Love and Chaos by Gemma Burgess Read Free Book Online Page A

You’re smart. You really think you’re here for your conversational skills? Hal needs a girlfriend for the weekend. You told me you needed to make some money. Everybody wins.”
    “No—” My voice is a whisper.
    Stef’s eyes are glinting with controlled fury, and he’s talking superlow, through gritted teeth. “Just sit the fuck down and play nice. I went to a lot of effort to make this party happen for my friend Hal. You’re embarrassing me.”
    Total silence.
    We stare at each other.
    Suddenly, I’m very, very scared.
    I don’t know Stef, not really. I don’t know what he’s capable of doing to me. And I’m alone. Completely alone.
    Panic rises like bile in my stomach. I stumble backward away from Stef and look around wildly.
    The sun is setting, and the other yachts that surrounded us earlier have left. They’re just gone, swoosh, vamoosed. I didn’t even notice! Or did we sail somewhere? I wasn’t paying attention, have we been sailing into the middle of the fucking ocean? I turn again, desperately trying to see land.
    It’s there. Thank God. Off the stern, I can see the long white beach of Grace Bay, and, in the soft dusk light, the twinkling lights of all the hotels. How far is it? A mile? Half a mile?
    I look back at Stef for a second. He stands up and opens his mouth to say something.
    Before he can speak, I look him in the eye. “Go fuck yourself, Stef.”
    Then I turn around, run toward the back of the yacht, take a deep breath, and dive.

 
    CHAPTER 8
    The moment the water hits my head, I have a weird flashback to my wish the other day. When I thought I was so miserable, back in freezing gray Brooklyn, and all I craved was the blissed-out feeling of diving into seawater.
    Be careful what you wish for.
    My dress is wrapping around my legs, making it hard to swim, so I quickly remove it. Then, wearing nothing but my bikini, I start swimming toward the shore.
    “Angie!” I can hear Stef screaming at me from the yacht. “Get the fuck back here, you crazy bitch!”
    There’s no point in shouting back—I need to save my breath—so I tread water for a moment, and without turning around, raise my arms out of the water to give him the finger from both hands.
    Then I keep swimming.
    Fuck you, Stef, I think, with every single stroke. I’m going to pay you back for this.
    I’m not exactly the running-around-the-soccer-field type, and the years of compulsory team sports in school just stressed me out because I was really uncoordinated and dreamy and forgot things like which direction to run if I ever actually got the ball. Swimming, however, is the perfect exercise for creative loners. And I’m pretty good at it.
    Every few breaths I look up to make sure I’m still heading in the right direction. I think I am, but it’s hard to tell. The land is a lot farther away than I thought. All I want is to get back on land, and then somehow I’ll find my way to Brooklyn. I want my home.
    Five, or maybe ten minutes later—I can’t tell—I hear a voice.
    “Hey you!”
    I turn around. It’s that fucking boat boy again, the clean-cut one who was watching me all day. He’s in a tiny blow-up dinghy. They’ve sent him to collect me.
    “Go the fuck away,” I shout. “I’m not going back there.”
    “I’m not going to take you back to the Hamartia, ” he calls. “I’ll take you to shore. I promise.”
    For a split second I consider it. But then reality hits: how many times do I have to be screwed over before I realize that everyone lies?
    “I’m not going to trust some boat boy from a fucking superyacht,” I say. “Go back and tell them I’ve drowned.”
    He laughs. “They don’t know I’m here.”
    “Why the hell should I believe you?” I say. “I’m flying back to New York tonight. Leave me alone.”
    “There is no flight to New York tonight.”
    “Then I’ll fly to Chicago and catch a fucking bus.”
    Before he can reply, I take a deep breath and keep swimming. Talking is making me