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Staying as far from the railings as I can, I hunt through the ship until I find Victor’s hiding spot. He scrambles to his feet, shaking his head. “No. If you wanna fucking see dry land again, you will turn around and walk away.”
He looks as queasy as I feel, eyes haunted, and a sliver of doubt forces its way into my convictions.
I hunt for words, struggling to fuel the righteous anger that brought me here. “We need to get some things straight. I’m not going to be the rope in a tug-of-war between you and your father. He gave me a job to do and I came here to do it.”
His smirk-shaped mouth turns up at the corner as he stands there, shifting his weight with the movement of the boat. “I mean it. Go away.”
The sleep deprivation, the stress, the gnawing feeling I might have made the wrong choice—it all spills out in a rush of words. “This is what I mean. You’re always running away, hiding, getting high. You threw away a legendary career over a suspension because you couldn’t admit you were wrong.” I thump my fist against my chest. “I have problems, too. Big ones. And it hurts but I fucking face them.”
Despite his warning, he approaches me. Before I know it, he’s walked me backward until my ass is pressed to the railing, trapping me there. His cheek brushes against my neck as he speaks into my ear. “People need you, Ethan. They look for you when you’re not there. You can sleep at night.” I can feel him breathing hard against my chest. “Is that not enough for you? You have to come here anduseme to get more? Drain me dry?”
I try to move, but he grips the railing on either side of me. His words in the car last night come back to me, words I forgot too easily.Remember, I bite.
“Look. It was a bad day, but it’s over; we’re going back to Naples.”
“Careful.” He tilts down his sunglasses, looks up into my eyes. Today, his look light blue, like the furthest away part of the sky. “We’re not there yet.”
I look over my shoulder at the uninterrupted water. “I don’t see any icebergs.”
Catching the tip of his tongue in his teeth, he smiles at me. “Too bad there’s only one life boat and you’re the least important person here.”
Too quickly for my mind to process, his hands collide with my chest and send me backwards and upside down into the warm sea. Panic and water wrap around my limbs, heavy and weightless at the same time, and in a flash I’m back in Lake Chelan, half-conscious, choking on lungfuls of water as I try to search for Danny below the spot he disappeared.
My head breaks the water and through blurry eyes I see Victor standing there, watching. I’m too scared to feel scared, like I’m already dead and looking back at how it happened. And of all the regrets I feel for myself, my mom, my friends, there’s one more that I can’t quite understand. Something that tells me maybe fate was real after all, that I might have been the only person who could reach him, that I’ll spend the last minutes of my life wishing I had listened to the part of me that knew he was telling the truth.
Water fills my mouth as I go under, but I fight my way back to the surface just in time to see him take a life preserver off the wall and toss it lazily in my direction. He ties the other end to the railing, lets out a shrill whistle between his teeth, and walks away.
By the time the crew sounds the alarm and pulls me in, I have the white plastic ring clutched to my chest so tightly they have to pry it out of my hands.
