Someone screams—could be me, could be all of us.
We brace.
The storm is here.
THERE IS SOMETHINGabout cold water and the way it stings against warm flesh that is absolute.
Or maybe it’s the way it feels so incredibly huge against my tiny human form, like it could just swallow me up and not a single person in the world would notice, because to it, I am insignificant. Nothing more than a blip, forgettable to it, another soul sucked into the depths.
Yet, my body still flails around, trying to stay afloat, even though the very idea of staying up seems pointless.
I can’t decide if the burning in my lungs is better or worse than the icy needles scraping my skin, but both are preferable to the idea of letting go. Ace would never forgive me for that—not after he made me swear to keep my head above water, no matter what.
A stranger who wants me to survive.
I blink and cough, unable to see a damn thing in the pitch-black night. I jerk my head above the waves, and cough up a mouthful of ocean. Someone is screaming—no, wait, that’s me. Almost funny. My limbs are so cold they ache, but I force them to move, to splash and churn and keep my head above water.
A hand appears out of nowhere, grabs me under the arm hard enough to bruise. “I got you.”
Ace.
Somehow in the darkness, he found me.
“Aggie,” I croak. “Tatiana...”
“We got ‘em.”
I cling to his jacket, trying not to drown him, but also needing my head to stay above water. He has something wrapped in his hand, and it takes me a minute to realize it is the lifeboat.Somehow, through all of it, he got hold of the one thing that could possibly save our lives.
“I’m goin’ to need you to help me get you on this boat,” he growls and then pushes me towards it.
A wave smashes into us from behind. I nearly lose him, but Ace’s grip tightens and pulls me with him, and now we’re both under, spinning in the dark. My chest tightens, desperate for air, but his hand is still there, grounding me even as we’re dragged down.
I think about letting go, just for a second. Letting myself sink, arms out, just allowing the world to slip away. Instead, I kick hard, aimless, and suddenly my head is above water and I’m coughing and gasping at the same time.
Ace pulls me to the lifeboat, and Kellen reaches down and hauls me up as if I weigh nothing.
Aggie is bawling, Rachel is screaming, and somewhere behind me someone is making a sound I have never heard a human being make before. The water around us is black and it goes on forever. My hands won’t stop shaking. I press them flat against the floor of the lifeboat and tell myself to breathe, just breathe, but the air tastes like salt and bile.
We’re alive.
I don’t know what that means yet.
For a long time after, there is only the sound of water, the slapping and sucking of waves around our lifeboat. The wind changed, just as the storm got close. That saved our lives. It didn’t stop one boat capsizing and forcing us all onto the other, only to have it capsize too, and yet somehow, those guys got us back on. With nothing but a few LED torches, and the three of them. If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
Nobody speaks.
Aggie, Tati and I lie across each other in a tangle, pressed down by cold, exhaustion, and something heavier than both,fear. Tatiana coughs, a thin, wet sound, and tries to sit up. Her hair is pasted to her face and blood seeps down from a cut on her scalp, trailing dark through the paleness of her cheek. Rachel is sitting in the front of the boat, her knees jammed up to her chest, hands laced in front of her.
Iris is lying down, and the guys are all just sitting, silent.
Adrian is clutching his lifejacket, staring at the ground.
I think that shook even him up.
“Is it over?” I croak, scared to even ask.
“It’s over,” Zeke murmurs. “But the waves will stay like that for a few hours more.”
