Off-Ice Collision: Chapter 27

Fucking Maverick… he told me his sister wouldn’t be here, yet here she was sitting all close and shit with Hudson. The moment I saw them, my blood began to boil. And then Hudson started drunkenly running his mouth like the idiot he is.

I can’t stop it from happening. Cocking back my fist, I drive it directly into his face, splitting open his lip. His head whips to the side, and London lets out an audible gasp. Hudson turns his head back to face me, wiping the blood from his mouth before a smirk pulls on the corner of his lips.

And then he rushes me.

My knee isn’t stable enough to support my weight and his, and I instantly fall onto the floor of the deck with him on top of me. Hudson cocks back his arm and delivers a blow to my jaw. My teeth rattle and I taste blood on my tongue as one of my canine teeth cuts into the flesh of my lip.

“Fucking tough guy over here forgot that he’s practically a cripple.”

Hudson goes to move off of me, but his words give me a burst of strength I didn’t know I had. I flip him over onto his back and now the tables have turned. I’m straddling his waist as I deliver two separate blows to his face, using both of my fists.

“Get off of him, Vaughn!” London yells at me, but I ignore her as all I can see is red. Blood fucking red. “Someone separate them!”

Just as I’m about to hit Hudson again, someone is pulling me away from him and onto my feet. Hudson sits up and smirks at me, shaking his head. “You’re a fucking fool. If you were smart, you would get your shit together and get her back.”

“What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do?” I snap at him.

I turn around, looking for London, but she’s gone. Just like that, she fucking vanished. I hobble over to the side of the deck and see a flash of her blonde hair as she runs across the lawn, heading directly toward the dock. Droplets of rain begin to fall, hitting my face as I glance up to the sky.

My leg throbs along with my face, but I ignore it as I begin to take the stairs down to the yard as quickly as I can. It’s about to storm and I have no idea what London is doing right now, taking off like this.

“London!” I yell out her name. “Wait!”

She doesn’t listen and I catch sight of her blonde hair again as she drops the paddleboard into the water and climbs onto it. She doesn’t bother turning to look in my direction as she begins to make her way out into the lake. By the time I reach the dock, she’s out there farther than I expected. The rain begins to fall harder and it starts to pour.

“Goddammit,” I mutter to myself. I break out into a hobbled jog that looks uncoordinated as I take off over to my dock. Unlocking the door to the shed by our dock, I find the spare Jet Ski key and it isn’t long before I’m taking off across the lake toward this damn crazy girl.

The storm has grown stronger and on the water is the last place we should be right now. Not with the way it’s thundering and lightning. The rain is coming down harder than it was and it’s making my vision blur as I try to see her through the darkness. I finally spot her paddleboard, but it’s out even farther, closer to the center of the lake.

Racing over on my Jet Ski, as I get closer, I notice she’s not on the fucking thing. It’s completely flipped over and her paddle bobs on top of the water. My stomach sinks and my heart pounds erratically in my chest. These conditions are deadly and I don’t know where the fuck she is in the water right now.

I reach the board and just as I’m about to jump into the water, her head pops up through the surface. She begins to cough and attempts to grab onto the board, but it’s too heavy for her to flip over right now with how out of breath she is.

“London!” I yell out her name over the sounds of the storm. “Swim over here, let me help you!”

London now notices me near her and shakes her head as she continues to try and flip the paddleboard over. “Go home, Vaughn. I don’t need you.”

“I beg to fucking differ,” I argue with her. “You’re going to drown out here. Why the hell would you come out in the middle of a storm?”

“Fuck off, Vaughn!” she shouts at me. It’s the complete opposite of the sunshine London I’ve known my entire life. The only person I’ve ever seen her truly get mad at is her brother. Right now, she acts like she wants to rip my head off. Or maybe even drown me in this lake.

“I swear to God, if you don’t swim over here, I will come in and get you.”

“Don’t you dare,” she snaps at me. There’s a fire burning inside her and it isn’t the kind I like to see in her. Instead, it’s like there is a volcano about to erupt inside her. “If I can just get this flipped over, I’ll be fine.”

“Can I at least help you with it?” I ask her, trying to take a different approach to helping her. She’s livid with me right now and I can’t say I blame her. Once again, I fucked things up, but I’m here to try and make it right. She’s being so stubborn and now is not the time to be doing that.

“I told you I don’t need you.”

“Never said you did,” I quip as I try to reach for the board while standing on my Jet Ski. “Just let me help you.”

“If you even touch it, I’m not getting on.”

I stare at her as the rain continues to pound down on us. “You would rather drown out here than accept my help?”

She doesn’t answer me and chooses to ignore me as she continues to work to flip the paddleboard over. By some miracle, she manages to get it right side up and uses all her strength as she pulls herself onto it. She’s on her knees and folds over as she attempts to catch her breath. Her paddle has since floated away, so she’s left with no choice but to use her arms to paddle back to the house.

Which isn’t going to work either.

“Give me the strap to your board and I’ll pull you back to the dock.”

Her gaze slices to mine. The way she’s looking at me feels like a knife to my chest. “Fuck off, Vaughn!”

“You’ll never make it back there, not with a storm like this. Your body is already exhausted. You don’t have the strength to make it back there safely.”

“Stop trying to tell me what to do and what not to do,” she throws the words at me like daggers. “I told you that nothing about me concerns you anymore.”

I shake my head at her. “Everything you do concerns me. Whether either of us wants to admit it or not. We need to talk, but not out here. Back on land, preferably.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, unless you’ve already gotten your shit together.” She pauses for a second, tilting her head to the side. “Which you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have tried to put your fists through Hudson’s face.”

I choose to ignore her remark. She isn’t wrong, but now is not the time nor the place to hash this out. We need to get back onto dry land, somewhere that is safe, before we can have any type of conversation. I glance around, realizing just how far away we’ve drifted from where our houses are. We’re closer to the island now than we were originally.

“Can you just stop being so goddamn stubborn and give me the strap to your board?”

London shakes her head at me as she flops down onto her stomach. “Absolutely not. I can get home just fine on my own, thanks.”

I watch in complete frustration as she begins to use her arms in place of the paddle that she lost. With the way the rain is falling and how dark it is, it’s virtually impossible to see anything. The water has gotten rougher and we’re both bobbing on top of the surface right now. London is pumping her arms but she isn’t covering much ground.

I just need to get her out of this goddamn water before we both get killed by the storm. Turning my Jet Ski around, I watch her as she moves away from me. The water gets more violent and I watch in horror as her paddleboard moves atop it. It does the same as it did before, flipping over completely as she sinks beneath the surface of the dark water.

My heart threatens to break through my rib cage and I move the Jet Ski directly beside her board as I look for her. I look and I fucking look, but I can’t see a goddamn thing. Not with this rain and not with the darkness. She’s back under the water again.

And this time, her head doesn’t reappear…