Chapter 25
That bitch hit her with a golf club.
The way the crown of Fletcher’s head throbbed confirmed it.
Only distantly could she muster the strength to be thankful Jackie hadn’t unsheathed her pistol and shot her right there in the crew lounge.
The thought did nothing to quell the copper tang in her mouth.
It meant only that whatever Jackie had planned for her was worse than a bullet to the chest.
A chill spread down her body. Wet, like she’d sweated her way through a night terror. But when Fletcher finally convinced her eyes to open…this wasn’t a dream she could wake up from. And it was far from over.
Nylon mooring line burned against her skin.
A knot wrenched her arms behind her back, one of the dock’s support beams stiff against her spine.
Cold salt water lapped at her chest. The tide wasn’t merciful enough to be lowering—it was only a matter of time before it coaxed its way into her mouth, her lungs.
Fletcher jerked, tugged, stretched. Anything to break her bonds. Now, she thought begrudgingly, would have been the perfect time to have a machete.
“You look like shark food.”
The familiar tone shocked Fletcher’s system. Two posts down, Waylon was trapped. Awake, but trapped. How the fuck Jackie managed to drag them down here was a case for the FBI. Fletcher was so relieved to hear the rasp of his voice that his words didn’t connect. “Like what?”
“Shark food.” His head nodded toward the cresting waves.
Below, circling along the sand, were shadows too big to ignore. Sharks (of a variety Fletcher had no intention of being close enough to discern) lurked with hungry anticipation. So, if she didn’t drown, she’d be shark chum.
Was one a more preferable death? Drowning sounded bleak—the slide of water down her windpipe, a useless gasp for air—but sharks had infinite teeth.
Her thrashing stalled. Drowning it was.
And if she was going to drown, at the very least she’d do it with a clear conscience.
“You were right, you know,” she said.
Waylon stewed, silent. But when she turned her head, his eyes bored into hers. His mouth pinched into a tight stripe, flat and unemotional. At least he was listening.
“I did use you. Just like Eliza, just like everyone. You’re Waylon Cartwright, and I took advantage of that, and I’m sorry.
” A particularly rowdy wave crested over the breakwater and slammed into her.
It took a second to find her breath, her bravery, again.
“I think I’ve been using a lot of people for a very long time. ”
His eyebrows lifted, but his lips stayed shut.
Near-death experiences were either the best or worst time for self-reflection. The jury was still out on which.
“Using them as excuses mostly. Like Kent. He was constantly trying to get me to go home, and I…let him keep trying. I could have broken up with him a hundred times, but I never did. If I really couldn’t cut it in New York, I knew he was right there waiting for me.
The safe option. The backup plan.” Salt water stung her eyes.
That was why they teared up. Obviously. (The quiver in her voice, however, was not going to be addressed.) “The night I met you, it scared me how you saw straight through me. It had been so long since I had felt that way with Kent, but admitting that to myself…I couldn’t.
And when I learned who you were, well, I assumed the worst. It was wrong, and I’m sorry for that, too. ”
While she spoke, Fletcher worked at the rope, twisting her hands to earn as much slack as she could, until she caught the first knot between her fingers.
Thank you, company-sponsored self-defense classes.
A few more tugs, and the knot unraveled.
A sigh parted her lips when the rope floated away. Next up: ankles.
In response, Waylon said nothing.
Lucky for him, Fletcher had always been a nervous talker.
“And your dad said it himself. I’m an excellent executive assistant.
It was way too easy to blame him for demanding so much of me, but I was the one who never set any professional boundaries.
I tried so fucking hard all the time, and I was stuck in the same place I always had been.
As long as there was always someone else to blame, I never had to admit to myself that I was so scared of failing that I’d never truly tried. ”
It was easier to be unhappy somewhere familiar than to strike out on her own. Even when that meant working seventy hours a week while her portfolio collected dust. If only she could have seen that three weeks ago.
A deliberating sound thrummed deep in his chest. A lot like I told you so. She deserved it. His mouth was still set in an uncompromising frown when he said, “You lied to me. Repeatedly.”
“I did.” She breathed. “It doesn’t help that I wanted to tell you.
I didn’t, and I should have. When I offered to help Jackie escape in exchange for a job on the Jet-Setter staff, I thought getting off the island as soon as possible was a safer bet than waiting for the rescue crew.
But this morning, when you asked me to stay, I meant it when I said yes.
It doesn’t—it doesn’t undo what I did. I know. But it’s the truth.”
Waylon focused on the horizon, throat bobbing.
The waves battered Fletcher as she crunched herself into a ball, shimmying her bound feet up the beam until her fingertips could reach the mooring rope. She swore the sharks’ eyes trailed her movement, and she picked up the pace for good measure.
“What happened up there?” Waylon changed the subject. “And why does my head hurt like a bitch?”
“That would probably be a traumatic brain injury. Say what you want about Jackie, but she’s got a mean backswing. During a brief hostage situation, I found the lockbox, and she wasted no time stripping the key from my hands.”
A breath rushed out of Waylon, like he’d been punched. “So, we’re stranded?”
“Well, I—”
The knot around her ankles gave, and with one quick shift of the current, Fletcher sank beneath the waves. She spun. Lost. With too little oxygen. Until eventually, kicking, Fletcher broke the surface and spat out a mouthful of water.
“Come again?” Waylon asked.
The water hadn’t lost its fight, towing Fletcher this way and that. Every time she opened her mouth, more ocean water snuck in. Her head bobbed beneath the surf once more.
Waylon shook out his hair, the drenched curls clinging to his cheeks. Enjoying this a little too much, if you asked Fletcher. “One more time.”
Like Poseidon was playing a sick joke on her, another maverick wave crushed the jetty. Salt water stung in every crevice of her sinuses as Fletcher coiled her arms around the dock to keep from getting carried away.
“Seriously?” she asked anyone listening—Waylon, the sea, the slice of daytime moon hanging in the sky, controlling the tides and clearly laughing at her.
“Let me guess, another patented Fletcher Spence plan.”
Was he smiling? Fletcher couldn’t tell because another wave splashed into her face.
Fletcher huffed. Wiped the salt from her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak once more, expecting it to summon another jarring swell, but the ocean stilled, if only briefly. Fletcher took the opportunity to say, “Yes, I have a plan. Step one: dry land.”
“Easier said than done,” Waylon grumbled, still fighting the knots behind his back.
Swimming with smooth strokes, Fletcher muscled toward Waylon, careful not to stir up the wake. The loose folds of khaki around her hips dragged against the tide, weighing approximately ten thousand pounds.
Finally, she latched on to the beam behind him and muttered an apology as she anchored her legs around his thighs so she didn’t drift off while untangling him.
“I know it sounds crazy when everything has been so horrible, but I’m kind of glad I came here.
” The skin of his neck pebbled against her words.
Fletcher focused on the knot in the rope rather than the knot of nerves in her stomach.
“I guess nothing gives you the perspective you need like thinking you might die at literally any second.”
Waylon scoffed in disbelief. Fair. Dying wasn’t off the table yet, anyway.
“I’m not afraid to go after what I want anymore. Well, I am afraid. Exceptionally afraid, really. But I’ve realized that some things are worth doing scared.”
When she finally unleashed his hands, Fletcher swam around front, and Waylon’s free arm caught her hip. She was close enough to feel his breath against her cheek.
“Like what?” he asked.
The odds that Waylon forgot she’d nearly handed him to Jackie on a silver platter in exchange for a job were slim, but even if he didn’t, he deserved to know the truth.
She knew what she wanted. If he didn’t want the same thing, that would be okay.
She would be okay. Falling was the risk you took to fly.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” she told Waylon as she loosened the ties around his ankles.
“You don’t have to forgive me. You definitely don’t have to say thank you, since I’m responsible for at least sixty percent of the fuckery we’ve encountered this afternoon alone.
But I think I’m falling in love with you, so I’d really like for you to not die right now. ”
For a long moment, he watched her, eyes trained downward as she pried her fingernails between the coils of rope.
In the blue of his stare, every fleck of emotion he buried deep swam to the surface.
She would understand if he didn’t believe how she felt, let alone if he didn’t feel it back.
The rational response would be leaving Fletcher for shark bait.