Read Online In Too Deep by Michelle Kemper Brownlow - Free Book Online Page A

walked to the elevator. When the doors closed behind me and the elevator headed down, it hit me that this was as close to Hell as I had ever been before. I just hoped the doors opened at the ground floor and not the real place. Although, I wasn’t sure how different those two places would feel at that moment. No matter where I went, the hole in my heart was still gaping. I couldn’t outrun it. I couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t sleep it off. I would have to face this head on, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to do it. Dammit. Why did he fight so hard for me that summer at Murphy’s if he was just going to turn around and cheat? He hadn’t changed. He was still a man-whore, and I was still confused.
    Once I broke up with Joel, and Noah and I were exclusive, I never imagined my life changing again. I just figured you find your future husband in college. They call it the MRS. degree. I thought I’d found him.
    Now what?
    I sat in my Child Development class in a daze. I could have still been on my bed in Noah’s torn UT t-shirt and a pair of ripped sweats for all my thumping heart and racing mind knew. My stomach churned. He cheated. I didn’t know how to digest it, how to make sense of what I was supposed to do now. Two full days had come and gone since Friday night, and the pain was still so raw.
    It was a dangerous thing to do, but I let my mind travel into the depths of what Noah told me Saturday night. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I suppose I had to focus on it to process and get over it. Dr. Charles’ class probably wasn’t the best place to do it, but I couldn’t stop. It came like a huge wave out of nowhere.
    Rolling through my mind were all the situations that should have been red flags for me but somehow I’d missed them.
    Last fall he went back to school while I was stuck at home commuting to UT Martin and counting down the days until I moved into my dorm on the Knoxville campus. One night he called to ask me if it would bother me if he had a girl as a study partner for his Trigonometry class. Her name was Steph. He explained that the professor assigned the partners and he didn’t want to make waves. My red flag should have been the fact that he could have cared less about making waves. Noah thrived on riding the waves he made. He just wanted her as his partner. But I was too naive and trusting. I never had to have my guard up with Joel, and now I may never let it down.
    The next red flag should have been the night he showed up drunk at our apartment after a Sigma Chi/Kappa Delta social. The second he walked in I saw a deep red smudge near the collar of his shirt. Lipstick. He assured me it wasn’t. “Some drunk bitch ran into me with her face,” he slurred. I used my fingernails to scrape the color from his white shirt but it was a futile attempt. Why did it not hit me at that moment? It was Madison’s lips I went to bed with that night. I actually believed the story about the run in with a drunk girl.
    I guess I could give myself some credit for the Ivy revelation. I did see a red flag even though no one else did. Friday night, I trusted my gut enough to call him out and I did. And he didn’t lie. He told me straight up…every ugly detail. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for me to have significant trust issues.
    That’s when it hit me…I knew of Steph, saw traces of Madison, and tasted Ivy. Things got worse as our story unfolded. I laid my head on my desk so no one would see the tears pouring from my eyes. Things couldn’t get worse. I was broken. They had to start getting better or I may just dissolve in my own sadness.

    The sand wafted into clouds of pale as my body surrendered to the slow pull of the deep. My heart and lungs fought to do their jobs in my chest as the water pressure threatened to squeeze me into oblivion. My lungs ached, but water didn’t enter them. It was like limbo between life and death and someone was taking their time making up their mind as to whether