him, crossing my arms.
“Well, if you don’t like it, then that’s shitty for you. I’m part of Megan, and this is what you get. You locked me in that room,” I point out, poking him in his chest. “You chose to deal with me. You thought you could just pick your favorite? Well, you can’t! We’re a packaged deal, and if you can’t handle what’s inside, you can walk. The Fuck. Away!”
“How am I supposed to figure you out when every hint you give me is a riddle?” he growls. “All you offer up is mixed signals just to run me in circles. I don’t know what’s right or wrong with you, and everything about you confuses the shit out of me.”
“None of that sounds like my fucking problem,” I snicker, enjoying everything about his breakdown.
He groans, covering his face with his hands and throwing his head back to the sky. “Fuck…You’ve made everything much more complicated than it should have been,” he mutters. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
But he’s not really talking to me. It sounds like he’s talking to himself out loud, confusing the shit out of me. Then he sets his wild gaze back on me as he stands there huffing, his anger still distorting his face.
I’m about to walk away and leave him in this jumbled-up state when out of fucking nowhere, he shoots forward, and his lips collide with mine.
I put my hand up to his chest to push him away, but this time, my own voice in my head stops me; this is where I want him.
The moment his lips meet mine, Megan cries out. For a moment, I want to gloat because now she knows what it feels like. But that’s quickly overshadowed by the guilt that unexpectedly takes over.
I didn’t think I’d feel like this.
She fades away, but I don’t stop because she’s gone or because I feel a little bit bad. I need to pull him into much deeper waters. I meet his frustrated energy with my own, and I take over.
I don’t think he’s expecting me to pull him to me and wrap my arms around his neck to keep him down on my level. I devour his mouth, sucking on his tongue that taste like pool water and spearmint. He tries to regain control, but I don’t let him have it; I’ll never let him have it. I wrap one of my legs around his waist, then the other, and he holds me up with his hands on the backs of my thighs.
But just as quick as he picks me up, he puts me back down and pushes me away from him. He’s not looking at me; his breathing comes out labored as he stares down at the water. I follow his gaze to the bulge in his swim trunks, and when I glance back up, his wildly perplexed eyes are already on me.
Without another word, he turns around, climbs out of the pool, and goes back into the house, leaving me here stunned. My mind races as I try to figure out how we went from yelling tothatso quickly.
You’ve got him where we want him,Veronica says.
For now, I push my guilt down because that can’t get in the way of this. As Veronica’s words sink in, I try to latch on to the fact that I got him here somehow, but the way Megan cried out, I can’t get out of my head. I recognize that pain, the anguish, the sadness, and the disappointment. I didn’t think there was anything Megan and I could ever relate to, but now I see that having a broken heart is what we both have in common.