Reborn at Eighteen The Billionaire's Second Chance novel Chapter 201

Elara

The chlorinated water closed over my head like a vice, and for one terrible second, all I could hear was the muffled roar of my own panic. My lungs seized. The pool lights above fractured into kaleidoscopic shards as I sank, arms flailing uselessly against the dense, unforgiving liquid that filled my nose and throat with burning chemical fire.

I couldn’t swim.

The thought arrived with crystalline, devastating clarity even as my body thrashed in animal terror, legs kicking wildly at nothing, hands clawing at water that slipped through my fingers like silk. Every instinct screamed at me to reach the surface, but I had no idea how–no muscle memory, no technique, nothing but raw desperation propelling my limbs in chaotic, counterproductive spasms that only dragged me deeper into the blue–lit depths.

My chest was a furnace. Air bubbles streamed from my lips in silver chains, each one carrying away seconds I didn’t have. The pressure in my skull built and built, a crushing vise that turned my vision spotty at the edges, black creeping in like spilled ink. Above me, distorted through the water’s surface, I could make out the blurred shapes of people–standing, watching, some with phones raised–but their faces were unreadable, their voices reduced to underwater

static.

I’m going to die here.

The thought arrived with a strange, cold detachment even as terror clawed at my throat. I’m going to drown in front of all these people, and they’re going to film it, and tomorrow it’ll be another headline: Elara Vance, the girl who couldn’t even survive a pool party.

My arms were already weakening, the frantic paddling slowing despite my mind’s screaming commands. Water pressed against my eardrums until they ached, and my lungs spasmed in involuntary attempts to breathe, each convulsion bringing me closer to the moment when my body would override my will and inhale liquid death.

Swim. Swim, goddamn it.

But I didn’t know how. I’d never learned. I’d been sixteen years old, standing at the edge of the Blackwood Estate’s indoor pool in a modest navy one–piece while the Olympic–level coach Mr. Vane Senior had hired looked me up and down with barely concealed disdain, his gaze lingering on my thin frame, my cheap swimsuit, the nervous way I clutched the blue foam kickboard to my chest like a shield.

“The deep end,” he’d said, already turning away to answer his phone–some “important call that couldn’t wait. “Just hold onto the board and practice your kicks. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

But he hadn’t come back in fifteen minutes. He’d left me there, alone in water far over my head, clinging to that flimsy piece of foam while my legs cramped and burned from treading water I didn’t know how to navigate. When my left calf had seized in a vicious charley horse, the pain so sharp I’d gasped and lost my grip on the board, I’d gone under for the first time in my life.

Sixteen–year–old me had clawed at the water, lungs screaming, vision tunneling, certain I was about to die in that pristine pool while the coach chatted on his phone in the hallway, not even aware that the charity case he’d been hired to teach was drowning ten feet from the edge.

And then–then–there had been the sudden explosive crash of water, the strong arms wrapping around my waist, hauling me up into blessed, gasping air, Julian had been nineteen, home from university for the summer, and the look on his face when he’d pulled me onto the pool deck had been something I’d never seen before or since: raw, unfiltered terror giving way to fury so intense his hands had shaken as he’d pressed them to my shoulders, my face, checking me over with a gentleness that contradicted the white–knuckled rage in his voice.

“What the hell was he thinking?” Julian had snarled, not at me but at the coach who’d come running at the sound of the splash, his phone still in his hand. “She could have died. Do you understand that? She could have fucking died while you were-”

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Reborn at Eighteen: The Billionaire’s Second Chance

Chapter 202

But I hadn’t been listening to the rest. I’d been sobbing into Julian’s soaked shirt, shaking so hard my teeth chattered, and when I’d finally managed to choke out the words-“I can’t… I can’t do this, please, I don’t want to learn anymore, please don’t make me“-he’d held me tighter and said, voice rough but certain, “Then you don’t have to. I won’t let anyone force you. And I won’t let you fall in again. I promise.”

I promise.

The memory shattered as my back hit the sloped wall of the pool, jarring me back to the present. My lungs were on fire now, every cell screaming for oxygen I couldn’t give them. I tried to push off the wall, to angle myself upward, but my limbs were lead–heavy and uncoordinated, and the surface seemed impossibly far away, a shimmering barrier I’d never reach.

He’s not coming this time.

The thought was bitter and final. Julian was up there somewhere with Sloane, his pregnant fiancée, the woman carrying his child–the woman he’d chosen, the woman he’d always choose. He’d seen me tonight surrounded by half–naked men, holding a drink, looking every inch the girl Sloane had painted me as, and he’d walked away without a second glance. Why would he save me now? Why would he even notice I was drowning when he had everything he wanted standing beside him, perfect and untouchable and his?

I have to save myself.

The realization cut through the panic like a blade. There was no rescue coming. There was no strong hand reaching down to pull me to safety. There was only me, alone in the water, with seconds left before my body gave up entirely and dragged me down to the bottom where I’d stay until someone finally decided I was worth fishing out.

Move. Kick. Do something.

I forced my arms to paddle again, choppy and graceless, more splashing than swimming. My legs kicked out in desperate, uncoordinated beats that seemed to do nothing but exhaust me further. I had no idea if I was even moving toward the surface or just churning in place, but I couldn’t stop, couldn’t give in,

because the alternative was-

Something grabbed my ankle,

The shock of it sent a fresh jolt of adrenaline through my system. I twisted, trying to see what had caught me, and through the distorted underwater haze I made out a shape–a person–Sloane–her face eerily calm despite the chaos, her hand clamped around my lower leg with surprising strength.

For one confused second, I thought she was trying to help me.

Then she pulled.

Down.

My eyes widened in horror as I felt myself being dragged deeper, away from the light, away from air. Sloane’s other hand shot up above the surface, waving in what would look like a panicked gesture to anyone watching from above, but her face–her face was cold and focused, her lips moving in words I couldn’t hear but could read with chilling clarity:

“Go to hell, you fucking leech.”

She yanked harder, and I went under completely, the last pocket of air escaping my lips in a stream of bubbles. I tried to kick free, to wrench my leg from her grip, but she was a trained swimmer and I was a drowning girl, and the imbalance was laughable. She knew exactly what she was doing, exactly how to make it look like I was the one dragging her down while she “fought to get free.

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Chapter 202

Above the water, muffled but unmistakable, I heard her scream: “Elara, let go! Stop pulling me under! Someone help, she’s–she’s trying to drown me!”

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