In Too Deep (Heart Lines)

by Larissa de Silva

  In Too Deep

  Blurb

  Terry Mara’s life is on track.

  She’s a resident doctor. She’s about to reach all her career aspirations.

  And finding a man is the least of her concerns.

  Until a lawsuit reminds her of the man she met years ago on vacation--the one who saved her from drowning. And when she meets him again, the athlete is as gorgeous as she remembers.

  And probably just as much trouble.

  But with the lawsuit happening, and nowhere to go, she’s going to have to be in touch with him until they see it through.

  Charming as he is, she might not be able to resist his advances, which could put a wrench in things.

  Noah Valentine is training to be an olympic medalist.

  He doesn’t have time to be distracted with women, and worse than that, he doesn’t have time to be distracted with lawsuits.

  But the girl he hasn’t been able to forget comes right back into his life, and soon, he’s questioning his priorities.

  The lawsuit isn’t coming from the kid they saved, but rather, his greedy parents.

  And soon, Noah faces a terrible choice: sacrifice everything he has worked for to help a kid and finally get with the woman he has fallen in love with, or keep going and fulfill his childhood dream.

  In Too Deep:

  A Second-Chance

  Romance

  LARISSA DE SILVA

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  Enjoy this book responsibly. With a cup of wine, for heart health.

  © Larissa de Silva, 2020

  All rights reserved

  This book is intended only for adult audiences.

  The events depicted within this work are fictitious. All and any similarity to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Unless you know of any men like the ones depicted in these books. If you know of any similarity to any living person, I urge you to email me. If not for me, then for science. Or medicine.

  CHAPTER ONE

  2019

  Terry

  I submerged my head in the water as I dove into the gym’s heated pool.

  This was supposed to be a relaxing time.

  I was supposed to be falling in love with swimming again. It didn’t seem to be working.

  I swam down toward the deep end of the pool, my vision distorted from the goggles I was wearing. I was paddling faster than I expected, but my breath was shivering, and I didn’t know if I was going to get across the entire length of the pool.

  I told myself not to panic. Panicking was the easiest way to make sure that I didn’t reach my goal and I wanted to finish the length of the pool underwater.

  I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it.

  As I closed my eyes, inching closer to the edge of the pool, pushing against the buoyancy of the water, I tried not to think about what had happened at the beach.

  It had been years ago. This was supposed to help me get more comfortable with swimming, not plunge me into the depths of my past. I climbed out from the water and took a deep breath, trying to orient myself in the swimming pool. I looked around at the people who were sitting on the edge of the pool. I could smell the sunblock and the salt water, and I closed my eyes and told myself I wasn’t on the beach anymore.

  This was a pool. Just a pool.

  And I needed to finish my swim.

  I plunged myself into the water again after taking a deep breath, and I swam in long strokes until I had reached the edge of the pool. I pulled myself up and felt the cold air on my skin as I sat up and took a few deep breaths.

  I looked at my watch, which told me how long it had taken me to do one lap, and it felt like it was too long. I needed to get better at this, in case something like what had happened at the beach happened again.

  I set my gaze on a few kids, who were playing and splashing around the pool, whose feet clearly didn’t reach the bottom. I thought about going over there and telling them that they needed to get to the shallower part, to tell them that they could seriously get hurt.

  My gaze darted over to where their adult supervisor was, who was sitting nearby, reading a book, and not paying attention. I told myself that it was none of my business, but I got to my feet, and felt my body begin to walk over to where they were without me even really thinking about it.

  I opened my mouth to say something, vaguely aware that someone was approaching also from the other side. I wondered if they were also going to call out the adult who was meant to be watching these children, but instead, they met my gaze, a smile on their face. I wondered if I knew them from somewhere. I was too worried about the children to take stock of them, to really notice what they looked like or what they were doing, but they seemed to know me. It took me a few seconds to realize that the person approaching wasn’t even wearing a swimsuit, instead, they were wearing jeans and a hoodie, and I could hardly see their face.

  “Hey!” they said. “Just checking, you’re Terry Hayes, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do I know you?”

  They grabbed their messenger bag and handed me a large brown envelope. “You’ve been served.”

  “What?” I asked, unsure of what I had just heard.

  I wanted to ask for more clarification, but the server was moving quickly away from me, and I felt frozen in place. I couldn’t ask them anything, and I could feel a lot of people’s eyes on me.

  I went over to the locker, where I had left my stuff, and sat down on one of the cold benches before I tore the envelope open with the end of my thumb.

  I wondered what this was about.

  I didn’t have any money, I didn’t own anything, really, all I had was debt, and it was going to be a while before I managed to pay anyone anything.

  Plus, I couldn’t think of anything that I had done in order to get in trouble with the law. I told myself not to worry about it. I would find out more when I opened this envelope. When I finally managed to pull out the documents inside of it.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath, barely aware that the people around me were talking. I should’ve gone somewhere more private, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. There was my car, I guessed, but I needed to find out right then and there. I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I took the documents out, my heart beating so fast in my chest felt like I might actually faint.

  As I read the words on the paper, my eyes widened. This was absolutely ridiculous. There was no way that this was the case, the boy, the child what had put my life on the line for, the one who had traumatized me for life, was suing me.

  More accurately, his family was suing me.

  I stuffed the papers back into the envelope, telling myself that it wasn’t a big deal. I had to go to a lawyer, but first, I had to get home.

  And I had to think.

  CHAPTER TWO

  2019

  NOAH

  “You can do another one,” I said.

  Choppy shook his head. He would probably use his voice to protest, but he was bench pressing, and he was using his breath to keep the weights up.

  “
One more rep, buddy,” I said. My fingers were curled under the barbell, in case he stopped being able to hold it up. He had been at it for a while, and there was always a chance he was going to go into muscle failure. If he did, he would drop the barbell on his chest, hurting himself considerably, or worse, on his neck, cutting off his air supply.

  As insufferable as I found him sometimes, I definitely needed him to stay alive.

  He did one more rep, then I took the barbell from him. He slid away from the machine, panting. After he took a swig of water from the giant jug he lugged around everywhere, he stared at me. “That was not cool. I hated it.”

  “You’re going to thank me when we get gold instead of silver.”

  He shook his head, a smile on his face. “It’s your turn.”

  “No,” I said. “I already lifted today.”

  “But you didn’t put yourself through what you put me through.”

  I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest. “I put myself through worse, because I’m better.”

  He flipped me off, the smile never leaving her face. “If you weren’t so good, I would convince Coach Hamilton to kick you out already.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said, taking my place in the barbell machine after he had wiped it. “Let’s see if I can beat your record, then.”

  He nodded, walking over to the top so that he could spot me. “Just don’t hurt yourself. If you do, Hamilton might actually take me out.”

  I laughed. “I mean, that is way more likely to happen.”

  I grabbed the barbell, and just as I was about to start, I heard a soft feminine voice coming from the entrance of the gym.

  “Excuse me,” the voice said, making me sit up from where I was and scan the room for where it was coming from.

  While the gym was technically open to the public, it was mostly the rowing team who used it. We had gotten lucky, mostly no one came other than us, all the other university teams trained elsewhere, and while the machines were old, that didn’t mean they didn’t work.

  Every now and then, of course, we had a couple of interlopers. We could have paid for a private space, but until we had brought home the bacon, as Coach Hamilton used to say, we wouldn’t be renting our own private space.

  Still, it was weird for a random woman to be there.

  Choppy, always so charming, plastered a giant smile on his face. “Yes,” he said, his voice soft. “How can we help you?”

  “Is one of you Noah Fletcher?”

  “I am Noah Fletcher,” I said. Choppy decided that it was the right time to elbow me slightly on the side, as if we were teenagers and neither one of us had ever seen a girl before.

  There was absolutely nothing wrong with this girl, I thought as she approached me, a smile on her face. She had long blond hair that fell just past her shoulders and big bright brown eyes.

  “Noah?”

  “Yeah?” I said, edging closer to the end of the machine so I could look her in the eyes as she spoke to me. “How can I help you?”

  “One second,” she said, sticking her hand in her messenger bag and rummaging around for a second before she took out a large brown envelope. She handed it to me, and I took it without thinking. “Noah Fletcher, you’ve been served.”

  As I watched her, she turned around, practically doing a hair flip, and then walked out of the gym. Choppy and I exchanged a look before he started dissolving into fits of giggles. “Bro,” he said. “That was fucked. I was sure she wanted—”

  I waved the brown envelope in the air. “Well,” I said. “I guess we both know what she wanted, don’t we?”

  He shook his head, calming down and waving his hand in front of his face. “You’re getting sued?”

  “I don’t know. It sure seems that way,” I said, opening the envelope with my hands, caring very little about whether I tore into the contents inside. I wanted to find out what this was about and how I could possibly justify it to Coach Hamilton.

  Because if I couldn’t, I was going to be in a world of shit.

  I didn’t even care about what was inside of it as long as I could come up with some good excuse. If I couldn’t, my chances of going all the way with the team might be toast.

  “So,” Choppy said after a little while. “Which one of your ex-girlfriends is suing you?”

  “Very funny, Choppy,” I said, then took the paper out and began to read it. I didn’t really understand some of the things that it was saying, but I sort of got the gist.

  And I certainly recognized one of the names on the document.

  It was the kid.

  He had told me his name, between gasps, as we got back to the beach.

  I remembered vividly trying to calm him down, trying to tell him that it was going to be okay all while I scanned the beach for his caretakers, for someone who would take him to the hospital.

  I knew how bad things could get if he didn’t get taken to the hospital, and I didn’t want to find out that this young teenager had died because his parents weren’t paying attention.

  The very thought of it made me want to shake with anger once more. I was the one who ended up taking him to the hospital, and the memory of it still made me feel like I wanted to punch his parents.

  If I ever managed to find them, I thought to myself.

  I looked down at the documents and took a deep, shuddering breath. I could see their names there, in black and white, and I thought, just for a split second, about going to find them.

  It wouldn’t be out of order, I thought.

  They had, in fact, almost killed that boy. If it hadn’t been for us…

  I felt a hand clap my shoulder, squeezing it. “Hey,” Choppy said as I looked up at him. When our gazes met, I could tell that he was concerned. “What’s going on, bud?”

  I bit my lips. “Long story.”

  “You okay?”

  I thought for a second. “Yes,” I said. “I think so. But I need to speak to Coach, and also, I think I need to talk to a lawyer.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  2017

  TERRY

  It was a very warm day and I was enjoying the sunshine on my skin. While I had applied a generous dollop of sunscreen, I knew I was on track to get a generous tan, which was exactly what I needed to look good for Lily’s wedding.

  I hadn’t had that much input on the bridesmaid dress, and while I knew the light blue color would be stunning on the rest of the bridesmaids, I was a little worried it was going to wash me out. I wasn’t too concerned about it, since I knew it was Lily’s day, and the way I looked wasn’t that important, but I still wanted to look back at the myriad of pictures fondly.

  Susie turned to look at me, sliding her sunglasses up as she set her gaze on me. “Did you still want to go for a swim?” she asked. “I’m so relaxed.”

  I laughed. “Me, too,” I said. “But I’m definitely not trying to falling asleep and getting a sunburn here. Can you imagine brown patches on our noses during Lily’s wedding? She would kill us.”

  Susie laughed. “I mean, yeah,” she said, then eyed the sea. “I guess maybe we should probably get out of the sun. But maybe we could go get a cocktail instead? The bar is under the shade.”

  I looked at the bar, which was on one side of the beach. It was easy to find, because there was sound coming from it, and there were plenty of people trying to get into the scarce stools in front of the bar.

  “How about this?” I asked as I pushed myself up. “I’ll go for a swim, and when I get back, you can have a nice fresh cocktail ready for me.”

  She scoffed, opening her mouth slightly. “What do I get out of this?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to swim.”

  She contemplated it for a few seconds. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. But I get to decide on the cocktail and you’re paying for it.”

  “Naturally,” I replied. I stood up and stretched as I felt the sun kiss my shoulders. “You should go, this is going to take a while.”

  I helped her get
to her feet. She stood up and stuck her tongue out at me, but she turned away and began to walk over to where the bar was. I walked over to the sea, slowly but surely, and dipped my feet into the water.

  It was cold, but not too cold, and I wanted to get away from the heat. I needed to. I took a few steps into it, feeling the sand get rougher under my feet, then softer, then just disappearing from underfoot. There was a surprisingly deep jump and suddenly I was no longer at the shallow end.

  It didn’t matter, I was a strong swimmer, and I treaded water as I gave myself some momentum, wondering how close to the buoys I should get. I wanted a good swim, and it was going to take a while for Susie to actually get the drinks, so I had plenty of time to really go for it.

  The water was still and pleasant, and I could see plenty of people around me swimming and enjoying the perfect weather. I swam toward the deeper end, where the markers not to go further were, enjoying the way my body was being held up by the water, how refreshing and free and alive I felt.

  I moved forward, fast as I could, and before I knew it, I was at the buoy.

  Surprised, but pleased at my speed, I made myself float as I caught my breath. I knew I was tired and I didn’t think I was going to get back to the beach nearly as fast as I had gotten away from it.

  I was about to close my eyes so I could enjoy how relaxing it was to just be out in the sea, enjoying the sunshine, when I heard splashing coming from nearby.

  I immediately went upright and looked at where the sound was coming from. I could see the shape of a human, though from the way the sun was shining in my eyes, it was surprisingly hard to see their silhouette.

  It took me a few seconds to process what was happening. I could see a body, someone who had been splashing only seconds ago, and now they seemed to be sinking and I could only see half their head bobbing above the water.

  I swam toward them, unsure of what I could possibly do. I like swimming, but I had absolutely no training when it came to something like saving someone from drowning, and I had no idea how I was supposed to help this person.