Chapter 37 #2
Dante tilted his head and studied me. “I won’t let anything happen to you. If you fall, I’ll jump right in to save you.” He grinned after the words left his mouth, and I knew he meant it.
I took the cup and sipped, the warmth unspooling inside me. “Are you sure?” I asked, half-mocking, half-hoping. My pulse thudded in my neck.
“Amelia,” Dante said, and it was almost embarrassing how I loved the way my name sounded in his mouth. “You could set the canoe on fire, and I’d still get in with you.”
I watched him, searching for irony or pretense, but there was none. It was just him, solid and uncomplicated, standing in the splintered morning.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had the best experience with water lately.” There was a nervousness in my voice, one which crackled with uncertainty.
Before Dante could respond, Caiden’s voice cut in.
“She’s right. I wouldn’t push her too much on that subject. We had a bad accident in Colorado while kayaking.” Caiden came to stand beside me, and I could feel the tension shifting in the room.
Dante and Caiden had a stare off, a silent challenge on who I belonged to, and who I should listen to.
The way his body was half in front of mine reminded me of his possessive and protective nature that he had been revealing to me these past weeks.
“What kind of accident?” Dante asked, his composure cracking the slightest, stepping back from me.
“We were kayaking with everybody, and there was a pretty bad storm. Amelia and I were caught in it and were pushed off course. We became very lost in the wilderness of Colorado,” he paused between his words, and hesitated before uttering his next dark confession.
“We were also kidnapped by a psychopath out there, that’s how we started bonding with each other. ”
Dante exhaled a low whistle, disbelief washing over his face, though I knew he believed every word. “Damn. That’s terrible. I had no idea.”
“It’s okay, I can try to go out onto water, but I can’t promise I won’t have a panic attack.” I tried to clear the air and offer him my polite energy, but Caiden cut in again.
“No, Amelia. That’s not necessary.” His voice was brisk and commanding; it pushed an irritation to rise.
“Can we not do the caveman routine today?” I said, my tone lighter than I felt. “I’m a grown woman, you know. If I want to try it, I’ll try it. If I don’t, I’ll say so.”
It came out sharper than I expected, and I instantly regretted it. Not because I was wrong, but because the way Caiden’s face closed told me I’d landed a blow.
Dante flexed his hands at his sides, like he was trying to warm them up. “I think it’d be fun,” he offered, careful not to look at either of us too long. “But if you’d rather chill here and read or nap, I totally get it.”
Caiden scoffed. “Typical Dante, always being the nice guy.”
Dante glared at him. The friction was obvious, and Dante felt it, too. He set his mug down with a tight click. “You’re not her bodyguard, Caiden. She can decide for herself.”
I could feel the heat of Caiden’s stare on my cheekbone. “I know that. I just don’t want her to get hurt again.”
My own annoyance tumbled out before I could stop it. “If I want to risk a panic attack in a canoe, I’ll do it. I’m not five.”
He stepped back, wounded, and the silence that followed felt like a dare. I wanted to step into it, to let the anger flare bright enough to burn off the humidity that hovered between us, but I was so tired. I poured more coffee instead and let the bitter taste shock me back to baseline.
“I’ll bring the canoe down to the dock,” Dante said after a beat. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He left, and the screen door snapped behind him. I watched the bobbing of his head as he walked down the slope, steady, certain, untouchable.
Caiden exhaled, his whole posture sagging. “Sorry. I’m not trying to run your life.”
I shrugged. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”
He laughed, but there was no edge to it anymore. “Seriously, though. You don’t have to prove anything. Not to me, not to Dante, not to anybody.”
I set my mug down and met his eyes. “And what if I just want to do something because I want to do it? Not for anybody else’s benefit.”
He set his mouth in a tight line. “You don’t always have to be brave for fucks sake, sometimes it’s best to do nothing at all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
It was funny how easily Caiden and I could slide back into our old ways of heated bickering and irritation with each other.
It was too easy, and I wondered if that was because this is how we were meant to be, rivals. Fated to haunt each other and never touch.
We ignored each other for a while, enough that the clock on the wall became the only force of gravity in the room.
Eventually, I went to find Dante down by the water, leaving Caiden behind in the kitchen with his sullen spirit and the iron weight of his moods.
Dante was at the water’s edge, dragging the canoe down the crumbling slope, his footwork careful on the mud. I jogged to catch up, my sneakers sliding sideways.
He looked up and grinned. “I was beginning to think you’d chickened out.”
“Never,” I said, though in truth my palms were sweaty with nerves. The canoe, up close, looked narrower than I’d pictured.
Dante steadied it, then offered his hand. “You want to be in front, or back?”
I hesitated, then said, “Front. If we tip, I want to be the one who goes under first.”
He laughed. “That’s the spirit.” He helped me into the shallow, and I braced myself as the boat wobbled beneath my weight. I gripped the gunwales and tried not to look back at the shore, where I knew Caiden was watching.
Dante climbed in behind, pushed us off, and we glided into the mist. For a while, he said nothing, just paddled with a steady rhythm that felt like a heartbeat. The water was black and cold, the trees crowding the edge so close their reflections seemed to double the world.
“Just trust me,” he spoke as he observed my shakiness. “This is a peaceful lake. It won’t be like how it was in Colorado.”
I nodded along to his words, trying to swallow down the panic that was rising. The water was quiet, rippling with ease. But I knew how quickly it could turn to swirling and dark.
I shoved the panic down.
I gripped the paddle and stared at the lake, letting my own reflection blur and double with the sky. For one blessed minute, I was just a body in a boat, cold enough, buoyant enough, to keep floating.
Then the current tilted us sideways, a little cross-chop from a motorboat a mile off. The canoe rocked, and I was instantly back in the gorge: the roar of white water in my ears.
I sucked in a breath, and braced my feet against the rib of the boat. I could feel the panic blooming in my chest, a fat, prickling flower, ready to choke out everything else.
Dante must’ve felt the shift in me, because he set his paddle down and reached forward, fingers curling gently around my forearm. “Hey. You’re doing great,” he said, voice just above a whisper.
“I’m not,” I said. The words scraped my throat. “I’m freaking out.”
“Yeah, but you’re still here.” He squeezed my arm, then let go. “You can close your eyes if you want. I’ll steer.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted to see what was coming.
It wasn’t rational. I knew, on some level, that Dante wouldn’t let me drown. I also knew that panic didn’t care about logic, or the steady drip of assurance in his voice.
If anything, the sureness of his presence made the panic worse, because it called into question every time in my life I’d been left to fend for myself, every time my mother was too drunk to show up and every time my father’s voice was the only thing louder than the fear.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “Dante?”
He stopped paddling, let us drift. “Yeah?”
“I fucking hate this,” I blurted, voice too loud in the open air. “I feel like if I look down, I’ll get sucked under. I know it’s dumb, but—”
“It’s not dumb,” he said, and there was no laughter in him now, only a careful gentleness that made me want to curl into him, allow him to be my safety net.
He reached out, but I jerked my arm away, the jolt of his skin on mine making the canoe shudder. “I’m fine,” I lied. I could feel the terror worming through my back teeth. The lake was a slab of black glass beneath us, and every paddle stroke felt like it was cracking the surface open.
I didn’t see the thing in the water at first. Maybe it had been pacing us the whole time, or maybe it only noticed us once we’d drifted far enough from shore that the only sounds were our own breaths and the faint whisper of trees.
What I did notice was the sudden, shuddering splash at my left shoulder, a froth of white water as something huge and unseen breached the surface, then vanished, leaving only a ripple and a spreading ring of disturbance.
“Holy shit,” I said, my heart hammering in my chest. “Did you see that?”
“Probably just a catfish,” Dante said, but his voice was a half-step too bright, and I could hear the edge in it. The canoe drifted sideways, caught in the wake of whatever monster had just sliced the water. “You okay?”
I wasn’t okay. I was not fucking okay. The memory of Blake, his hands choking the air from my lungs, the way the river in Colorado had closed over my head and made everything go silent, all of it rose up and pressed against my chest like a second, tighter ribcage.
I tried to breathe, but it came out ragged, like something had already started to drown me.
There’s something about being so close to what you fear that makes your body root for its own destruction; I could feel the urge to tip myself over, to let the shock of cold erase everything.
Just as quickly, shame followed on its heels: don’t ruin this, don’t make Dante worry, don’t make Caiden right about you.
But then, without warning, the surface of the water fractured again. The sea creature broke through once more with a slapping, sudden sound, sending up a spatter of spray.