Lahat ng Kabanata ng Drowning in You: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

Two other swimmers stepped forward to help me up, but I didn't want them to touch me. I kept my eyes locked on Callum as they led me away. He stayed where he was, standing frozen on the deck, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. As I was carried toward the locker rooms, I looked back one last time. Callum was still watching me, his face pale and his expression haunted. He looked like a man who had just seen a ghost, or perhaps, a man who realized he was still haunted by one . I spent the next hour in a hot shower, the steam filling the room and warming my frozen bones. I leaned my forehead against the tiles, listening to the roar of the water. My chest still felt tight, a lingering remnant of the flinch, but the physical sensation of Callum's arms around me remained etched into my skin. He had saved me. Again. The thought made me feel sick and grateful all at once. I hated that he had seen me at my weakest. I hated that he knew exactly how close I had come to disappearing

"You're so pathetic," I spat. My voice dropped to a low growl. "You spend your whole life being the nice guy, the helper. But we both know the truth. You're just a coward who is too scared to actually live. You're terrified of the water, you're terrified of who you are, and you're terrified of me." Leo stepped closer, his chest nearly touching mine. He was shaking, but it wasn't from fear. It was rage. "I am not a coward. I survived you, Callum. I survived your father and I survived your silence. That makes me stronger than you will ever be." I felt something snap. The anger and the guilt and the desperate longing I had been suppressing for years collided. I grabbed his collar and shoved him back against the desk. His textbooks slid off the surface and hit the floor with a heavy crash. "Stronger?" I yelled. "You're a shell of a person! You fold yourself into a tiny little box so no one can see how empty you are inside!" Leo didn't shrink away. He reached up and grabbed my wris

LEO'S POV Rain hammered against the window in a relentless, rhythmic assault. I sat at my desk, staring at a paragraph about Keats that had ceased to make sense three hours ago. My room felt smaller than usual. It felt like the air was being sucked out of it by the sheer force of Callum's presence. He was sprawled on his bed, tossing a tennis ball against the wall. Every single sound he made felt like a needle pricking my skin. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose with one finger, my movements stiff. I could feel him watching me. I didn't have to look to know he was scanning my back, probably judging the way I hunched my shoulders to hide from him. "You're vibrating, Hayes," Callum said. His voice was a low drawl that grated on my nerves. "If you're that wound up, maybe you should go for a run. Or find a nice pillow to cry into." I didn't turn around. I gripped my blue pen so hard the plastic groaned. "I'm studying, Callum. Some of us actually have to earn our degrees

"We're alive...." he whispered. His voice was devoid of its usual mockery. It sounded small. I turned to look at him. In the dim light of the storm, he didn't look like the arrogant prick who had spent the last week tormenting me.He looked like a boy who had just realized that all his money and status meant nothing in the face of a tide that didn't care who his father was. I reached out and touched his arm, my fingers brushing against his wet skin. "We're alive." Callum looked down at my hand and then up at my eyes. The tension that had been building between us, the hatred, the longing, the unresolved pain, suddenly converged into a single point of intensity. He didn't hesitate. He reached out and grabbed my face with both hands, his palms cold from the rain but his touch desperate. He crashed his lips against mine. It wasn't a soft kiss. It was a collision of desperation and terror. It tasted of salt and rain and the metallic tang of fear. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pul

CALLUM POV Cold air bit into my skin as I watched Leo move among the survivors. He was a magnet for the broken and terrifiedn.He spent his morning giving away his only dry pair of socks to a sobbing freshman and splitting his meager portion of crackers with a girl who had been shaking for hours. I leaned against a rusted vent pipe and chewed the inside of my cheek, my jaw tight. I hated it. I hated the way he made kindness look effortless, and I hated the way it made me feel like a monster just for existing in the same zip code as him. I cracked my knuckles one by one. My gaze stayed locked on him. He was hunched over, his broad shoulders curving inward as he listened to some guy ramble about his lost luggage. Leo looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes and his taped up glasses were smudged with salt and grime. He looked fragile, yet he was the only thing keeping half these people from spiraling into complete hysteria. "He's a real saint, isn't he?" I didn't