Drowning to Breathe by A. L. Jackson Page B

side.
    “We’re so much alike, Sebastian. You just wear all your scars here. On the outside.”
    I shivered, so fucking transparent beneath the weight of her gaze.
    She tugged at my hand and placed my palm flat over the quickened beat of her heart. “While I keep all of mine here.”
    My spirit thrashed, and I sank down lower, whispering a hair’s breadth from that soft, soft mouth. “One day, I need you to show me. All of it.”
    “I know,” she breathed.
    Slowly, she rolled to her side, and I curled around her back. Shea nestled her head into the crook of my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around her. Covering her. Protecting her.
    “Hold onto me,” I demanded.
    “Don’t let me go.”
    “Never.”
    Silence enveloped us, the darkness alive with our turmoil.
    There’d be no sleep tonight.
    When Shea began to quietly sing, I clutched her to me.
    I strained to make out the words that passed languidly between her lips, a tickle to my ears, something like heaven and honey and all things sweet.
    So, so sweet.
    My heart clenched as I swam in the power of the words.
    She was singing Lullaby by The Dixie Chicks.
    I only knew it because my mom had loved the record it was on. She had listened to it constantly before everything had gone to shit—before my family had lost it all.
    As I held on to Shea and listened to her pour the words out into the night—like mourning, like praise—I had the intense urge to weep.
    Instead, I buried that feeling with my rage, made it count, added it to the debt Martin Jennings was going to pay.
    But Shea?
    Shea wept.
    Wept unlike anything I’d heard since my mother had wept when the sea stole Julian.
    A mother’s pain.
    A torment I’d prayed I’d never hear again.
    And I just held her. Held her and held her and made a million silent promises that I’d never let her go.
    “I sang that to Kallie every single night. I don’t ever want to stop,” she finally managed to whisper before she slipped back into silence.
    Long moments passed with just the sound of our breaths, before I pressed a soothing kiss to the top of her head. “Tell me a story, Shea from Savannah.”
    She stumbled over a soggy laugh, and pulled my arms tighter around her. “What kind of story do you want to hear, Sebastian from California?”
    “I want to know who taught you to sing.”

HEAT PERMEATED THE SMALL church. It was stuffed full of people and Shea was all dressed up, wearing a frilly white dress and white patent-leather shoes. A matching ribbon was tied in her curly hair. Little pebbles of sweat beaded at the base of her neck.
    But Shea didn’t mind.
    Her grandma squeezed her hand where she stood beside her in the pew, and Shea began to sing with the choir.
    Amazing Grace,
    How sweet the sound
    That saved a wretch like me.
    Her grandma had taught her how to play it on the piano, had taught her all the words, and it felt like their song. Somehow, standing there in church singing it beside her grandma, Shea got the feeling she was doing something really, really important.
    I once was lost, but now am found,
    Was blind,
    But now I see.
    Pride filled her as she let the words free.
    Let them float, high and lifted up.
    Just like her grandma had taught her to do.
    Her grandma was always telling her she had the prettiest voice she’d ever heard. Just like a morning bird, she’d say. She told Shea that God had given it to her as a gift, and nothing pleased Him more than hearing it used to praise His name.
    So Shea sang her praise, thanking God she got to be right there, because Shea’s favorite places were the ones where she got to be with her grandma.
    After they finished singing, the pastor said a prayer before ending the service.
    Shea was sure her grandma had to know just about every person who lived in Savannah, because countless people stopped them to say their goodbyes as they made their way out of the busy church.
    “Look at you, precious girl,” her grandma’s friend said. “I could hear you