Page 79 of Crush
Carefully, I do.
Headmistress Dupris washes into my vision, her sharp features and dark suit standing out from the white walls behind her as she leans forward, folding her arms. “Are you aware of what occurred this evening?”
“I…” I clear my throat, frowning. “I was at a meet. Swimming. Then…”
“You almost drowned, dear.”
Swallowing, I glance down at my hands, folded across my stomach, with an IV line running out of my right forearm. “I don’t remember.”
“What did you take before the race?”
My eyes slide to hers. “What?”
Dupris’s brows come down in concern, yet a prickle of unease spreads across the nape of my neck.
“I didn’t have anything but water and a few bites of an apple.”
Dupris’s gaze turns shrewd. “Your bloodwork says otherwise.”
Alarm shoots into my chest, and I try to sit up. “Huh?”
“Ember!” The door to my hospital room flies open, and Malcolm barrels through. “Thank God you’re awake.”
His motion prods a memory forward, two shadowy figures talking outside the frosted glass window of the door.
“I-I’m fine.” But am I? What in the hell happened?
Malcolm comes up to my other side, holding my hand and squeezing. His eyes shine as they look down on me, the muscles lining his jaw tense and trembling.
It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him. I return the squeeze from shock alone.
“If it weren’t for Thorne Briar, you wouldn’t be speaking to us right now,” Dupris says, drawing my attention again.
I don’t recall feeling Thorne’s arms around me, and I always sense his presence. There’s no memory of him carrying me out of the pool, but my mind goes there anyway—him pulling me against his chest, water sluicing off his body as he walks up the pool’s steps, lays me on the deck, and gives me mouth-to-mouth.
Stupidly impossible because the pool doesn’t have stairs, and Thorne and I have never kissed before. Not once have I tasted his mouth.
Good lord, what kind of pain meds am I on? Dupris said they didn’t give me any, but I’m so hazy, my horizon wavering so dangerously that I have to be on something.
Malcolm’s grip becomes painful. “We don’t have to talk about him at the moment. She’s only just woken up. How are you feeling? Any aches? Pains?”
“Everywhere,” I say honestly. “But … I don’t understand why. Did I pass out? Was my blood sugar low or something?”
Malcolm and Dupris exchange a look.
I feel my chest, panicking over whether I was cracked open during some kind of emergency surgery. “Did I have a heart attack?”
“No. No, sweetie. It’s okay.” Malcolm combs back my hair. “Nothing like that.”
“Then what happened? Why am I in a hospital?”
“Why don’t you rest, and we can discuss this later,” Malcolm says.
“No. I want to know.”
“She deserves the truth, Malcolm.”
Malcolm glares across the bed.