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The cold slams the air out of me before I'm even under. Then the water closes over my head, green and roaring, and salt shoots up my nose. Something huge slides past in the murk. The hull of the boat, big as a Daniels and completely indifferent. The rope wrenches my ankle once more, then let’s go.

It took my boot instead of me.

I start kicking, but I don't know which way the surface is, and my other boot is full of water, weighing me down. Panic claws at my throat as my lungs start throbbing painfully from the lack of oxygen. Something enormous hits the water beside me.

An arm comes around my ribs and hauls. The green gets lighter. Then there's air.

I come up coughing my lungs out, dragging in some much-needed oxygen and flailing wildly. Aiden’s voice is right at my ear, more growl than words. "Stop fighting me. I've got you. Kick when I kick."

I try to follow his order, but I’m shaking so hard it’s difficult to get my limbs to move with any measure of coordination. It's maybe twenty feet to the ladder. It takes a year.

Marcus and Tommy haul me onto the decking by my wrists, and I roll on my hands and knees on the boards, bringing up half the harbor, hair stuck across my face, one boot gone. Diesel is losing his mind two feet away. Aiden comes up the ladder behind me like the water's an inconvenience.

"Anything hurt?" Marcus asks anxiously, crouched by my side, a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"No. No, I'm fine. I don’t need-" My teeth are chattering too hard to finish the lie.

Then Aiden's there, and his hands are on me. He pulls me up off my knees, turns me around, and checks me over like a hull. Cold hands run down my arms, press at my ankle, tip my chin up with two fingers to look at the scrape on my jaw. His hands are freezing from the harbor and every place he touches heats up anyway, hot handprints blooming on cold skin, and I lean into it without meaning to. Half-drowned, shaking, terrified, and my body still files him under warmth. There's probably a word for what's wrong with me. I wonder if it requires a prolonged stay in a mental institute.

He finds nothing broken, and the care burns off in one breath.

"You stood inside a running line." Quiet. Furious. "That boat was in gear. Six more feet and it would have taken you under the hull."

"I know. I didn't see-"

"You didn't look."

"I'm sorry. I was trying to-"

"You don't know this dock! You don't know anything about boats. You've been here two weeks, and I shouldn’t have let you anywhere near the lines because-" He stops. Whatever's on the other side of that sentence, he swallows it whole. "Marcus. Get her inside."

Everyone is very carefully looking at anything except the two of us. Tommy has gone full sightseeing tourist, entranced by the sunlight on the water. Even the gulls shut up.

I'm shaking too hard to be dignified, dripping a lake onto his dock, and I'm not going to cry in front of the crew. So I say the only thing left in my head, and it comes out ragged.

"You jumped in after me."

He stops, half-turned, dripping, and looks at me like that's the stupidest statement he's ever heard.

"Of course I did."

Then he walks away up the dock, soaked through, without looking back.

Marcus gets a towel around my shoulders. Diesel sticks close to my side, licking harbor water off my fingers, moving every time I do. Tommy hands me my folder. The invoices are ruined of course.

I’m glad Aiden isn’t here to see it and tell me he told me so.

Marcus walks me up to the office like I might make a run for it and dive back into the water.

He digs a crew sweatshirt out of the parts room, faded navy, three sizes too big, smelling heavily of dust and oil fumes. Right now, all I care about is the fact that it’s warm. My spare sneakers are still in my truck from the move. By the time I'm dry and dressed, he's made me a coffee I didn't ask for and planted himself in the doorway.

"Carol's going to hear about this," he warns. "You'll be eating casserole till Labor Day."

"That’s a terrible threat. You’ll have me falling into the harbor weekly."

He smiles at the joke, but we can both hear how wobbly my voice is.

"Sit for a while. You’re still shaken up. Don’t worry about the folder, we can dry it." He says it like the paperwork is what has me still falling to pieces. It isn't.