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A jolt.Crunch. All lightless motion ceased, water seeping all around her, swallowing her.
Roe’s hold around her body loosened, his arms going slack, falling away from her.
The water dragging them downward.
She shook her arm that was bound to his. His limb flopped lifelessly in the water.
She kicked, kicked again, kicked toward the surface, while Roe dropped lower and lower beside her.
Kick, kick, kick. Scratching at the water with her right hand. Yanking at her bound arm—yanking him up with her.
Except they weren’t going up. She fought it. With every kick, every stroke of her arm. But still they sank.
No use. They were both dropping, sinking into the depths, the water sneaking past her lips, into her mouth. Downward.
Downward.
A hand. A hand on her neck, on her collar.
Dragging her upward, a strong hand. Dragging her upward, and with her, Roe.
Her lungs bursting, she held, held on for air. Air she knew was just beyond her reach.
Another hand grabbed her arm, yanking her up faster, faster.
Air.
She broke through the surface and gasped in air and water, the whole of it sputtering into her chest and choking her. But the air won, the water hacking its way back up her throat.
She yanked up on her left arm, pulling Roe to the surface as well to suck the air.
But her hand came up through the water, the dead weight on it, gone.
The leather strap that bound them together, gone.
Roe was gone.
{ Chapter 21 }
Torrie stared out at the darkness—so grey, day had turned into night even though it was still morning.
Smack.
A slash of rain—or a rogue wave—crashed into the windows above the bed. The pane in the right top corner cracked, splitting in place.
Rain lashed at the windows and an acerbic chuckle snaked its way up her throat.
Of course.
For all that they’d survived, here, a storm in the middle of the sea was going to sink them.
The rain kept whipping at the glass above the bed. Furious, threatening to end it all for them.
She forced her gaze from the glass to Roe’s inert face and she let her eyes wander down his naked torso.
All the burn marks on his body—burns he took so she didn’t have to. The cuts from the glass.
Her look shifted further down past the sheet wrapped over his hips, to his left leg open to the air above and the pus-filled stitches where his shinbone had been forced back into his body.
