I hesitated, then said, “Front. If we tip, I want to be the one who goes under first.”
He laughed. “That’s the spirit.” He helped me into the shallow, and I braced myself as the boat wobbled beneath my weight. I gripped the gunwales and tried not to look back at the shore, where I knew Caiden was watching.
Dante climbed in behind, pushed us off, and we glided into the mist. For a while, he said nothing, just paddled with a steady rhythm that felt like a heartbeat. The water was black and cold, the trees crowding the edge so close their reflections seemed to double the world.
“Just trust me,” he spoke as he observed my shakiness. “This is a peaceful lake. It won’t be like how it was in Colorado.”
I nodded along to his words, trying to swallow down the panic that was rising. The water was quiet, rippling with ease. But I knew how quickly it could turn to swirling and dark.
I shoved the panic down.
I gripped the paddle and stared at the lake, letting my own reflection blur and double with the sky. For one blessed minute, I was just a body in a boat, cold enough, buoyant enough, to keep floating.
Then the current tilted us sideways, a little cross-chop from a motorboat a mile off. The canoe rocked, and I was instantly back in the gorge: the roar of white water in my ears.
I sucked in a breath, and braced my feet against the rib of the boat. I could feel the panic blooming in my chest, a fat, prickling flower, ready to choke out everything else.
Dante must’ve felt the shift in me, because he set his paddle down and reached forward, fingers curling gently around my forearm. “Hey. You’re doing great,” he said, voice just above a whisper.
“I’m not,” I said. The words scraped my throat. “I’m freaking out.”
“Yeah, but you’re still here.” He squeezed my arm, then let go. “You can close your eyes if you want. I’ll steer.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted to see what was coming.
It wasn’t rational. I knew, on some level, that Dante wouldn’t let me drown. I also knew that panic didn’t care about logic, or the steady drip of assurance in his voice.
If anything, the sureness of his presence made the panic worse, because it called into question every time in my life I’d been left to fend for myself, every time my mother was too drunk to show up and every time my father’s voice was the only thing louder than the fear.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “Dante?”
He stopped paddling, let us drift. “Yeah?”
“I fucking hate this,” I blurted, voice too loud in the open air. “I feel like if I look down, I’ll get sucked under. I know it’s dumb, but?—”
“It’s not dumb,” he said, and there was no laughter in him now, only a careful gentleness that made me want to curl into him, allow him to be my safety net.
He reached out, but I jerked my arm away, the jolt of his skin on mine making the canoe shudder. “I’m fine,” I lied. I could feel the terror worming through my back teeth. The lake was a slab of black glass beneath us, and every paddle stroke felt like it was cracking the surface open.
I didn’t see the thing in the water at first. Maybe it had been pacing us the whole time, or maybe it only noticed us once we’d drifted far enough from shore that the only sounds were our own breaths and the faint whisper of trees.
What I did notice was the sudden, shuddering splash at my left shoulder, a froth of white water as something huge and unseen breached the surface, then vanished, leaving only a ripple and a spreading ring of disturbance.
“Holy shit,” I said, my heart hammering in my chest. “Did you see that?”
“Probably just a catfish,” Dante said, but his voice was a half-step too bright, and I could hear the edge in it. The canoe drifted sideways, caught in the wake of whatever monster had just sliced the water. “You okay?”
I wasn’t okay. I was not fucking okay. The memory of Blake, his hands choking the air from my lungs, the way the river in Colorado had closed over my head and made everything go silent, all of it rose up and pressed against my chest like a second, tighter ribcage.
I tried to breathe, but it came out ragged, like something had already started to drown me.
There’s something about being so close to what you fear that makes your body root for its own destruction; I could feel the urge to tip myself over, to let the shock of cold erase everything.
Just as quickly, shame followed on its heels: don’t ruin this, don’t make Dante worry, don’t make Caiden right about you.
But then, without warning, the surface of the water fractured again. The sea creature broke through once more with a slapping, sudden sound, sending up a spatter of spray.
My body reacted before I could stop it: legs jerking, hands scrambling for purchase. The canoe rocked, overcorrected, and pitched me over the edge.
