Beautifully Broken

Beautifully Broken: Chapter Eight

This chapter is dedicated to all my new fans. :) You guys are the reason why I find time to do this story even if I often feel like I should put it on hold because of my school work for this semester! :) This one is pretty long! :) And has some Nate in it.

Enjoy!

Denise

------

Chapter 8

I was laughing so hard I had to put my hands on knees because I was so out of breath. My stomach was beginning to ache from all the laughing just as Julian resurfaced. He had another one of his devilish smirks on his face but his eyes were still wide betraying his surprise.

“So you thing that was funny?” he panted through the water’s surface. He continued to stare at me.

“No, I don’t think that was funny at all.” I replied sarcastically through my laughter.

I had definitely got him there. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. It was getting hard to breathe so I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to take deep breaths to even out my breathing and hopefully slow it down. I didn’t actually want to get him mad or something.

When I opened my eyes Julian wasn’t in the water anymore. I thought he might have went down under but as I scanned the pools surface, it had already calmed and there weren’t any signs of someone swimming.

I was about to turn around when I felt cold hands on my waist. I panicked at the sudden physical contact. What if this was some random guy? What did he want from me? Where had Julian gone?

The person’s arms slowly wrapped around me hugging from behind. I could feel his wet chest and toned abdomen pressed against my back. His chin was gently resting on my head. I couldn’t move.

Taking a deep ragged breath, his cologne mixed with the smell of chlorine entered my nose.

I knew that scent. I stopped panicking in an instant. It was Julian all along. Somehow in the few moments I took to catch my breath he managed to climb out of the pool and behind me.

Well if you were that fit, you’d probably be able to do that too, I said to myself.

His warm uneven breath met my right ear. “I wonder if you’ll find this funny,” he whispered softly. It was my turn to shiver.

He fell into the pool freely, taking me with him, his arms still firmly around my waist. I screamed in shock as the freezing water hit my body and he let go of me so I would be able to swim towards the surface instead of being pulled down with his weight.

Cold was an understatement to describe the water’s temperature. It made me wonder how Julian was able to avoid stuttering from the cold when I pushed him in earlier.

“Th-The waters freez-zing,” I stuttered through clenched teeth when I got to the surface.

“Stay for a while, you’ll get used to it” he said, splashing me in the face with water.

After splashing each other in the face for a while I decided to wander off one of the ends of the pool and swim in laps back and forth while Julian tried out the slide a few times.

At first I went slow, feeling the sensation of water as I moved forward, my arms burning a bit with each movement propelling me forward. I kicked into the water with a steady rhythm, enjoying the blank slate erupting, as thoughts of school, problems, and the past left my mind so I could focus on my body’s movements.

I began to swim faster. Digging my arms into the water with even more force, my kicks going faster and deeper. I realized I was holding my breath longer, going up for air less and less only when my lungs began to scream for air. My hamstrings and gastrocnemius muscles were beginning to cramp but I continued at my speedy pace going back and forth within the pool’s water.