Page 65 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

The second her hand touched the water, she ripped off the scarf I’d made from my linen shirt and screamed.

I shut my eyes and drew in a long breath. If I didn’t drown her now, I never would.

She panicked, her arms thrashing wildly in every direction, only pushed the raft deeper beneath the surface.

“We have to swim to shore,” I said.

The raft had caught on a rock, leaving one end pinned in place while the other tilted upward. The raised end gave the two of us somewhere to stand, and for the moment, that was enough.

I needed to calm Gabriella first and draw the shark away from us.

I pulled her up beside me, and said. “Just look at the land.”

I took a deep breath and set the two small juice boxes and the loaf of bread beside her. The rest of our supplies had already drifted away. Then I climbed up, grabbed a paddle, and shoved the raft back into the water.

It floated away exactly as I’d hoped. So did the shark.

Before I straightened up, I stuffed the bread and juice boxes into my pockets, trying to save what little food we had left.

The moment I stepped back to her, her arms wrapped tightly around me.

I knew she was terrified, but she almost shoved both of us straight into the mouth of a sea monster.

“Calm down,” I said, though I think I was saying it as much to myself. That familiar irritation was creeping back whenever it came to her.

I turned her gently, holding her by the hips. One arm slipped around her shoulders, my hand resting against her jaw to keep her facing the island, while the other held her close.

“Focus on the land, can you?”

She nodded.

“Now breathe in.”

The breeze carried her scent of vanilla towards me, and before I realized it, I’d closed my eyes and breathed it in.

“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered, trembling beneath my hands.

“You can,” I said. “You have to.”

She nodded again.

I recognized this stretch of water.

This was the shark bay the sailors had talked about one night during one of my parties. One of them had claimed that if a shark came too close, you could shove it away with your hands.

Maybe.

But how were you supposed to push away a beast nearly four meters long?

The smaller sharks circling below us were barely half a meter, but the real monster surfaced again, bursting from the water before clamping its jaws around the drifting raft a few meters away.

It was now or never.

“We have to do it now,” I said, a little louder this time, panic already creeping into my voice.

She nodded.

We slipped into the sea as quietly as we could, careful not to splash and draw any more attention to ourselves.