Left Drowning (Left Drowning #1)

by Jessica Park

I see perfection in things that are likely considered imperfections by others.

“What’s a little risk now and then, huh?”

“It makes you feel alive. It brings you crashing into the here and now. Keeps you alert and grounded.”

This near stranger is inexplicably giving me more safety and security than anyone else ever has.

Death and grief make everyone around you vanish because death and grief are intolerable.

I wish he wouldn’t look at me, and I also wish that he’d never stop.

Some people describe certain physical connections as being like electricity. Sparks flying. When Chris and I touch, it’s different. I think of the feel of water. The way it is when you wade into the ocean and a small wave cascades against you, swirling sand over you and awakening every pore.

Slow motion, I think decidedly. He can make things happen in slow motion.

He puts his hand on my cheek. “You were left drowning.” I nod again. “And you’re struggling to breathe.” I am. It’s a constant struggle to stay near the surface. I have just enough air to stop me from totally going under, but not enough to thrive.

The atmosphere in the room is loaded; loaded with my emotion and my fervent, raw, inescapable lust for this person.

study him. And more than that, I see both our kinship and our differences: how we both have pasts full of pain, and how he emanates survival in the way that I want to. Right now, I embody failure and surrender, but I see in him the possibility of what I could have. So his touch is more than just physical touch.

He tastes like eternity, and healing, and completion.

No one else could ever kiss me like this, of that I am positive. I could breathe him in forever. I could fall in love forever.

I have spent four years without touch and affection and without wanting any, but now there is Christopher Shepherd, the boy who has changed all the rules.

It’s smart to end relationships that are poisonous. It’s a good thing. Sometimes you have to cut people out of your life to make things better. So you can move forward.

I pray that Neon Jesus will fly across the room and knock her unconscious.

Chris, Sabin, Eric, and Estelle have rescued me, and I can’t fathom how I can ever begin to repay them.

The idea of Chris as my “boyfriend” still sounds totally ludicrous. Boyfriends are about dates, and silly anniversaries, and crap like that. I can’t help feeling like becoming boyfriend and girlfriend would trivialize whatever is between us. If Chris and I ever do really get together, it’s not going to be trivial. It’s going to be the love affair to end all love affairs.

And then I realize what has happened between us tonight. We just fell in love. I am not confusing sex with love. Unfortunately. Because this is not what I want, and it’s not what he wants. Not yet. We’re not ready. This love will wait. It has to.

So that you always have what you need.

I’m so stupid. I guess that it was really just sex between us. The friendship part, I know that was real, but the other stuff? I must have been the only one who felt it. There is no deeper connection between us, no larger reason for our scars, no epic romance that has yet to unfold.

“Being with you let me feel, feel everything, and I needed that. I remembered better with you, I healed better with you, and you made… you made everything real.”

I will always be in love with you, even though you’ll never love me back. You have been my sanctuary this year. You saved me. Do you know that? You saved me. And I wish that you would let me save you.”

“You are the great love of my life that I’m never going to have.”

me to look at that way, but…” She taps her stiletto heel. “There’s something about you. I will never for a second forget that I had the best fucking roommate anyone could ever ask for.”

He is a fucking German shepherd,

“What are we doing? What are you doing?” “Loving you,” he says simply. “If you’ll let me.” “Always. God, always.”

“When we are together, the world gets sharper, the past becomes unobstructed, and… the floodgates open.

“Either way, I won’t leave. We ran away from each other before. Mostly, you ran. I’m ready for this now. Are you?” “To move ahead with you? Yes.” He swipes his tongue over my mouth and whispers in my ear. “To take you to bed forever? Yes. To make you come in my mouth, to feel you writhe under me while I slide my cock inside you? Yes. To listen to you scream and beg me to stop because I can’t get enough of you? Absolutely. Am I ready to focus on giving you levels of pleasure that you’ve never even dreamed about? Yeah. I’m ready.” I laugh. “That’s not what I meant.” “I know what you meant.” He holds me against him. “I’m here.”

I can recognize trauma in another person because I have experienced my own, and to see it in Chris is slowly torturing me. I feel it brewing furiously beneath the surface of our love: the looming promise of an inevitable, destructive storm. I hope he will reach for me then. I am going to fight with everything that I am to save him and to save us, but I won’t be able to do it alone.

She is the past, and the present, and the future. She is through, and over, and under.

That’s how a storm with such power happens; you sense the build and darkness, you prepare as best you can, you do what you can to get through it even as it devastates your entire world. Whatever you do, however much you brace yourself, you will still be caught up in forces that you cannot control. So the question is how to navigate through the chaos. It takes thought, and trust, and serenity.

“Don’t you see, Chris? You and I are supposed to be together. Not because we have to be together. There is always a choice. This is not an obligation or a duty. But our lives are entwined, they have been, for good reasons. I’ve known that from the moment I set eyes on you.