Page 27 of Coming Home

I hadn't gone face-down to play a prank. That was a five-minute hypoxic hold I'd been running since I was a scrawny fifteen-year-old trying to expand my lung capacity. It's a recovery drill—you empty the chambers, let the buoyancy take the weight of your spine, and just exist in the gray quiet beneath the surface. It's the closest thing to an altar a guy like me has. And lately, when I was down there in the dark, I'd been archiving it, same as I always did during those counts.

Memorizing the exact weight of the pressure against my ears. The bite of chlorine at the back of my throat, sharp enough to taste for hours after.

The way the light looks like shattered green glass from ten feet down. I was saving the files. There was a morning coming when the lights would go out, and I wanted the memories to be enough.

I didn't know she was tracking the lane. I knew she was in the building—hell, she was the only body on that concrete deck I've cared about in half a decade—but she'd been sitting forty feet back against the cinderblock, aggressively pretending her phone was the most interesting thing in North America while stealing looks through her hair when she thought I was blind to them.

I saw them. My vision might be narrowing into a tight, dark tunnel, the world going soft and blurry at the margins, but my eyes found Emma Carrow every time.

I just hadn't accounted for the panic. And I sure as hell hadn't expected the splash.

She'd jumped.

Emma. The girl who hadn't touched a competitive pool since she quit. She'd kicked off her shoes and dove into twelve feet of water fully clothed, her stroke alive with an efficiency that scared me—that told me her muscle memory didn't give a damn about what her brain was trying to forget.

I was still processing the sound of her entry when I opened my eyes under the glare and found her face an inch from mine on the tile. Her wet hair dripping onto my collarbone, her small hand cupping my jaw, her chest dropping as she prepared to force her own air into my lungs.

I should've been the bigger man. I should've cleared my throat and said, "Hey, it's just a hold drill, I'm good."

Instead, my mouth curved into that stupid, instinctive smirk, because the sight of Emma Carrow hovering over me—flushed, terrified, and so fiercely alive I could feel the heat radiating off her skin—was the best thing I'd looked at in three years. My brain shorted out before my decency could throw the breaker.

Yeah. I deserved every single millimeter of this silence.

The bathroom door groaned. She emerged with a towel draped over her neck, her hair damp and dark, wearing a fresh cotton shirt from her pink bag. Her expression carried enough ice to preserve beef for the winter. She marched into the kitchen holding two heavy bundles of fabric—the oversized gray hoodie from last night and the spare clothes from the pool—and rammed them straight into my breastbone hard enough to knock my heels off the stool.

"These are yours," she said, her voice clipped, sharp as a razor. "Take them. I don't want your things."

I set the damp pile onto the granite, clearing my throat.

"Em. I was an idiot."

"Finally," she snapped, her chin tilting up. "A moment of lucidity."

"I'm sorry. Seriously."

"You should be."

"It was a bad joke."

"It was a pathetic excuse for humor, Ralph. I've heard Theo give sponsor pitches with more comedic timing."

She held out the key fob. "Drive your own circus from now on. I quit."

She tossed them.

My right hand came up on raw, athletic reflex. But the keys came at a different angle, and they sailed straight through the shadow between my index and middle finger, clattering against the white tile floor.

The sound was massive in the empty kitchen.

Emma stared at the keys lying between my feet. Then her eyes drifted up to my face, then back down to the floor.

"Really?" she asked, one eyebrow creeping up. "Your catching skills have deteriorated in the last thirty minutes."

"Or maybe your aim's getting worse," I lied.

Whenever I dropped a pen or missed a handoff from a trainer, I used an excuse. She just thought I was clumsy from the training load. I reached down, scooped the metal up, and shoved it into my pocket.

"Suit yourself," she murmured, turning on her bare heel.