Sneak Peek Wednesday: Breakup Boot Camp by Beth Merlin (Giveaway)

I made my way easily over the first few stones before they started to feel slick from seaweed and algae. I glanced up. The weather was starting to turn, and the ocean was getting a bit rougher. Spray crashed up and over the jetty, soaking everything in its path, including me. I pushed on, making it almost to the halfway point of the jetty. Suddenly, I took a wrong step, slipping off the rock, my ankle getting firmly wedged between two of the boulders.I pulled up with every ounce of strength I could muster, but the pain in my left ankle was too intense. I reached around to my back pocket for my phone before realizing I was device free. No phone, and no way to call for help other than literally calling out for help. I scanned the shoreline. The dark clouds and rough surf had cleared out the beachgoers, and there were very few people left on the sand. Besides, they were way too far to hear me over the crashing waves anyway.

After that, panic quickly set in. I’d told Emmy and Zosia I was going to the beach look for the buried treasure, so they might come looking for me, but how long would that take? An hour? Five? Ten? And what if nobody ever found me? Or at least, not until it was too late?

Then, I started to imagine Sam’s reaction to finding out I’d died on this jetty, taking pleasure in the idea that he’d be guilt-ridden and remorseful, blaming himself for the heartbreak that ultimately, if not actually, led to my untimely death. I was so caught up in my macabre daydream, I barely heard the male voice shouting out to me from the end of the embankment.

“Are you all right?” he called.

“What?” I yelled back over the surf.

“Are you all right?” he repeated.

“My ankle’s caught between the rocks. I think it might be broken.”

“I’ll be right there,” he shouted back.

I squinted to make out the stranger coming to my rescue, but he was still too far away to see anything other than a vague outline. I looked down at my ankle, which appeared to be doubling in size, and tried pulling my leg out again. I managed to shimmy it up a few inches, but that was as far as I could budge it.

“Here, take my hand. I think with the right amount of leverage, I can get you out,” a voice said from over my head.

I looked up and into the light blue eyes of the handsome surfer I’d seen from my room when I first arrived. I searched his face for any shred of recognition from when I thought we’d locked eyes last night. There was none.

“It’s pretty swollen,” I said.

“I’m not going to lie to you, this may hurt. But you can yell as loud as you want, since there’s nobody here to hear you. Okay, on the countdown of five.”

I did a double take. “You want me to count down from five, not three?”

“I want you to really brace yourself.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay.”

“Ready? Five, four, and . . . three!” he said, pulling me up and out from between the rocks.

I rubbed my throbbing ankle. “Ow! Jesus, what happened to counting down from five?”

“I thought it’d be better if you were caught off-guard,” he said as he flashed me a dashing smile, which temporarily made me forget about the ache in my ankle.