Hooking Him (How to Catch an Alpha #3)(13)

“Her parents.” I shiver, even though I’m not cold.

“Pardon?” the woman asks, adjusting the big floppy hat on her head.

I stumble away from her with my entire body shaking. “She needs her parents. They’re sleeping.”

“I don’t understand.” She follows me, even as I start to run.

When I reach where the two of them are lying, I rip their umbrella out of the ground, and they both instantly sit up. “What the fuck, bitch?” the guy snaps, and anger like I have never felt in my life surges through me.

“Your daughter is over there!” I scream while swinging my arm out to the crowd, which is growing by the minute. “She’s getting CPR, because you two idiots weren’t looking after her.”

The woman’s face pales; then she and the man both jump to their feet and start to run. I stumble behind them through the sand, hearing sirens getting closer, and then my legs give out from under me when I hear someone shout, “She’s breathing!”

“You saved her,” the woman who helped me earlier says while resting her hand on my back, and I look at her as my vision blurs. “Are you okay?”

Am I? I don’t know.

“You don’t look so good.”

“I’m okay.” I try to stand, but my body feels weak and my vision seems to be growing dimmer by the second. “I live right there.” I point toward my apartment, which is only a little ways up the beach.

“Let me help you up.” She weaves her arm through mine, and I use her strength to pull myself up off the ground.

“Thanks. I think I’ve got it from here.” I blink, trying to get rid of the stars and darkness that are sweeping over me.

“Darling, I know you think you’re okay, but I think you should sit down and rest for a moment,” she says, eyeing me with concern.

I wave her off. “I just need to get my stuff and go home. After I rest, I’ll be fine.” I take two steps and hear a gasp right before everything goes black.



“Everyone back up!” A deep, familiar rumble drags me through the darkness toward consciousness.

“Is she okay?” a somewhat familiar woman’s voice asks.

“You said she just passed out, right?” Warm fingers touch my neck; then a large hand comes to rest on my chest.

“Yeah, she looked pale but said she was okay, but then her eyes went weird and she kind of toppled over.”

“She rescued that girl,” a male voice says, and I try to open my eyes as everything comes back to me. “She’s probably in shock.”

“She said she lives right there,” the woman adds as I force my eyes open but then close them against the bright light. “She was going to go home.”

“Is Amy okay?” I ask, wondering why my throat hurts and feels like I’ve eaten sand.

“Get me some water.”

Calvin? My muscles bunch, and I open my eyes to find Calvin leaning over me.

His gaze locks with mine; then his fingers slide down my cheek.

“Hey, beautiful.”

“Oh God.” I close my eyes, hearing him chuckle.

“Can you sit up for me and rinse your mouth out?”

I nod, not wanting to talk, and then I let him help me sit up. When he puts a bottle of water to my lips, I take a sip and swish it around before leaning over to spit it out, trying to do it as inconspicuously as possible.

“You fell face-first into the sand.” I look to the woman at my side as she pushes my hair out of my face. “I didn’t have time to catch you.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, then start to cough when my throat itches from the sand I’ve apparently ingested.

“Drink and spit again,” Calvin orders, holding the bottle closer to me once more, and my cheeks warm as I do as he commands. “How are you feeling?”

I focus on his handsome face and don’t even lie when I answer. “Like I swallowed sand and ran a marathon.”

“I bet.” He touches my temple, then slides his finger down the side of my face to behind my ear.

“You didn’t answer. Is Amy okay?”

“She was breathing when they put her in the ambulance. They think she’ll be okay,” he says, but I still see a glimmer of worry in his eyes, and that makes my chest ache.

“You saved her,” the woman says, taking my hand and attention. “If it wasn’t for you following her in, no one would have known what’d happened to her.”

My eyes burn and I swallow over the lump in my throat, not sure how to respond.

“Let’s get you home,” Calvin murmurs, and then, before I have a chance to prepare myself for what’s about to happen, he places one arm behind my back and one under my legs and lifts me up off the ground. I instinctively wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze. “I won’t let you fall, babe, but you need to let me breathe.” He sounds like he’s laughing.

“I can walk.”

“I’m not taking any chances. Plus, I need to talk to you about what went down today.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, squirming to look at him.

“From what I understand, after you got the girl out of the water, you had a confrontation with her parents.”

Damn, I forgot about that, with everything else that happened and the whole passing-out thing. “It wasn’t really a confrontation.”