Chapter 10 #3
"It's dark, Zero."
"It's a dock, Bane. Not Everest."
He's already walking, crooning his finger for the rest of us to follow.
Bane sighs and gets up. I follow him. Atlas follows without comment, beer-less, hands in his pockets.
The dock creaks under our weight. The boards are rough and silvered with age and I can feel them through my shoes.
Zero walks all the way to the end, turns, sits down with his legs dangling over the edge.
I stand beside him. Bane leans against one of the posts a few feet back.
Atlas stands to the other side of me, close enough that I can feel his warmth.
The water from the end of the dock is different than the water from the bank. Deeper. Blacker. I can't see the bottom at all out here.
Zero flicks his bottle cap into the pond. It hits the surface with a small plnk and disappears.
"Littering," Bane says.
"Returning metal to the earth. It's environmental."
"That's not how—"
"I'm an environmentalist now, Bane. Accept it."
I'm laughing. Bane is shaking his head. Zero tips his face up at me from where he's sitting, his eyes catching the dock light, and something in them shifts from amused to hungry in the space of a blink.
"Come here," he says. Low. His hand reaches for my hip. "Sit with me."
He means his lap. I know he means his lap because his fingers curl into the waistband of my shorts and tug, and the pull is warm and lazy and exactly the kind of thing Zero does when he wants me close and doesn't feel like asking twice.
I step toward him just as he yanks me closer.
My foot catches the edge of the board—the rough silvered lip where the plank is warped and lifting—and my weight is already shifting forward from his tug and my center of gravity isn't where I think it is.
I don't sit.
I tip.
Zero's hand tightens on my waistband—I feel the fabric go taut, then slip through his fingers—and then I'm past him, falling off the dock, and the water swallows me whole.
There's no wading. No gradual entry. No time to brace. One second I'm laughing above Zero's upturned face and the next I'm under—all the way under—the water closing over my head in one black rush, and the cold hits me like a wall and my feet kick and there's nothing beneath them.
No mud. No bottom. Just depth.
Something shifts.
Not in the water. In me. In the deep animal place where my body stores things my brain won't look at.
The cold. The dark water over my face. The way it happened so fast—one second air, the next second none. The pressure at my temples. The way I can't see anything. The way someone's hand was on me and then it wasn't and I'm under, I'm under—
Linda.
The bathtub. Her hand on the back of my head.
The water coming up over my ears, my mouth.
The specific sound of water closing over a child's face—the muffled roar, the loss of air, the pressure at the temples.
Her voice above the surface saying something I can't make out because I'm under, I'm under, I can't—
My chest locks.
I surface—barely—gasp once, but my arms aren't working right.
The panic has them. The panic has everything.
My hands are slapping at the water instead of pulling and the dock is right there, I can see the dark shape of it above me, but I can't reach it because my body isn't mine anymore.
My body is nine, ten, eleven years old and it has decided we are drowning.
I go under again.
Deeper this time. The water is in my nose, my throat. I can't tell which way is up. I can't—I can't—
Arms.
Arms under mine. Hauling me up. The surface breaking around my face and air—cold, sweet, brutal—hitting my lungs and I'm gasping, choking, coughing up pond water, and there are hands on me. Hands everywhere.
"I've got you—Max—I've got you—"
Atlas. His voice in my ear. His arm a band across my chest, my back against his sternum, his other hand cupping the side of my face. He is fully clothed and fully in the water and he is holding me the way he held me in the kitchen, every time I've tried to fall.
"Breathe, sweetheart. I'm here. Breathe."
I can't. I can't breathe. The panic is everywhere—in my chest, in my fingers, in my teeth. My body is still in the bathtub. My body is still back there.
"Max."
Bane. In the water too, to my left. Not touching me—giving Atlas the hold—but right there. His voice low and steady and close. "You're at the pond. You're home. Feel Atlas behind you. Feel the air. You're above the water. You're breathing."
I'm not breathing. I'm trying. The air won't go in right. It shudders in and shudders out and I'm shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.
"In through your nose." Atlas. Calm. His chest expanding against my back, slow and deliberate. "With me. In. Hold. Out."
I try. I fail. I try again. I’m coughing and sputtering. The rhythm catches—not all the way, not steady, but enough. One breath. Two. Three. My hands find Atlas's arm across my chest and grip. My nails dig into his forearm and he doesn't flinch.
Zero is on the dock.
I can see him through the blur of water in my eyes.
He's on his knees at the edge, one hand still reaching toward the water like he tried to grab me and couldn't. His face is—I've never seen his face like that.
Stripped. Wrecked. The cockiness gone, the performance gone, just Zero underneath, and Zero underneath is terrified.
He sees Atlas has me. He sees Bane beside us. He pulls his hand back. Sits on his heels. Doesn't come in.
He looks away.
He watches the shore and the tree line with the coiled attention of a man keeping guard, and I understand—he's giving me the dignity of falling apart without being watched by the person who put me in the water.
Not looking at me. Not because he doesn't care but because the guilt of looking would break something in him he can't afford to break right now.
I love him for that. I love him so much for that I nearly drown again.
"Easy," Atlas murmurs. "Easy, sweetheart. I'm not letting go."
"I know," I manage. Through chattering teeth. Through the panic that's draining out of me the way bathwater drains—slow, clinging, leaving me cold and scraped clean. I can’t shake the memories. "I know you're not."
Bane moves first.
He's out of the water and onto the dock in one motion—hands flat on the boards, hauling himself up, rolling onto his knees. He turns back and reaches down.
"Give him to me."
Atlas lifts me. I don't help. My arms are useless, my legs are useless, I'm shaking so hard I can barely keep my head up.
Atlas gets me high enough that Bane's hands find my arms, my ribs, and then Bane pulls—drags me up onto the dock like I weigh nothing, like I'm something he's fished out of the deep end, and I land on the rough boards on my side, coughing, shaking, curling in on myself.
The wood is solid under me. Not water. Not depth. Solid.
Atlas is out of the water a second later. He's on his knees in front of me before I've stopped coughing, soaking wet, his shirt plastered to him, and his hands find my face. Both of them. Palms on my cheeks, fingers in my wet hair, forcing my head up, forcing me to look at him.
"Max. Look at me. Right here."
I'm looking but I'm not seeing. My eyes are open and Atlas is in front of me but Linda is behind my eyes and the water is still in my ears and I can't—
"Max." Firmer. His thumbs press against my cheekbones. "Say my name."
"A—Atlas."
"Good. Say you're okay."
I can't. The words won't come. I'm shaking too hard. My teeth are chattering so violently I bite the inside of my cheek and taste copper.
"Sweetheart. Say it. Tell me you're here."
"I'm—" A breath. Another. His face comes into focus—the dark eyes, the jaw, the wet hair falling across his forehead in a way I've never seen before because Atlas doesn't get undone like this.
I find the bonds and hang on tight, letting them bring me back fully to the present.
"I'm here. I'm okay. I'm—Atlas, I'm okay. "
"Again."
"I'm okay."
"One more time."
"I'm okay."
He exhales. Long. Controlled. The Atlas version of falling apart—one breath, precisely released. His forehead drops against mine. Wet skin against wet skin. His hands stay on my face.
Bane is already gone—down the dock, across the grass, back with the blanket in under a minute. He wraps it around my shoulders from behind, pulling it tight, his chest warm against my back through the soaked fabric. His mouth presses once against my wet temple.
"Okay?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"I'm okay, Bane."
He nods. Squeezes my shoulders through the blanket. Steps back.
Zero hasn't moved. He's still at the end of the dock where he was sitting when I went over, his legs pulled up now, arms braced on his knees, jaw working.
When I'm wrapped and breathing he finally looks at me.
His face does the thing it does when he's feeling something he didn't give permission for—the small crack under the surface, the quick repair.
Except this time the repair doesn't hold.
"Max—"
"Don't, Zero."
"I didn't—"
"I know you didn't. It was an accident. Zero. Look at me." I wait until his eyes come up. "It wasn't your fault."
He doesn't believe me. I can feel it in the bond—a dark knot of something that's going to sit in him for days if I let it.
"I'm fine," I say. "I'm right here. I'm fine."
He swallows once. Nods. The jaw sets again, harder, and he looks away at the dark like he's furious with it for existing.
We stay on the dock.