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His jaw visibly clenches and he nods, eyes peering up and snagging mine. A long, heavy moment passes.
My chin quivers. “You-you shouldn’t’ve done that,” I find myself saying. I wrap my arms around myself, wishing they were his. Wishing I could crawl back into his lap, but something tells me that moment is long gone.
Shaking my head, I gently clear my throat and lower my gaze and go on, “You could’ve died. You—”
“And you would have if I didn’t,” he says in a deep, strained voice. He sounds angry, and an icky feeling settles low in my gut, replacing the overly full feeling from before.
I sniff. “But you-you—”
“I what?”
Peering up at him, I say, “You have a wife. A kid.”
Some indecipherable emotion passes through his expression, pulling his lips down.
“Risking your own life to save me wasn’t—”
“Worth it?” he says in a growl.
I still. “If you died trying, no.”
His jaw ticks and he looks away.
Chewing the inside of my cheek, I wait.
“A thank you would suffice,” he finally says shortly.
He’s mad. I don’t blame him.
He’s got to be realizing now too just how stupid that was, coming in after me. We got lucky. Really lucky. How I survived the fall without crashing into a rock is a miracle, one I don’t even want to look too closely at. Just the memory has my lungs clenching, seizing my breath, and a shiver racing down my spine.
But how he managed to find me…get me out in time before I got swept into the ocean…
We shouldn’t have survived that.
How the hell did we survive?
I hug myself tighter, feeling like I could cry. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I sense more than see the stillness that overtakes him.
“I got excited, and I wasn’t thinking—I never think, I just—” I shake my head, frustrated, remembering all the times I got in trouble growing up, all because I couldn’t just step back andthink.
All the times, my brain just sort of glitched and I turned into a human tornado, unable to stop myself.
“You’re an embarrassment.”
“If anyone should be apologizing,” he says gruffly, yanking me to the present, “it should be me.”
I stiffen, bracing myself, but then his words register.
“It was my idea to take the shortcut that wasn’t even a fucking shortcut. I should’ve kept you behind me, so—”
“So I didn’t do anything stupid.”
He quiets, and I glance up, finding him looking at me with a troubled expression.
I swallow and shrug, looking away. My jaw ticks. I feel like I’m going to start crying again.
