Page 127 of Against The Tide

Serenity.

Everything feels so warm. So perfect. Like coming home. For that one single breath that lingers between us.

It takes me back to that first time I kissed her beneath the sparkling sun with hooves pounding in the distance.

Thud. Thud. Thud, thud, thud…

Her body pressed to mine. Hands clinging to me. Eyes wide and mouth gaping in that inviting way that’s impossible to resist.

Thud, thud, thud-thud-thud…

“Rhett…” Tears drown her eyes, making the whites pink and the green scorch so deep, I feel it twist viciously in my chest. “Ohmygod.” A tear falls. “Ohgod.” Her beautiful voice breaks. “Ohmy-my…no. No-no-no.”

Another tear rolls down her cheek.

“Doc,” she whispers, and I don’t know which of us is falling.

I’m trying to catch her, but it’s like water trickling through my fingers. Impossible to grasp. To hold.

She’s slipping from my hands, and I don’t know how to hang on to her. My body refuses to listen to my head as my knees hit the ground. Tears blink from wide, panicked eyes punctuated by shot after shot after shot. And I know something is wrong.

It’s not just a needling prick in my chest. It’s a burning, corroding ache that makes it impossible to breathe. No matter how hard I try to gasp and drag air into my lungs, they’re congealed. Hardened concrete that refuses to give. Holding me down. Pulling me down, lower and lower, until I’m drowning.

Cough upon cough of metal-tinged fluid bubbles up my throat as my body collapses uselessly to the ground, leaving nothing but thoughts and the need to say all the little things that I never got to say. I’m never going to get to say.

“Sunsh—”

“Shhh…” Fuzzy hands grasp my face as she chants, “Help is coming. Help is coming. It’s coming…”

All I can do is stare and nod while I swallow the blood that collects at the back of my throat.

This is it.

After all this time. All these years.

I found her.

I love her.

I have to let her go.

CHAPTER 35

AVERY

Blood. So much blood. Pasted. Dried. Dark.

“So much blood,” I whisper, pulling my hands out of Jo’s grasp as she tries to clean it off my hands with a wipe.

“Oh, sugar.” She pulls me into her again, trying to pet my head onto her shoulder.

But I can’t see the clock like that, and I need to see it. Every second that ticks by. Every minute that elapses to the next hour. The white walls blur as I stare. Counting every jitter of the never-stopping clock hand even when Rowan stands in front of me. I picture the clock behind his hulking frame.

Tick-tick-tick-tick…

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, crouching in front of me.

I’ve always seen the similarities, but it’s only now that I realize how identical they are. Green eyes filled with sadness and regret bore into mine. Bright. Relucent. So samey and yet so different where they lack the blue ocean marled through the vivid verdure.