Unfiltered & Undressed (The Unfiltered Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

across the bottom.
    I wasn’t swimming, or even floating. I was just…drifting…and it was bliss. This was my bliss.
    It wasn’t until my feet slipped out from beneath me and I realized I’d gone too far from shore that shit got real. This wasn’t part of my I-got-a-dream campaign anymore. The waves that just a second ago felt all floaty and safe suddenly got scary as hell.
    I flapped wildly, thinking I could somehow swim my way back to safety and manage to find my footing again, but it wasn’t that simple. Swimming, I quickly realized, was a skill—something I’d never mastered, thanks to my parents and the fact that I’d been too humiliated to sign up for swim lessons once I was out from under their overprotective wings.
    The first time I went under I still believed I just needed to get my feet, or my toes, or any part of me, on the sandy ocean floor. But I quickly discovered it was too far below me, and I came up to the surface again choking. My mind was spinning as I scoured the coastline for anyone who might be out at this hour, someone who could rescue me.
    Lifeguards! Where the hell were all the lifeguards?
    But this wasn’t like my TV shows. There were no beefcakes running across the beach in slow-mo. Or bleached blondes with bouncy implants whose mascara never streaked.
    No, I was sure I was going to die out here, all alone because I’d been too stubborn or too stupid to do things the right way.
    Thrashing violently, and coughing and sputtering, I tried to shout above the thunderous waves, but it was no use. No one could hear me.
    This time when I went down, I couldn’t find the bottom at all and I didn’t bob back to the surface. My eyes burned as they went wide beneath the murky saltwater, and my lungs ached as I strained to hold that one last breath.
    I didn’t want this to be the end, but the edges of my vision grew darker and darker, tunneling, until my chest felt like it was going to explode.
    Right before everything went black, pain exploded in my head. I wasn’t sure what it was that struck me, or where it had come from, but it was more than I could take and gasped, bubbles bursting from my mouth. I choked on a huge mouthful of the briny water. My skull, where I’d been hit, was on fire and felt like someone had smashed it with a crowbar.
    I tossed my head violently beneath the surface, and then felt arms reach around me. Despite myself, and the fact that this was what I’d wanted all along, I resisted. But the water made my actions sluggish, and the arms were insistent as they dragged me anyway, hauling me out of the water until I fell onto dry ground.
    I didn’t know how, but somehow whoever saved me had dragged me back to shore. And after what felt like forever, I finally managed to stop gagging and choking. That was when a familiar face came into focus above me, and suddenly I wanted to bury my head in the sand.
    “You scared the shit out of me,” Will-not-Billy from the night before announced as he peered down at me.
    “You…” I gasped, still struggling to catch my breath. “You have got to be kidding m—” I struggled to sit up, but my words were cut off by a violent coughing fit and Will pushed me back onto the sand.
    “Take it easy, Brown Eyes, you need to rest. You just inhaled about a gallon of ocean water. Give your lungs a minute or two to recover.”
    It’s not like I had much choice. I collapsed weakly onto the sand, staring sullenly up at the sky as I waited for my wheezing to subside. I wasn’t sure why, but I definitely wasn’t as grateful as I should have been. I hadn’t drowned, which was a win considering I’d just given myself my first real swimming lesson.
    Instead, I was disgusted.
    My mother had been right: swimming was terrible. It was hard and it was dangerous, and the ocean was nothing like I’d imagined it would be. It was too powerful, and way too cold and salty, and not only had I almost died, but I itched everywhere. I had sand in places I might