Chapter 2 Everett
Everett
Storm light turns the city the color of a bruise. The wind picks up, and the glass hums with that low, aching pressure you feel in your teeth before a storm breaks.
From my office at Tidal Solutions, twenty-six floors up, I watch clouds muscle in over the forest—Fable Forest, and beyond it, the town of Screaming Woods. Both places are rumored to be steeped in magic and fairy tales. As a scientist, I don’t have time for either.
Tidal Solutions was founded on the promise of restoring balance between people, progress, and the planet.
Officially, we’re an environmental engineering firm: water purification, shoreline restoration, ecological consulting.
In practice, we’re a multinational brand with glossy brochures and more investors than scientists.
The storm presses closer, a low pulse against the glass. I tell myself it’s just weather, but it feels like a warning.
“You’re not going out on Starfall Lake today, are you?” Ricky asks, forehead pressed to the window. He sounds like a man about to witness a crime.
“I already have a mother, Ricky,” I say wryly. I don’t add and a father, and a board of directors, and the HOA president from hell. “I don’t need another.”
“That storm looks wicked,” he says, peeling himself away to steal a file off my desk. “And don’t say it’ll blow over. That sucker has opinions.”
He’s not wrong. The sky is a stack of dark anvils, and the air filtering through the cracked window tastes like pennies. Sensible men reschedule. Sensible men also marry the woman their father picks for them and play golf on Sundays. I prefer boats.
“I’ll be fine,” I say gruffly. “I need fresh data on lead levels after the factory came online near the Screaming Woods buffer zone. And I want to field-test the new locator. Bad weather is good weather for that.” Two birds. One mildly irresponsible stone.
Ricky’s mouth does that thing where it can’t decide between pleading and swearing. He settles on giving me a look that says You’re going to do what you want, and my job is to try to keep you alive anyway. He rolls his eyes and shuts the door.
Peace lasts six whole seconds.
The door slams open, and I’m halfway through “Ricky—” when my father barrels in. Kara trails behind him, all calm competence and tidy bun, the human equivalent of a deep breath.
“I knew you’d be addle-brained enough to go out,” Dad says, looming like a different kind of storm wearing a suit. “I’m here to put an end to that. You need to take Kara out. It’s been two weeks.”
“Good to see you too,” I say, because I’m a mature adult. “I have a meeting out of town.” Lie. “Suppliers.” Bigger lie. I’m my own supplier today.
“If he has meetings, Henry, he should go to those,” Kara says, brown eyes sparkling with amusement. She’s a good friend. Unfortunately for the warring-houses alliance my father fantasizes about, she’s not my person. And I’m not hers.
Dad glowers across my desk with the entitlement of a man whose office—bigger, higher, and aggressively mahogany—is directly above mine. He was born to glower from mezzanines.
“Tomorrow, then,” he says. “You have duties. You can’t pretend you don’t.”
I could list my duties: steward the lake, run the company, continue being the disappointment who won’t marry for a merger. Instead, I tip my head. “Tomorrow.”
Dad gets summoned by a crisis at the mansion—something about the pool, chlorine, my mother, a meltdown—and I thank fate for winking at me.
Kara leans a hip on the desk when the elevator dings him away. “What time are you leaving?”
“As soon as I can,” I admit.
She grins. “Text me when you’re back. I’ll make sure the board thinks you’re networking.”
This is why I’d go to bat for her every day and twice on Sunday. She covers me, I cover her, and nobody gets bartered like cattle.
Ten minutes later, I’m slipping lines off my day-cruiser. She’s not fancy, not compared to the company yachts, but she’s mine: clean deck, responsive tiller, a quiet solar motor for when the wind takes a nap. The first slap of lake-scent hits my lungs, and my shoulders drop two inches. Home.
Wind bellies the sail the second I clear the marina.
Whitecaps lift. The lake wears her wild face, and I try not to grin like she’s a lover who bit me once and might do it again.
I cut toward my favorite coordinates, a mile off the point where the shoreline turns to storybook forest. The anchor drops with a chain-rattle thunk that vibrates through my bones.
Data first. Fun later. I set the sampler array to draw at various depths, rig the bottom-scraper to make a slow pass, and clip the new locator to my vest. The little screen blinks all its hopeful little blinks. If it sends my vitals to the office in a storm, we’ll know it’s worth the patent.
The scraper comes up with the usual haul—silt, a ribbon of weed, one heroic bottle cap—and then, because the lake likes to mess with me, a single oyster with a pink pearl tucked inside like a blush.
It’s the third one this month. Either someone is seeding my life with improbable romance novel props, or the lake is in on the joke.
I tuck the oyster into my life-jacket pocket like a secret.
The rain begins as a polite suggestion—cool pinpricks on my cheeks—then upgrades to a thousand small slaps. Wind slants harder, and the water changes from glass to corrugated steel. Somewhere east, thunder rolls its shoulders.
“Okay,” I tell the sky. “I hear you.”
I move for the halyard to drop the sail when the boom slews around on a vicious gust and kisses me across the temple with all the tenderness of a brick.
Light detonates in my skull. The deck tilts out from under me. One second, I’m cursing, the next, I’m not on the boat anymore.
Cold is a slap and a watery grip. The lake grabs every inch of me, shoves up my nose, into my ears. It tastes of iron and algae. I kick for the surface, breach, gulp air, and try to spot the boat. She’s already drifting, a white smear in the rain.
My training takes over. I slap the EPIRB with numb fingers. The locator against my chest buzzes and goes silent like it’s thinking about it. The next wave breaks over my head, and my stomach heaves. I swallow it down because drowning is undignified, and I refuse to go out that way.
I yell for help, but the wind eats it.
My head throbs. My vision tunnels. The edges of the world go soft and gray and far away, and I think: Well, shit. Dad gets to be right.
Arms fold around me.
For a second, I’m convinced the lake has decided to evolve hands. Then I blink water out of my eyes and see her.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Red hair, darkened to wine by the storm. Eyes the blue of a clear noon sky, focused and determined. A face I’ve only ever seen in dreams—except dreams aren’t supposed to have the strength to tow a full-grown man through a cross chop like he’s a mildly inconvenient log.
I grab the line she shoves into my hands, and between her push and my mostly cooperative limbs, we reach the boat. She braces me and hauls my arms over the rail. I gain purchase with one knee, then the other, flopping onto the deck like a man who will absolutely feel this tomorrow.
Her palm skims my cheek. Warm in the cold. Gentle in the violence. I open my mouth to say thank you—Who are you? How are you?—and she leans down and kisses me.
It isn’t a CPR kiss. It isn’t you’re dying, breathe; it’s you’re alive, remember? It’s salt and rain and something that tastes like yes. For a crazy beat of a second, I think about wedding rings and halls full of relatives and how none of it has ever felt like this.
Then she’s gone. A flash of red sliding over the gunwale, a swirl of water, a ripple that might be a tail if tails on humans were a thing, and I wasn’t concussed.
“Wait,” I try, but the word is a croak.
The deck tilts again. The rain is a curtain. Somewhere, my EPIRB dutifully pings its little heart out, and the locator at my chest decides to take a nap.
I clutch at the slick deck and laugh—because if I don’t laugh, I’ll hurl—and let the dark come in on a rush like a wave.