Title: Where We Belong
Author: Eve Connell
Release Date: February 19, 2015
Synopsis
One
man diving into the past.
One woman emerging from the depths.
At the age of seventeen, Amelia Baide won silver at the Olympic Games and was the second-fastest woman in the pool. Then one tragic night she crashed into a lake and was dragged out without a pulse. Now twenty-four, she is still haunted by it and hasn’t swum again. Until this year’s anniversary of the accident. It is a day unlike any other and a strange turn of events finds Amelia back at a swimming pool.
Harry Jamieson had eyes for one girl, while women and the media had eyes for him. As a trainer of Olympic athletes, he was an in-demand man. Until one boozy morning after … But from bad luck to pure chance he runs into his old flame, Amelia, at a swimming pool no less. She doesn’t remember a thing from the night of the crash.
And Harry knows every single secret.
The pair joins forces—a comeback for Amelia and Harry’s ultimate coaching opportunity. But dodging waves is hard to do; and even the strongest swimmer may sink.
Where We Belong is a second-chance love story for young and old, for swimming enthusiasts and romantics at heart.
One woman emerging from the depths.
At the age of seventeen, Amelia Baide won silver at the Olympic Games and was the second-fastest woman in the pool. Then one tragic night she crashed into a lake and was dragged out without a pulse. Now twenty-four, she is still haunted by it and hasn’t swum again. Until this year’s anniversary of the accident. It is a day unlike any other and a strange turn of events finds Amelia back at a swimming pool.
Harry Jamieson had eyes for one girl, while women and the media had eyes for him. As a trainer of Olympic athletes, he was an in-demand man. Until one boozy morning after … But from bad luck to pure chance he runs into his old flame, Amelia, at a swimming pool no less. She doesn’t remember a thing from the night of the crash.
And Harry knows every single secret.
The pair joins forces—a comeback for Amelia and Harry’s ultimate coaching opportunity. But dodging waves is hard to do; and even the strongest swimmer may sink.
Where We Belong is a second-chance love story for young and old, for swimming enthusiasts and romantics at heart.
Chapter 1
Amelia
We had the fight
moments after I slipped the robe off my shoulders into a pool around my feet. I had one foot on the shower base, one on the
plush rectangular mat.
At that moment, my
fiancé, Kristopher, knocked from the other side of the bathroom door, which I’d
already locked for privacy.
He had this
tendency often. The first word he would speak to me all day? As I stepped into
the shower. Was it okay if he went out with his friends instead of the dinner
reservation? As I stepped into the shower. His
solution to cancer? As I stepped into the shower.
Clenching my jaw, I
awaited the question.
“Aftershave,
Amelia?” he asked.
I sighed. “You
should have gotten it when I told you I needed to shower. Or while I collected
my creams and lotions and make-up. Or while I sniffed around for a clean towel
in your stash in the corner.”
The soap—as we both
knew—was irrelevant in this argument. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if we
stayed together out of laziness. And maybe we did. Because I hated many
characteristics about my fiancé. Especially his ignorance of this anniversary.
It was September twenty-ninth.
This year I called
my boss’s mobile at the crack of dawn to fake a sick day, playing up my groggy
tone as a terrible sore throat in addition to a nauseous tummy. She told me to
get well, and I swallowed the news with a lump in my throat, guilty for lying. I was an assistant for a
medium-sized advertising business and handled paperwork, invoicing and calls
all day long—it wasn’t like my absence would be of consequence to day-to-day
activities. I’d pick it up tomorrow.
Last year Kristopher
and I made dates apart with our respective best friends, and I’d spent it
eating all the ice cream along a strip of shops down the coast. I’d thrown up
once and then kept on going. Jaffa flavour, I remember.
I’d licked and
slurped the drips down the paper cup, and only thought twice of the
anniversary. Once on the drive down to the beach, and then once as I’d clutched
the sides of a rusty public bin and spewed my guts up to the backdrop of
disgusted gasps from passers-by.
I don’t know what
Kristopher did that day, but he came back when the night sky was a deep
sapphire blue, whisky on his breath as he climbed in bed behind me.
The year before I
took a day off from work and spent $600 buying cocktail dresses I would never
have occasion to wear. The next day I
donated them to charity.
Six years ago
today, I died. Hence, it was the one time
of the year we didn’t forget the date. Unlike some years when we had to shop
for Christmas gifts at two am on
the twenty-fourth.
I stared down the
white door of the bathroom, one foot tingling with the sharp cold of the shower
base, hand clutching the knob. I stepped back onto the tiles, accepting defeat.
Chapter 2
Harry
I woke to star-
and heart-shaped glow-in-the-dark
stickers radiating in neon green from the
ceiling. A ceiling I’d never seen before in my life—typically, I wasn’t the
sort of man to befriend the fancy sticker type of person.
It was pre-dawn,
barely so, the sun a tiny orb just under the horizon through the crack in the curtains.
My world swayed as
I tilted my head. I held my ears in my palms, and my fingers weaved through the
messy state of my bed hair. Under the purple sheets, my stomach churned, and
farther down, morning glory unstuck from the
aforementioned undelightful purple
sheets. I crawled out of the bed.
Author Bio
Writer, kid-at-heart, awesome partner, graphic
design dabbler, book lover.
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