Chapter Sixty-Three How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Waves
At first, I think it’s some kind of shark or something, but there’s no pain in the hold, no teeth slicing into my skin. Just determination, as whatever it is pulls me up, up, up.
I break the surface several seconds later and immediately start coughing as I try to drag air into my starved and waterlogged lungs.
Dawn has broken across the sky, and though it’s still gray and dim inside the storm, I can see my rescuer for the first time.
And somehow, someway, it’s Jude. But that’s impossible—he already went through the portal. He should be at the warehouse in Huntsville.
At first, I think I’m hallucinating, that I’ve blacked out and am about to die and he’s a figment of my oxygen-starved imagination. But then Jude spins me around and drags me against him, my back to his chest. He joins his hands just below my bra line and starts jabbing them into me over and over again.
It hurts way more than drowning did. As does the copious amount of seawater that immediately comes rushing up my trachea.
I start coughing as I vomit it all into the sea.
I’ve barely finished, barely had a chance to take a breath, when Simon surfaces right in front of me. There’s three of him—big surprise—but they all look so different that it’s easy for me to figure out which one is present Simon, even before he grins at Jude and says, “Looks like you beat me to her.”
“I was motivated,” Jude answers.
But Simon is already casting an uneasy glance at the ever-worsening weather. “We need to get to shore, fast.”
I can feel Jude’s nod against the back of my head even before he growls, “Grab onto me, Kumquat.”
I start to protest, but he just shoots me a don’t push me look, and for once, I decide to heed the warning as I wrap my arms around his shoulders.
And then we strike off for shore, with Simon right beside us in case we need him.
The wind is fiercer now, the waves growing bigger, pounding harder. We get rolled more than once, and more than once Jude has to claw his way back to the surface with me on his back.
But he does it every time, his huge, powerful arms eating up the distance between where we are and the shore despite this storm that seems determined to stop us.
I know that’s not true, know the storm is just an inanimate thing that cares about nothing—it just exists. But it doesn’t feel like that right now. It feels malevolent, like the heart of it is determined to get to shore and take all of us down as it goes.
But that doesn’t matter because we’re almost there. The lights on the fence are so close now that it seems like I could almost reach out and touch them. Jude must feel it, too, because somehow his kicks get longer, his strokes more measured until finally—finally—we’re washing up on shore.
The second we get sand beneath us, I start to roll off of him, so grateful to have land beneath me again that I don’t care about the rain or the wind or the lightning tearing the sky in two. I just want to lie on the sand for a moment.
But Jude obviously doesn’t feel the same way, because he’s up again in seconds. He runs up the beach with me still on his back and doesn’t stop until he gets us completely clear of whatever wave might roll in, no matter how high it goes.
Only then does he help me off his shoulders before collapsing beside me on the beach.
My throat is raw from salt water, my eyes feel like they’ve been scoured with sandpaper, and my lungs burn with each breath that I take. As soon as I find the energy to actually move—I roll over to look at Jude, who is currently stretched out on his back, bent arm over his eyes to shield them from the rain that continues to pour down upon us.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. My raw throat burns in protest, but I don’t pay any attention to it. I need answers. “You went through the portal a long time ago. You were safe at the warehouse in Huntsville.”
He doesn’t answer, just shakes his head back and forth as he continues to suck air in at an alarming rate.
I know I should wait until he catches his breath, know I should give him a couple of minutes to recover, but that will also give him a chance to put his armor back in place. And no. Just no. I am beyond tired of omissions and evasions and half answers that don’t tell me anything.
So, even though every muscle in my body is screaming at me, even though I’m still shaking from exertion and shock, I force myself to sit up and push his arm away from his face so I can see his beautiful eyes. I expect them to be shuttered, distant, as they so often are. Instead, they’re burning hot and more than a little wild as he sits up to meet me.
But he still doesn’t answer, just looks at me in a way that has every nerve ending in my body going on high alert in all the best ways. Still, I need answers. “I’m serious, Jude. Why are you here? You were safe and—”
“The portal broke,” he answers abruptly. “And your mom came through on the other side. The second I saw her there without you, I knew you hadn’t made it through, so…” He trails off with a shrug.
“So you what? Just dove into a breaking portal?” I ask incredulously.
The corners of his lips twitch in his almost Jude smile as he reaches forward and rubs a finger over the small dimple in my chin. “I already told you, Satsuma. I’m not okay living in a world without you in it.”
I let the ridiculous citrus name go and focus on the rest of what he has to say. It’s hard not to when my entire body lights up from the inside, an inexplicable warmth moving through every part of me. But still, I need more.
“What about the nightmares?” I ask. “You said we could never be together. You said you loved me, but—” My voice breaks as the tranquility I felt in the ocean slips away in the face of all the pain of our last encounter.
Jude grows solemn. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. Or how the fuck I’m going to learn better control over these nightmares.” His jaw tightens. “I just know that when I thought you were…”
This time it’s his voice that breaks. He clears his throat, tries again. “When I thought you were dead, I…” And again, his tight throat won’t let the words pass.
So I fill them in for him, a strange confidence flooding me that’s been missing from our relationship—and everything else I do—for far too long. “You realized how foolish it is to try to run away.”
Jude gives me a look. “I’m not so sure I would say foolish—”
“Maybe not, but I would,” I tell him.
He ignores me and continues. “More like futile. I spent three years staying away from you. I don’t think I have it in me to try to do that again.”
“Jude.” I reach for him just as a chorus of screams rings through the air.