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“Okay,” I tell the sky. “I hear you.”

I move for the halyard to drop the sail when the boom slews around on a vicious gust and kisses me across the temple with all the tenderness of a brick.

Light detonates in my skull. The deck tilts out from under me. One second, I’m cursing, the next, I’m not on the boat anymore.

Cold is a slap and a watery grip. The lake grabs every inch of me, shoves up my nose, into my ears. It tastes of iron and algae. I kick for the surface, breach, gulp air, and try to spot the boat. She’s already drifting, a white smear in the rain.

My training takes over. I slap the EPIRB with numb fingers. The locator against my chest buzzes and goes silent like it’s thinking about it. The next wave breaks over my head, and my stomach heaves. I swallow it down because drowning is undignified, and I refuse to go out that way.

I yell for help, but the wind eats it.

My head throbs. My vision tunnels. The edges of the world go soft and gray and far away, and I think: Well, shit. Dad gets to be right.

Arms fold around me.

For a second, I’m convinced the lake has decided to evolve hands. Then I blink water out of my eyes and see her.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Red hair, darkened to wine by the storm. Eyes the blue of a clear noon sky, focused and determined. A face I’ve only ever seen in dreams—except dreams aren’t supposed to have the strength to tow a full-grown man through a cross chop like he’s a mildly inconvenient log.

I grab the line she shoves into my hands, and between her push and my mostly cooperative limbs, we reach the boat. She braces me and hauls my arms over the rail. I gain purchase with one knee, then the other, flopping onto the deck like a man who will absolutely feel this tomorrow.

Her palm skims my cheek. Warm in the cold. Gentle in the violence. I open my mouth to say thank you—Who are you? How are you?—and she leans down and kisses me.

It isn’t a CPR kiss. It isn’t you’re dying, breathe; it’s you’re alive, remember? It’s salt and rain and something that tastes like yes. For a crazy beat of a second, I think about wedding rings and halls full of relatives and how none of it has ever felt like this.

Then she’s gone. A flash of red sliding over the gunwale, a swirl of water, a ripple that might be a tail if tails on humans were a thing, and I wasn’t concussed.

“Wait,” I try, but the word is a croak.

The deck tilts again. The rain is a curtain. Somewhere, my EPIRB dutifully pings its little heart out, and the locator at my chest decides to take a nap.

I clutch at the slick deck and laugh—because if I don’t laugh, I’ll hurl—and let the dark come in on a rush like a wave.