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As I watch her blonde hair disappear under the surface of the water, I ignore the twisting in my gut. I did so good for so long, pushing away feeling and emotion. I hard-wired my brain to imagine Davos straddling my unconscious girlfriend every time Monica popped into my mind. I found companionship in women content with a night of good things. I learned to crave darker interactions because they fed the beast in me created by my rage and kept it dormant.
And in a matter of weeks, this girl has come into my life and fucked with everything. I’ve been too easy on her, and she’s made me soft in general. It’s past time I remedied that, so I push the guilt away and turn to fix myself a drink while I wait for the sound of her gasping as she breaks the surface.
It happens sooner than I anticipate, the splash of the water followed by a sharp inhale of air. She’ll just be climbing on the deck from the ladder, dripping wet and pissed as a drowned cat, no doubt, by the time I pour myself some bourbon.
Except, when I walk back onto the deck with my glass in hand and a smirk on my lips, she’s still not there. Panic strikes me like lightning as I consider the possibility that I went too far. What if she hit her head? What if her shorts snagged on the side of the boat and she can’t free herself? I run to the bow of the boat, looking over the side in search of her, of any sign that she ever came up at all. But there’s nothing.
I’ve set my glass down and stripped my shirt off, throwing it on the wood that’s slick with rain. I’m just about to dive in when a flash of lightning illuminates the space beyond the lights, and I see her… swimming away from me.
We’re still docked near the shore, but instead of swimming for the ladder on the back of the boat or the dock that would take her into the city, she is swimming further out to sea… in the middle of a thunderstorm.
What the hell is she doing?
“Claire!” I call after her, cupping my hands around my mouth in an attempt to be heard over the howl of the wind and the waves breaking against the hull.
I assume she doesn’t hear me, as another peel of thunder takes that exact moment to clap around us. God, this woman is insane. She has to know she’s going in the wrong direction. What does she really hope to gain by swimming into the abyss?
My irritation piqued, I hoist the anchor and decide I’m going to have to chase her. Of course, it’s sketchy in this weather to motor next to an unprotected body, but she’ll likely kill herself swimming out like that. At least this way, Rhea will have a body to bury, because I’m going to fucking kill this girl.
Squinting to see through the onslaught, I find her and lock my gaze on the shape of her head bobbing along the surface as I chase her. She wasn’t lying. She is a great swimmer. I can’t fathom how she got so far away from me in such a short time.
But no matter how fast Claire is, she can’t outswim the boat. I catch her in a matter of moments, cutting her off by whipping in front of her so that she has no choice but to acknowledge me. I see her scowl when she notices me, but she doesn’t even hesitate before turning to continue her path parallel to mine.
“Claire!” I yell, my anger swelling like the waves in the distance behind us. It’s been raining for hours—it was before we fell asleep. But the storm only seems to be growing in intensity, the whitecaps in the distance looking distinctly precarious.
Whether she doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care, I get no answer as she continues to swim away from me as if she’s just doing laps in my family’s pool. I could follow beside her, waiting until she tires and sucks up her pride to climb aboard. But I’m not in the mood to wait.
She doesn’t hear me jump in behind her. I’m sure that she’d turn back if she had, but she just continues forward, fully focused on staying moving. She should be fully focused on keeping her head above the water though. “Claire!” I growl, anger burning in all of my limbs as she ignores me, so recklessly swimming on.
Without the protection of the boat to break the waves, they’re growing choppier, faster, and bigger as they break around her small form. And she fucking swims fast, putting more distance between us than I would have even considered possible.
I’m definitely going to kill her when I catch her. Wrap my hands around that little throat and use that grip to shake her, maybe knock some sense into her.
“Just fucking stop!” I yell after her. She may be a good swimmer, but she’s been in the water longer than me, and the waves push her around much more easily. She’s expending at least twice as much energy as I am just to stay afloat.
Finally, she must tire a little… or maybe she just hears me for the first time, because she turns back to face me as if she’s surprised I’m there. I get a moment as lightning forks overhead to take in her parted lips that I’m going to punish once I catch her.
And then a wave crashes between us and she disappears entirely.
If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. The lightning disappears just as she does, leaving only the darkness between us and the falling rain, the crashing waves.
Fuck. I swim faster, my heart hammering harder than it ever has as I try to close the distance between where she was when she went under and where I started from. But without anything around to serve as a marker, it’s impossible to tell. I keep watch for any sign of her—a flash of her silvery hair, a glimpse of her jean shorts. But there’s nothing, so I take a deep breath and plunge beneath a wave as it breaks, looking for those same things below the surface.
It's too dark. The ocean is pitch black at night when there are no stars or lights to distinguish anything in the abyss. It’s impossible to see where the surface even is as I glance up at it a second before pushing myself deeper. The drop-off here is steep, and I push myself as deep as I can go before the ache in my chest forces me up.
It seems to take longer to get to the surface than it did to push myself under, but when I finally break it, I suck in a breath of relief, trying to get all the air I can into my chest so that I can dive back down.
A wave crashes into me before I can go back below. Unprepared, the force knocks me loose, sending me cascading through the water. I have just enough warning to fill my lungs with air before my head goes under and the darkness returns.
It's peaceful under the water, even as I’m thrown around in the surf. The angry sounds of the sea and sky above don’t reach down here. It’s the most profound silence I’ve ever known. And yet, I know not to be entranced with it. My chest still burns with the need for air.
And Claire.
I get control of myself enough to break the surface again, spinning around to see how far that set me back. I can’t even see the shore from where I am, but the boat isn’t too far. I can get there in a matter of minutes. But if I don’t find Claire, she won’t have minutes. It could already be too late, and that makes my chest ache harder than the need for air did.
The lightning that’s been dancing in the sky, painting the clouds silver in intervals, strikes somewhere in the not-so-distant space beyond my boat. It offers me the briefest chance to see a flash of something silvery before we’re plunged in darkness again. But that flash is all I need. I swim toward it without abandon, eyes locked on the space that the night has reclaimed, moving on instinct because it’s all I’ve got.
My fingers tangle in her hair first, the web of it drawing me in. In the dark, it could be anything, but I fist it in my hand, using it to draw her against me. And as I drag her through the water, it’s clear that it’s not just anything. I’ve got her.
