Lachlan:

"Kat!"

The words escaped my mouth in a flurry of fear and surprise, and the last thing I saw before she sank underneath the cold water was her terrified brown eyes reflecting the white snow and ice in the sunlight.

I moved like a man possessed, reaching into the water to try and pull her out immediately, but her body had floated down and off to the side of the hole that she'd fallen though, too far away for me to reach. 

The ice creaked and groaned beneath my weight, and a few fissures and cracks grew beneath my legs but I didn't care, not if it meant that I could get her back.

"Lachlan!  Get away from there, you're going to fall in too!"

I didn't listen to whoever was yelling at me.  Vera was off to the side crying and screaming Kat's name and the guys were standing a good way's off, watching with crossed arms not even trying to help.

Assholes.  I would save her myself, then.

"Please!  Get her out!"

"I'm trying!"  I yelled to Vera as I pulled my skates off quickly and began slamming the sharpened pick into the thick sheets of ice beneath me.  It was harder than I thought considering that the further she floated away from where she had fallen through, the ice grew even thicker.

"Come on!  Come on!"

"Why are you even risking your life for her?!"

"You don't know anything!" I roared at who I knew was Jenna.  I didn't have time for her in that moment, or ever.

At one point, my hand slipped on the blade of the skate and sliced my hand open but I didn't care.  I saw only white ice and red blood and the image of her brown terrified eyes repeating over and over in my head.

I had to get her.  There was no way that I couldn't.

And then the ice gave way.  The amount of relief I felt was insurmountable, but I didn't have time to rejoice, not yet. 

Finally, Taylor dropped down to help me scoop some of the ice shards away from the makeshift hole I'd created and I nearly froze as still as the frozen water around us when I couldn't immediately make out her form. 

"Where is she?!"

A shock of dark brown hair floated into view.

"There!"

I plunged my head and upper body down into the shocking water and pulled her limp and freezing body out, sputtering and hyperventilating, but she was breathing.

She was alive.  She was breathing and she was alive. 

I stroked her chilled cheeks, gazing at her beautifully auburn streaked raven hair, at those warm brown eyes that reminded me of home, her gorgeous full pink lips that were suddenly blue from the cold.

But she was alive.  I watched her chest heaving up and down.  She was definitely alive.

My forehead met hers as I stroked her hair over and over while shouting orders to the others.  Their questions didn't matter, all that mattered was that she was alive, and that she was okay.

And I was not going to let her go another second on this earth without knowing that I wanted her to be mine, but first I had to make sure she didn't lose an appendage, or worse, out in the biting cold with her wet clothes still hugging her shaking frame.

One step at a time.  First I'd make sure she was alright, and then I would show her just how badly I needed her, how wholly and entirely that I craved her very presence.

Clutching her tiny, shivering body, I knew in that moment that I couldn't ever bear the thought of losing her.  She was it for me, and she was going to know that before the night was over, even if it killed me.

Kate:

My eyes were open, but I couldn't see a single thing in front of me.  There was a tight constriction in my chest, and I desperately wished to suck in a greedy breath of air, but all I would get was a lung full of sub zero temp water.

I knew how to swim, but when my body was in shock from the fatal water temperature, swimming became the last thing on my mind.

I was clawing for something, anything to get me out.  My arms worked but my legs didn't, my feet still encased in the heavy skates that dragged me down, down, down, until it was all I could do to keep my eyes open.

There was a heavy, loud crunching noise from somewhere up above me, and I arched myself closer to the noise, to the light that was streaming in through the hole where I'd fallen through. 

My mind drifted to my mother in that moment, to her fake happiness and surface level love.  I wondered what kind of life I would have been given had I been raised by my birth mother.  Would I have given up all the money and rich complexities of this life if it had meant that I would have been raised in an actual loving home, without a 'father' figure, but with a mother who would have given her all for me to be happy, that is, if she could have ever wanted me at all?

My favorite memories flashed through my head, then, of my childhood with Sloane when we actually had fun together and she didn't have some kind of grudge against me for being the chosen child instead of the 'accidental' child that she thought she was. 

My time spent in California with my dad and his new wife surged through my brain.  I could have been nicer to his new wife...I could have done a lot of things differently, and I wished that I had considering that I wasn't going to be able to make things right.

I thought of Ian and his sweet smiling face, our nights out in the desert star gazing and the most intimate parts of me that I'd given away to him.

Images of Vera and our friendship floated to the surface, the late night slumber parties and sneaking out and listening to music at full blast and laughing until our sides hurt, our bond crumbling after I'd come back to New York because I was terrified my biological father would use our connection against me, hurting her in the process.

If I made it through, I would have told her about him and everything, even what he did to my mother. 

But I doubted I'd survive. 

My lungs screamed for oxygen that I knew I wasn't going to be able to breathe in.  The pounding and scratching and yelling grew louder, my arms still flailing and somehow keeping me afloat and not sinking to the bottom of the pond.

I couldn't help but to think of Lachlan.  He was such an enigma, someone that I had been friends with in childhood out of necessity because of our family's connections, but when Holden cheated on me with Sloane it was like a line between us had been severed and he grew cold and mean towards me and my friends.

I was thankful that he had come clean about the reason for his teasing and hostility towards me. It didn't necessarily excuse it but I understood his reasons, not that I agreed with them.  I forgave him.

The way he made me feel had a little something to do with forgiving him, though, as those brown eyes and dark hair flashed in my memories.  When all his attention was turned towards me, towards making me feel things I'd never felt before, including with Ian, there was no way that I couldn't respond to that.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I made it out of this freezing water stuck underneath a sheet of ice three feet thick that there was nothing I wouldn't do to be with Lachlan.  When I compared how I felt with Holden and Ian with how I felt with Lachlan, there was no comparison, and I doubted that something like that came along very often. I'd put my heart on the line, and I would do it easily.

I would be done living in fear, stuck under my biological father's thumb much like how I was stuck under the ice. 

That incessant pounding and scratching sound grew louder and in one swift movement, a hole was created above my head and sunlight broke through the bleak and gnawing blackness.

Strong arms gripped me underneath my own arms and I was hauled up into the sunlight, dripping wet and half out of my mind from the shock and terror of almost dying.  Almost.  Wait, I wasn't dead?  How was that possible...

I was in his arms, and I was being caressed and held lovingly while his forehead touched mine tenderly.  If I wasn't in such a state, my heart might have skipped in my chest from his action.

"Come on, someone run to the school right now and get someone, emergency services, somebody!  Kat?  Don't you close your eyes, keep them open.  Right here, look at me.  Keep your eyes on me," his voice said, soothing and low like a lullaby.  I was so tired, but the look in his eyes was alarming.  He was so scared, for me?

Lachlan raced us barefoot across the rest of the pond, the others completely forgotten as he strode to his cabin tucked neatly away in the thicket of trees just behind the pond.  I heard hurried footsteps behind us and some stumbling as well.

"What are you doing man?  Just get her in the car and we can take her to the nurse," a guy's voice called out but still I kept my lazy eyes trained on Lachlan's fiercely determined pools of brown that glimmered amber in the honeyed golden sunset.

"I'm taking her to my place, the sooner we can get her out of these wet clothes, get her warm, the less the chance of her getting hypothermia."

"You live out here?"

The person's question was lost as we approached his cabin and in a few swift movements he had the door unlocked and carried me over the threshold. 

All at once, exhaustion split through me like an ax swinging over me, but Lachlan didn't seem to notice.  I was placed gingerly on his wingback chair in front of the roaring fireplace and sat numbly as he began blindly pulling off all of my clothes...in front of all of our friends.

First were my shoes and socks, then my tights and suddenly this was feeling a little too familiar.

My arms were shaking too ferociously for me to even attempt to help him, and my mind definitely wasn't there either, so I sat there and watched as he continued to do all the work for me while the others watched on in stunned silence, even Vera was quiet.

My downy overcoat came next, then my sweater and Lachlan broke his gaze to stare at our friends.

"Guys, go to the kitchen or something, look away."

Two of the guys obeyed his command, Evan staying exactly where he stood.  I didn't see Jenna, Sloane or Holden.  They must've followed Lachlan's first set of directions and raced to the school to get help since we had our phones confiscated at detention.

"You're the one needing to look away, are you kidding me right now?"

"Evan, he saved her life, what did you do while she was drowning?  Quit arguing," Vera snapped and that quickly shut him up.

Drowning.  Was that was I had almost done?  Oh yeah, died.  I almost died.

The suffocating feeling resurfaced and the breaths were coming more shallow then, my pulse speeding as Lachlan tugged me out of my button up leaving me just in my bra and my skirt, which he leaned closer to me to help me pull down.

Suddenly his shirt was off and he was throwing a blanket over the both of us, his bare chest pressed against mine as my breathing rattled and my body hummed in response to the trauma I'd just endured.

I couldn't help but begin to hyperventilate, the stars swimming in my eyes, and my panic didn't go unnoticed.

"What's going on, is that a symptom of shock?"

"She's having a panic attack," Lachlan told Vera who simply watched on in shock herself.  I didn't want to meet her eyes, knowing they would portray the hurt that she must have felt because of the fact that I'd kept quite a few things from her, most of which were glaringly obvious by the way Lachlan was acting around me.

"Hey, in through your nose for five, out for five, just like before, okay?  In for five, out for five, good.  You know, when I first met you, I thought you were the scariest girl I ever met."

That pulled me out of my reverie a bit, and then I realized that was exactly what he wanted.

"W-what?"

He pulled back so he could look into my eyes, his knees on the ground in front of the chair as he held me in his noticeably warm body.  Before, all I'd felt was the numbness, but suddenly the skin on my body was flushing and thawing.

"You had two missing front teeth and were chasing after Vera for some reason.  I knew right then and there that I didn't want to get on your bad side."

"Y-you sure w-went ag-gainst that, then," I said to him, the uncontrollable shivering slowing down while my teeth still clacked together in my mouth.

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't have had so much fun teasing you," he responded and I heard Evan snort in the kitchen, unsurprised that he was listening to our conversation with precise attention.

"M-maybe..." I trailed off, focusing instead on the space where his neck met his shoulder, the sharp muscles decorating his skin.  I wanted nothing more than to lean myself into him, so that was exactly what I did.

The jolt of contact at my face meeting his skin was jarring, but it was Lachlan picking me up and sitting in the chair himself and placing me in his lap facing him that elicited a small squeak of surprise out of me.  I definitely didn't mind this.

"Okay, what the hell man?  What is going on between you two?"

I didn't even look up at Evan's words as he stalked into the living room.  Lachlan stared down at me almost in question, like he was asking me for permission to tell everyone.  I closed my eyes,  prepared for him to explain that there was nothing going on between us and for him to deny everything, but he never did that. 

"We've been hanging out.  Kat didn't want everyone being nosy and judging her or whatever.  It is what it is, but let's talk about it later when we're sure she's fine and still gets to keep all her fingers and toes."

"Yeah, whatever," Evan grumbled, and I could tell that he was hurt, maybe even a little jealous, but I kept my fingers firmly clasped around Lachlan's waist, my face buried in the crook of his neck.

I must've dozed off for a moment, the soft stroking sensation that his fingers were doing to my back forcing me into a cocoon of safety, because soon they were talking like I wasn't even there.

"Why didn't she tell me?  I'm her best friend..." Vera trailed off, and I heard the unmistakable shake of tears in her voice.

"It happened pretty quick, but I know she had the right intentions behind it.  She has her reasons, and I'm sure she'll tell you why now that you know."

"And what about you though?  You've always been a dick to her, even these past few weeks when we were all hanging out.  You mean to tell me you two were doing it and you were still treating her like dirt?!"

Blythe's voice resonated through the cabin and I almost tensed up at her angry words if I wasn't safely ensconced in Lachlan's perfect grip.

"She wanted me to act like everything was normal, so nobody would get suspicious that anything was up between us."

"No, I don't believe you.  She wouldn't do something like that, you're just taking advantage of her in her vulnerable state right now," Blythe argued, and then suddenly Taylor's voice joined in the mix.

"He's telling the truth.  I overheard them in the hallway after the fight with Jenna.  They were joking that he was her dirty little secret or something.  He's definitely not taking advantage of anyone, especially not Kate.  The guy's totally hung up on her."

The silence in the room was telling, and then all hell broke loose when the doors to the cabin crashed open and in came Holden, Sloane, Jenna and the school nurse.  This was going to be fun.