Drowning to Breathe Read Online Free PDF Page B

when you think things are finally coming together…that you know you’ve finally touched on something good? Hurts that much worse when it’s ripped from your fingers.”
    Eyes peered intently at me from the side.
    “Knew I was going to bring her down, Austin. The first night I saw her?”
    My heart sped with the memory—the energy that’d surrounded her—the need to get lost in all her sweet and soft enough to make me lose my mind.
    He just watched, waiting for me to explain.
    “Thought she had to be the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen. There was something about her I couldn’t shake…not a damn thing I could do to stay away from her, even though I knew when I went back to that bar I was gonna end up hurting her.”
    Confusion wound through his tone. “Thought you two had it all worked out? That’s why we came back here, right?”
    I raked the back of my hand over my mouth, unable to contain the bitterness breaking free. “I’ve been fooling myself it ever could. Since we came back from L.A., I thought if I let all those walls down…let her in…everything would be okay. That somehow we could make it when my life was nothin’ but a disaster. But these last two days? It was like they were a warning I couldn’t keep up the charade and everything was going to fall apart. That I was still pretending .”
    I blew a strained breath toward the sky, before I cut my attention to my baby brother. “She lied to me, Austin. Kallie’s father isn’t dead. Martin Jennings is her father.”
    Quickly, I filled him in on the events of the night, every wicked word bleeding from my mouth.
    With each one, Austin’s distress seemed to increase. He jumped to his feet and gripped his shaggy brown hair. “What? Shea is Delaney Rhoads?”
    I was surprised he even knew the name, considering he would have only been thirteen when Kallie was born.
    He paced the sand, back and forth in front of me, like a partner to the wind. More upset than I ever expected him to be.
    He turned his grey stare back to me, his face twisted up in confusion. More disappointment. “So you just walked away? Left her there to deal with all this shit on her own?”
    “The shit I caused, Austin. She wouldn’t be dealing with this right now if it wasn’t for me.”
    “The shit you caused?” Incredulously, he snorted. “Everything you do is to get someone else out of trouble. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
    “Not your fault,” I grated.
    I’d told him what felt like a million times.
    When was he ever going to start believing it?
    “You know what, Baz? You act like you’re the only person around here strong enough to shoulder any blame. You go around protecting and protecting and protecting until it’s suffocating . You won’t even let me take responsibility for what I did .” Twice, he struck his fist against his chest to punctuate it.
    I winced with the bite of his words.
    Then he softened, remorse seeming to seep through. “And you know how much it means to me. All you’ve done. What you’ve given up. You became my entire world. My mom, my dad, my brother, and my best friend . You made sure I ate when Mom couldn’t get out of bed, put yourself in Dad’s line of fire to protect me. Fucking hauled me around, this little kid thinking he was on top of the world because his big brother allowed him to tag along.”
    “That was the worst mistake I ever made.” My rough voice clashed with the air. “Dragging you into all that.”
    “Really? Where do you think I’d be right now if you hadn’t gotten me out of that house? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t still be breathing.”
    Pain clenched my heart. “I did it all wrong.”
    “You were a kid, too. You think I don’t know you were doing the best you could?”
    Disgusted, he shook his head. “We’ve had a whole lot of bad in our lives.”
    His words echoed like my own. Have so much shit, Shea.
    “And now you finally have something good. I don’t care who she is or what