“I know you’re not wrong.”
It wasn’t exactly encouraging, but I barreled on.
“I had Tempest and the rescue do some magical tests, and she sent a sample to the university up the coast. I didn’t tell her the sample was from our beach, not yet anyway. But she confirmed it. There’s plastic in the sand, in the water. I’m sure it’s in the fish. And it wasn’t in this.” I pointed to a different jar of moonwater I’d collected during last month’s full moon.
I wrapped my hands around the contaminated jar, staring down at the shimmer inside.
“It had to have come from the RipTide bottles. The lab results aren’t back until tonight, but I’m sure they’ll confirm it.”
Chase was so still he almost looked like a mannequin.
“And then what will you do?”
I rapped my fingers on the counter.
“I’ll publish the report, but a lab report and a local rescue versus a beverage giant’s legal team…you know I can’t win that. We can’t win that.”
“We?”
I couldn’t read him at all, and it felt like the ground was opening up between us.
“Ask me for the next part.”
I was shaking.
“Even if somehow we could get this out, the competition is tomorrow. Thousands of people, thousands of bottles dissolving in the water. But…” I’d never felt my chest so tight. “Saturday the competition’s on a national live broadcast. You’ll do interviews, win or lose. Thirty seconds. You could tell the truth in their logo, to everyone. They couldn’t walk that back.”
He didn’t move.
“Selena.”
“It’s the same fight we’ve been?—”
“It is not the same fight.”
His voice didn’t rise. It was completely flat, and that was worse.
“Messing with some tents and costing RipTide money is a prank. It was deniable. What you’re describing is me detonating their flagship product on their own broadcast, with their patch on my chest. They won’t eat that cost. They’ll end me. That’s an easy breach of contract. They’ll take back?—”
He stopped himself.
Don’t run. Please.
“Take back what, Chase?”
Three heartbeats, four…five.
Everything was silent.
“Three years ago…well, you know. Everyone knows. I nearly got my best friend killed because my sister had gotten sick and I didn’t know what to do. My family wouldn’t listen, and everything was too loud, too damn loud. Being El Tiburón is the only thing that ever made it stop. So I did the dangerous thing, and he followed me like he always did. He nearly died, and his career ended.” He looked up. “RipTide’s money pays for his care. It pays for my sister’s too. That’s all that matters. That I…repay that debt.”
He dragged his hands through his hair.
“I have enough wins, Selena. I’m not out here for me. Every wave I ride pays down what I did. Everything else is noise.”
“Everything else?”
I would not cry.
