Breathless Read Free Page A

feels.” I yawn. I’m getting sleepy because of the drugs they’re giving me.
    “Should I leave?” she asks. Her anger’s gone and she looks worried.
    “Your call. Can’t be much fun to hear me snore.”
    “I’ll wait.” She settles in a nearby chair and doesn’t let go of my hand.
    It’s late at night when Cooper comes to my room. “Hey, man.”
    I’m awake but groggy. “Don’t let the nurses catch you. It’s after visiting hours.”
    He taps his closed fist against mine. “I didn’t want to run into the paparazzi.”
    I grunt. “Dad’s running interference. Just a few reporters checking in so far.”
    “Yeah, I saw it on the news. Big story, along with Mrs. Ford’s dog tearing up the flower beds at City Hall.”
    I grin. Alexander’s a small place, and because so many alumni are still around, high school athletics has a big following. Football is king, but my honors in diving have given me supporters. “Not the way I want to be remembered,” I say. “For a failed dive.”
    “What’s that?” Cooper points to a machine by my bed.
    “Happy juice.” I hold up a button linked by a tube to the machine that runs into a vein on my arm. “A morphine drip. I push this, and I’m happy.”
    Cooper nods. “Don’t go liking it too much.”
    “Never happen. The stuff makes me loopy. It clogs my brain.”
    Cooper doesn’t crack a smile or give a comeback.
    I take a deep breath. “Thanks for saving my butt.”
    “Would have ruined the picnic if you drowned.”
    Better, I think, more like the old Coop. He’s always got my back.
    “You get the boat to the house?”
    “Yeah. Hosed it down and cleaned it up.”
    “I freaked all of you out, didn’t I?”
    “Did you freak yourself out?”
    “A little,” I admit. “When I couldn’t swim, couldn’t kick … no control. I hate not having control.”
    “That’s why we need the buddy system,” he says. “Don’t do that again.”
    I grin up at him. “You sound like Emily.”
    He looks away when I mention my sister. “They going to let you out of here anytime soon?”
    “Don’t know. I have an MRI tomorrow. A kind of whole-body X-ray,” I explain.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow night. You can tell me if they discover a functioning brain.”
    I don’t want him to leave. “Until then,” I say, and flick the button on my morphine drip. “Just me and my happy juice.”
    He grins. He’s the best guy on earth and majorly underappreciated by most people at school. He acts tough and scary, but because of where he lives, it pays to have creeps afraid of you. I’ve always kept his secrets, especially about his mom.
    “Thanks, Coop.” The morphine spreads through me, but he’s already gone.
    *   *   *
    Darla comes to visit twice a day before she hits her summer job at the theater concession stand where she works five nights a week. “The money’s shabby, but it gets me out of the house,” she told me when she first took the job. “Plus, I have another mouth to feed.”
    “Your car.” Her grandmother left her some money when she died, and Darla’s mom helped her buy an old car. She works for gas money.
    “And clothes,” Darla added. “I need new clothes.”
    “What’s wrong with wearing your bikini?”
    She makes a face. “Goose bumps.”
    She’s my babe. Plus, she’s beautiful and smells like flowers and gives me a high that beats morphine by a mile. Most guys see her rack first, which I’ll admit is impressive. I see her eyes. Big, blue, full of feeling. They look inside me and make me want to be better than I am.
    “Things all right at home?” I understand about her wanting to be away from her house. Her old man’s a real piece of work. I think he hits her; I know he hits her mom.
    Her pretty smile droops a little. “I just stay out of his way.”
    Another reason to be out of this hospital. The two of us should be hanging at the lake or at my house to keep her away from the guy. “Soon as I’m out of here—”
    She