Breathe Read Free

next turn in the pool.
    “He’s amazing,” I had whispered to Coach Scott later while Garrett toweled off.
    Coach Scott had followed my gaze to his son. “Garrett? No. He’s average at best. What you have, Abby—that’s real talent. Natural. Raw. That can be shaped into something great.”
    He’d stalked off to watch the next race, passing his son without so much as a congratulatory nod in his direction. If his father’s indifference had bothered Garrett, he hadn’t shown it. But I’d seen something in Garrett—a calm, almost laid-back confidence—that Coach Scott apparently did not. And I knew, unequivocally, that he was far too good for me.
    Now I watched his hand glide across Zoe’s forearm and thought of how he would never dream of pulling her into the water the way he would do with me. She’d totally freak out about him messing up her makeup or her long, curly Taylor Swift hair. Instead, he pressed his palms against the ledge and hoisted himself from the pool, taking great care to avoid splashing her.
    I shook my head and scanned the area for my gym bag. I needed a change of clothes and a towel. No way in hell I was gonna let Zoe Winchester observe my lackluster body in a swimsuit.
    Zoe had given up swimming after that first summer when Coach Scott had made it clear she’d never be good enough to make the high school team. Because of that, she was still built like a girl—thin and soft with perfect, perky C-cups—while I was built like an athlete. Lack of body fat (aka breasts) made me popular in the pool, but not so much at school dances.
    After a few minutes of futile searching, I remembered I’d dropped my bag in the hallway when I’d tried to beat Garrett to the pool. I was headed that way when a group of football players filed in led by Nolan Carter. That was the biggest problem with the pool: it was housed in the same building as the coaches’ offices and the field locker rooms, so every morning during football season I had to deal with Nolan Carter and his cronies.
    “Looking for this?” Nolan asked me. There was a teasing lilt in his voice, a hard edge to his jaw and he dangled my black and turquoise gym bag on one finger in the air ahead of him. The urge to wipe the smug smile from his face and kick him in the knee surged through me. Popular or not, everything about Nolan Carter repulsed me—from his flat, round face to his oversized, sausage fingers. I wondered briefly if anyone had ever told him he looked like a Pug. Just less attractive.
    I wrapped an arm around my stomach—an automatic protective gesture I’d picked up somewhere along the way—and reached out with the other to retrieve my bag. Nolan pulled it up and out of my reach with a snap of his wrist. The asshole. “Not so fast,” he sang. “What do I get in return?”
    The bag swung over my head like a pendulum but I didn’t look up at it. I kept my eyes locked on Nolan, refusing to turn away. “My gratitude,” I replied. The words were bitter on my tongue, like licking an ashtray or the underside of a mule. The last thing on Earth I wanted to give Nolan was a thank you. A knee to the groin maybe. But a thank you? Not so much.
    Swallowing hard, I waited while he considered his options. There weren’t many: he could give me back my bag or he could continue to taunt me. We hadn’t always been at odds—Nolan and I. I hoped that he’d remember that. And I suspected that if his friends weren’t watching, I’d’ve gotten off easier.
    A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he lowered the bag to allow me to take it. I snatched it, intuitively knowing that couldn’t be the end of it, and turned on my heels. Once I’d put some distance between us, I leaned over and placed the bag on the ground, unzipped it and searched for my towel.
    I felt his hands upon my hips first.
    Snapping upright, I spun around and took a step back, the metal lockers banging against my spine. He was too close. Too large. I clutched my towel