Page 88 of Sucker For You

No, no, no. . .

“I’m going to touch you.” Then Wes was lifting her up from the tiles like she weighed no more than spindrift, cradling her as if gravity had relinquished its painful claim to her right here, like it did in the water.

He was very gentle, his skin hot and bare.

She screamed into his shoulder. If her nails weren’t already digging against her palms, she would have clawed at him. But this body wasn’t hers anymore. Screams were all she had.

“I’m sorry—” He tensed. He didn’t release her, though. He didn’t drop her. He didn’t leave her alone in the dark.

“A-a-ah—”

He carried her away from the unforgiving ceramic floor, cursing when his boxers snagged on the bathroom door’s strike plate and he stumbled into the jamb. His arms shielded her from the impact, however. He rushed out of the bedroom, past a dim glow from the reef tank that illuminated their caricature perched on the credenza, and to the porch. She bit her bloody tongue or his collarbone when he leaped down the risers—thud,thud,thud, his footsteps beating into her, threatening to split her open like a rotting kelp float.

Maybe she screamed again.

She couldn’t hear her own breath over the hurricane in her skull.

“Sorry—I’m sorry, we’re almost there.”

Now he was running: across Tide Avenue and down the beach, hissing at the rip of saw-toothed grass against his legs, at tidal rocks tearing the soles of his feet. He didn’t stop, didn’t slow. He charged over pebbles and mussel shells, straight into the midnight surf.

“Fuck!”

A heart-stopping chill lashed through him. Isabel felt its strike, felt him jolt and shudder. Still, his pace didn’t falter. Neither did his pulse under her ear. Wes plowed on through the spitting foam and scalding-cold spray, wading deeper, laboring forward with water lapping against his thighs.

“S-shit—”

The next breaker knocked out his knees. He collapsed, yelping, submerging them both in the bay’s frigid embrace.

Underwater.

Her lungs contracted with an instant, animal imperative. The cold shocked a bubbling breath through her teeth. Salt and sand and wetness rushed to fill her mouth. Her fragile mammalian body responded. She choked, fighting for the surface, striking out and kicking free of Wes’s arms, breaking back into the night air. She inhaled.

“I-Isabel—”

Struggling to keep her head up, she coughed hard and long.

“Thank Christ.” His hands found her again. He cupped her elbows, holding her upright, raising her chin above the water. “I’m sorry—the tide’s strong, and I. . . I panicked. Are—you. . .?”

Breathing?

Am I?

Yes, she was.

She was cold, too. So cold, shuddering through her racking coughing fit in the waves, gasping—and with that cold came a second instinctive physical reaction from her body: blood vessels narrowing, nerve conduction slowing.

Another inhale.

“Y-y-yes.”

Shivering, teeth knocking, her straining lungs nevertheless eased their spasms after several further wheezing, grateful breaths.Inhale, exhale. Another cycle. Yes, now try again. . .In response, she slowly guided herself back into a floating position, reclining deeper against every warm-blooded instinct, her arms and legs extended in the numbing water. Wes moved with her. He braced her shoulders against his chest through the sodden, knotted silk of her slip and stabilized her buoyancy with an armacross her ribcage. Beneath the raft he made of himself under her, his hips lifted, his own legs frog-kicking as he towed them out beyond the worst of the buffeting waves, to where kelp or curious fish-kisses skimmed their skin.

To where the ocean calmed.

And her breaths became moments, became minutes. . . became the slow passage of time.

Gradually, very gradually, her angry pain calmed. The seaweed didn’t hurt. Wes’s touch was light. The spikes pounding into her skull dulled, then receded from her temples, from her neck, from her spine. The bright pressure on her eyelids wasn’t a migraine aura, but moonshine parting the marine layer overhead.