Pretend We're Over

by Ella Miles

  I know we have to get to the water. That’s our best chance of avoiding more stings, but we are at the top of the waterfall. We have to climb down. We have to—

  “Jump!” I shout at him.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “We have to.”

  “We could break our necks! Why are we jumping?” He slaps his legs as more bees sting him.

  He’s right. I shouldn’t risk his life to save mine. Think!

  The bees are getting closer. Stay calm; they won’t hurt you if you stay calm.

  Sebastian looks at me closer. “Millie, are you allergic?”

  I don’t answer. We are miles away from civilization. It doesn’t matter if I’m allergic or not. What matters is that I make sure Sebastian is okay. He may not be allergic, but the number of stings he’s getting can’t be good for anyone.

  “Millie?” he asks again.

  “Let’s climb down around the side and get you into the water where the bees can’t get to you.”

  “Jesus.” His eyes peer over the edge, and then before either of us can think about what he’s doing, he’s grabbed me by the hand, and we are both jumping over the waterfall and into the pool of water below.

  I scream as our bodies fall, having no idea how deep the water is. It’s thrilling and dangerous, and exactly who Sebastian thinks I am.

  We hit the water, our hands coming apart on contact. My legs hit the floor too fast, but not enough to break them or seriously hurt me. Sebastian is taller and heavier, so he hit the bottom before I did.

  We both break the surface, breathing fast.

  “There is never a dull moment with you, is there, Millie?”

  I laugh nervously. “Nope, my life is just one crazy adventure after the next.”

  He laughs with me, finding my hand in the water and pulling me to him.

  “Are you okay? Your foot—“

  “Is fine,” he finishes, taking my face in his hands as we continue to pant. Apparently, neither of us are ever able to catch our breaths around each other.

  “Why did you stay when a single sting from one of those bees could have killed you?”

  “You were in danger. I couldn’t leave you.”

  “You should have run.”

  “You shouldn’t have jumped.”

  I let my hands roam his face and neck where I see a few red bumps, but the bees seem to have vanished like I thought they would when we jumped into the water.

  Sebastian thinks I’m wild—I am, but not in love. In love, I don’t take risks, not anymore. I don’t risk anything with a man. But for a second, I risk it all.

  I grab Sebastian’s neck and pull us together as our mouths connect. Open, raw, rough—we devour each other. Our first kiss was perfect, sweet, magical. This kiss is hungry, carnal, and intimate.

  The water pushes us closer together, smashing us together until I can feel all of him. Everywhere I touch is hard—his chest, his arms, his cock. All of him is muscle and man. All of him begs me to touch him.

  I forget about the consequences. I just want him. This is pretend; this isn’t real. But for a moment we had a very real moment. We risked our health for the other, and that brought us closer together. It turned the tables and made me want him.

  I shouldn’t. This is when I should demand he be a jerk. When I should turn wild and crazy. This is when we should ensure that we are our worst because we are vulnerable. Our hearts are open after the beautiful moment we just had. And hearts are designed to fall in love and then break.

  I vowed I wouldn’t let that happen again.

  And yet, here I am kissing Sebastian like he’s my real husband. My body is sliding up and down his, humping him in the water, begging him to remove our clothes and take me right here, right now.

  “Sebastian,” I breathe through the sloppy kiss, one that fires through my body and practically makes me come. Jesus, it’s been too long. That’s all this is. Too long since I’ve been fucked. I don’t feel anything else.

  “Mmm,” he moans back, unable to detangle his mouth from mine. His hands slide up my body under my shirt, moving so close to my breasts.

  Yes.

  Yes!

  Just a little closer…

  When suddenly, he’s gone. He’s no longer kissing me. He’s no longer feeling me. No longer seconds away from taking me in this pool of water.

  I open my eyes.

  “Why did you stop?” I ask, afraid he’s come to his senses and no longer finds me attractive.

  “I’m not going to fuck you for the first time either of us remembers in this freezing pool, with me covered in bee stings, and you risking your life being out here where you could get stung.”

  I shiver, realizing how cool the water is for the first time. He’s right. We shouldn’t fuck here. But hiking back four hours to get back will seem like an eternity.

  I pout.

  He chuckles. “We don’t have to hike the four hours back. There is a thirty-minute hike to where we can have a car pick us up.”

  “Thank God!”

  He laughs harder. He holds out his hand, and I take it as he helps me out of the pool.

  He hisses when he steps out. For the first time, I see the damage of jumping into the water caused him. His ankle is swollen and bruised.

  “Sebastian, your ankle, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have made you jump.”

  He turns and shakes his head. “And I shouldn’t have put you at risk in the first place.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Let me help you create a makeshift brace or something to make it easier to walk.”

  Sebastian brushes me off. “I’m fine.”

  Just like that, he’s back to being cold with me except when we are being intimate.

  “Ouch,” I wack my neck after something sharp hits me.

  I don’t think twice about it. I’m too busy thinking about Sebastian and how to get him to stop being so hot and cold. I know I wanted him to be a jerk to me to protect my heart, but…

  “Millie.” Sebastian’s voice drops, and the twinkle in his eyes is now replaced with absolute fear.

  I don’t know what he’s so afraid of.

  Then the burning on my neck hits me. Already, I can feel my tongue swelling, my throat closing. I know better than to travel without my epi-pen. But when I’m around Sebastian, I forget everything but him.

  “Fuck,” I say, knowing that might be the last word I ever say. We are thirty minutes from a road. Thirty minutes from cell phone service. I’m about to swell up bigger than Sebastian’s ankle.

  I take a shaky breath. At least I’ll die having had the perfect first kiss, and the dirtiest second kiss. I’ll die without having my heart broken again.

  19

  Sebastian

  My nightmare happened. The thing we were trying to prevent—Millie got stung.

  I realized it before she did. I tried not to react, hoping that if I kept her calm, then she wouldn’t actually feel sick. But I’m not a good enough actor to hide my fear.

  Now Millie is standing in front of me, gripping her neck. I know how bad her neck stings. I have small bites all over my body that all burn. But unlike her, my entire body isn’t swelling up.

  “What do I do?” I ask, knowing that time isn’t our friend. I have to get her help.

  “Get us somewhere where we can call 911,” Millie says so calmly like she’s just telling me directions to drive to her favorite diner—not giving me instructions that can save her life.

  I nod. “The road is close from this direction.” I pull out my cell. I don’t have any service, but I should once we get a bit closer to the road.

  Millie takes a breath, and it’s already garbled. I can hear the wheezing, the struggle to breathe.

  “What else?”

  She shakes her head gently, giving me a fake smile that’s meant to reassure me. but I see right through it. “We take our time walking toward the road together. There is nothing else we can do.”

  “How long d
o we have?”

  “We’ll make it,” she gives me a wink.

  “Yea, we will.” I grab her hand and drape it over my back. “Climb on.”

  “Sebastian, your ankle. You can’t carry me.”

  “Millie, climb on my back right the hell now.”

  She does. She may be wild, but my voice can tame her. Good to know.

  And then I start running.

  “Sebastian, slow—“ Her voice catches, and she struggles to get any more words out.

  “Do not tell me to slow down because I won’t.”

  She doesn’t ask me again. I run down the mountain through the trees and branches that have fallen on the path. I don’t feel my ankle as I run. All I focus on is Millie, listening to her breath and hoping that I can run fast enough to save her.

  I’ve saved people before, but never have I felt such urgency, such responsibility and need to save someone. If I fail, not only will the world lose an incredible woman, but I will never be the same. Losing Millie would be like losing a piece of me.

  “You shouldn’t have—“ Millie takes a deep breath while I hang onto her every word.

  “…stopped kissing me.”

  I laugh. “Are you trying to make a joke?”

  She nods against my neck.

  “Well, it’s a horrible one.”

  “You,” she takes a broken inhale. “Then,” she exhales painfully.

  “If you didn’t want to fuck me, you should have just told me no. You didn’t have to fake almost dying.” My joke sucks worse than hers, but I hear the faintest chuckle behind me. It made her smile.

  I need to keep talking. I need to distract her from whatever pain she’s feeling.

  “I’m going to try and guess why you wanted to stay fake married to me since you won’t tell me and there is no way those Kylie Jenner sized lips are going to tell me now.”

  More chuckles, but these ones are softer.

  Keep breathing, baby. Don’t die on me.

  I keep running as I think of the most ridiculous reasons I can think of.

  “You have to be married to inherit an English estate.”

  Laugh.

  “You are a princess in line to the Monaco throne and are trying to live a normal married life before being forced to marry a prince.”

  Laugh.

  “You’re secretly in love with me and think you’re going to make me fall head over heels before our six months together is up.”

  She laughs, but it’s barely audible. It deflates me. I have no jokes left in me.

  You’re running from something and need me to protect you.

  The guess has floated through my head before, and right now, it seems like the most plausible.

  Millie makes a sound, but it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before, and I’ve heard countless people on the edge of death before. Most of those people wanted to die, but the sound Millie makes is a cry to live. If she had use of her voice, it would be a warrior cry instead of the soft moan of a woman whose body is swollen and making it impossible to breathe.

  The sound tells me time is up. I have to get her to a hospital as quickly as possible.

  I pull out my phone—one bar.

  I dial 911 and then hold it to my ear.

  “What’s your emergency?” I hear on the other line.

  “My fr—wife was stung by a bee, and she’s having an allergic reaction. We are hiking near Waimoku Falls and are headed to the road. We are less than five minutes away and need an ambulance.”

  “Okay, sir. I have an ambulance on its way. Is she walking on her own?”

  “No, I’m carrying her.”

  “Is she breathing?”

  I feel the heat of her breath against my neck.

  “Barely.”

  “Okay. Keep monitoring her breathing. If she stops breathing at any point, I need you to communicate to me what is happening, and I can walk you through steps to clear her airway and give her CPR until the ambulance arrives.”

  “Okay,” I breathe back, hating how easy it is for me to breathe and how hard it is for her to breathe. If I could give her all my breaths right now, I would.

  But all I can do is keep running forward and hope I make it there in time. So close.

  I run faster.

  Then I see the road. I hear sirens in the distance.

  “We made it, Millie. We made it,” I say out of breath from running.

  The ambulance roars to a stop in front of us, and the paramedics jump out, racing to take Millie from me and put her on a stretcher. One of them stops in front of me.

  “You riding with us?”

  “Yes, I’m her husband.”

  He nods, and I follow him into the back where they’ve already loaded Millie into the ambulance and begun working on her. She has an oxygen mask on and an IV in her arm.

  The second the door shuts, the ambulance starts flying.

  “Is she…?” I ask one of the paramedics who is administering medicine through her IV.

  “My job is to get her to the hospital alive, and I will. You’ll have to talk to a doctor about her long term prognosis.”

  I nod and don’t ask any more questions as we drive. Millie’s hand is within reach, so I take it and hold onto her, giving her all of my comfort and hope.

  “You got this, Millie,” I whisper.

  We arrive at the hospital, and the doors fly open. I hop out and curse when my foot hits the pavement, but I don’t give a damn about my foot. All I care about is Millie.

  The paramedics pull Millie out on a gurney and then pass her off to a team at the hospital. I try to follow through the doors when a nurse stops me.

  “You’ll have to wait here,” she says.

  “But I’m her husband.” I hold up my hand with my ring like I need to prove that I’m her husband or something.

  She nods. “Come with me.”

  I follow her, and then suddenly she stops outside a door. “Sit on the exam table, and I’ll have someone examine your foot.”

  “My foot is fine; my wife isn’t. I won’t leave her.”

  “Get your ass on the table so I can set your foot quickly while the ER docs look over your wife. They won’t let you in the room anyway, and you won’t be any good to her with a broken ankle.”

  “My ankle isn’t broken.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “I’m fifty-three years old. I’ve been doing this a long time. I know a broken ankle when I see one. I know you want to be with your wife, so give me twenty minutes to set it and put it in a cast to heal it until you have an orthopedic doc take a look. Or you can be stubborn, in which case I’ll make you wait for a doc to look at it, which could take hours before you see your wife. Now, which will it be?”

  I frown, ready to argue.

  “Twenty minutes. I promise I’ll get you to your wife as soon as they will let you see her.”

  “Fine.” I step inside the room, trying to prove to her that my ankle isn’t broken, but there is no hiding it.

  I sit on the table and let her quickly put my foot in a cast.

  “Do you want pain meds?” she asks.

  “I’m an alcoholic and drug addict. No, I don’t want drugs.”

  She nods. “Wheelchair?”

  I hop down, giving her my answer.

  She smiles at me. “I’ll have some crutches brought to her room. Follow me, and I’ll take you to your wife.”

  Luckily, Millie is just in the room over. I can’t breathe though when I see her hooked up to so many tubes and IVs. She even has one shoved down her throat.

  My nurse takes the chart and looks it over quickly as the other nurses and docs are still working on Millie. She looks from the chart to the machine with her vitals and then squeezes my hand. “Your wife is going to be okay, thanks to you. Now, go hold her hand until we get her moved up to another room.”

  I nod, choking back tears and words, and then I go to Millie. When I squeeze her hand three times, I swear I feel her squeeze back three times.
That’s all I need to know that everything is going to be okay. We are going to make it.

  I look down at her hand. I have no idea how I’m going to let go of her hand in six months.

  20

  Millie

  Sebastian squeezes my hand three times. He doesn’t know the meaning; at least, I don’t think he does. But he saw Oaklee and me do it. He’s letting me know he’s here for me. He’s letting me know that he cares more than any words he could ever say.

  I smile inside even though I can’t show him what it means to me that he’s here, that he saved me. Not only that, but once he saved me, he stayed. He didn’t leave. He stayed.

  I try to squeeze his hand back, but I feel so weak that I barely moved my fingers at all.

  “I’m here; it’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

  Those words stayed with me while I dreamed. I wish I dreamed of my future. Instead, I dreamed of my past. Even dreaming about a future without Sebastian would have been better than reliving everything.

  My dreams didn’t take a different form. I didn’t dream of a bright light or falling or clowns or whatever it is that people dream about that is a metaphor for their real fear. No, for every second that I was unconscious, I relived every heartbreak, every mistake, every drop of pain my life has contained.

  It gives me motivation to open my eyes even faster, to get away from my past and live my present, even if my future is back to reliving my pain.

  I open my eyes, afraid that Sebastian is gone. That I dreamed Sebastian King up. Or that once I open them, I’ll remember he’s nothing more than an egocentric ass, who is only in this relationship to get laid.

  I open my eyes, and I see him. He’s sitting in a chair next to my bed, slumped over face first on the edge, drooling onto my pillow, making the softest most adorable snores. He looks exhausted, even though he’s sleeping. I can tell by the ways his eyes are twitching, his mouth is moving, and the adorable yet painful soft snores he exhales. What catches my breath, though, isn’t the broken man, it’s that he’s still holding my hand.