Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Rhett
Fifteen Years Ago
F ifteen yards.
That was how much space was between my boat and the one in front of us, a distance that could easily be closed in only a few seconds, which was all the time I had to try to avoid crashing my bow into their stern.
I never allowed spaces that were this tight.
Especially with the speed I was going.
I couldn’t brake—brakes didn’t exist on a boat.
I had little options, and I needed to move fast.
“What happens when we bump them?” Penelope’s face was near mine when she spoke, excitement in her tone when there should have been fear. That was the coke; it turned everything into a fucking party.
I didn’t have time to push her away or comment on the closeness of our bodies.
“You need to hold on tight,” I warned. “Do it now!”
I swore I’d shifted my path so this wouldn’t happen. And I swore there had been plenty of clearance before I looked at Penelope when she had really started to act wild and that it had been somewhat safe to take my eyes off the water.
But I had known better. I had known how wrong that was.
My father had trained me not to get distracted, to always keep my focus on what was around me—the boats, the waves, the depth. I’d acted like a damn idiot, and I was going to pay the price.
Adrenaline was pumping through my body, my hands shaking as I held the helm with one and the throttle with the other. I couldn’t jerk the wheel—boats were nothing like a car; the movement wouldn’t immediately turn us, there would be a slight delay, and then we’d be sent in a three-sixty. With boats behind us, gaining speed by the second, that would just get us into another accident.
“Go, Rhett! Go!” She squeezed my shoulder. “You’ve got this, captain.”
She acted as though this were a race, not a catastrophe.
That I wouldn’t be dead the second my father found out.
That I wouldn’t be paying him back for the rest of my life and beyond.
“Stop,” I growled.
I didn’t know if I was talking to Penelope or to what was unfolding, but I needed both to happen.
“I want to help?—”
“You can help by keeping fucking quiet and holding on.”
The only things I could do—and hoped to hell they worked—was turn the wheel a little, praying it would be enough to clear the other boat’s left side, and lower my speed without causing an accident with the boats behind me. But if the one in front of me continued at the same rate, that would add some space between us.
Seconds would tell, and so would patience.
With Penelope’s hand on my shoulder, as she shouted words in my face, patience was becoming a real problem.
My boat instantly reacted as I pulled back on the throttle, and I held my breath as I assessed whether the change had helped. The tip of my anchor, which sat front and center of my boat, was what I used to judge our position. One thing I could tell right away was that we were no longer aligned with the middle of the other boat’s engines. By turning, we’d shifted at least a foot.
But would it be enough?
If the depth of the water wasn’t an issue, I would have pulled off onto the side and let everyone pass. But the markers that were dug deep into the sand—posts that stuck out from the surface of the ocean—clearly defined the channel, and anything outside those tall sticks would bottom out the boat, causing a whole other nightmare.
With each second that passed, the space between our two boats began to grow, and the tension in my chest slowly released since the threat of crashing was getting less and less. Somehow, I’d done the right thing, I’d fixed this. I just needed to maintain the same speed so the boats behind us didn’t face the same issues I’d just had.
But just because the danger in front of us was diminishing, that didn’t mean I was back to breathing normally.
That there wasn’t a fucking monster clawing its way out of my chest.
I’d never been in a situation like this before. I didn’t screw around when it came to driving my dad’s boat; I took this shit seriously.
And what had happened with Penelope? That wasn’t okay.
Things had gotten out of control.
She hadn’t listened to anything I’d said.
She’d turned what had already been a risky situation into something that could have been fatal.
I needed a second, so when I saw the opening up ahead—a widening between the markers that would allow me to idle in the water—I navigated toward the right. I decreased the horsepower until I could shift into neutral.
Once the boat was stopped, my head dropped, and I clutched what I was holding, letting the air come into my lungs, doing everything I could to bring down my pulse.
“Yay, you did it!” She threw her arms around me. “You’re my hero.”
A fucking hero?
That was what she was going to say to me? After what could have just happened?
I couldn’t take any more of this.
“You need to get off me.” My fingers clenched as she squeezed her face into the side of my neck. “Penelope, get the fuck away from me.” When she still didn’t respond, I found her wrists and pulled her hands off me. “Jesus Christ, why don’t you listen?!”
She looked as if I’d just slapped her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Do you have any idea what could have happened back there?” I threw my thumb over my shoulder, pointing at the scene of the almost crime. “We could have fucking died. We could have totaled the boat. Does that mean anything to you?”
Her eyes were turning feral as she chewed her nail. “It was your fault. You were the one driving.” Her arms lifted in the air, and she danced. “I was just a hot accessory.”
“You’re kidding me.” When she continued to dance, I shouted, “You’re fucking kidding me! You’ve been touching me, flirting with me nonstop. Climbing on my shoulders, begging me to dance with you. None of that is right, Penelope.”
Her arms dropped, and her body stilled. “Asshole.”
“I’m the asshole?” My eyebrows couldn’t possibly get any higher. “You’re the one who’s been acting like an idiot since we got on the boat.”
“That’s a lie.”
“A lie?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve done nothing but help you, and all you’ve done is reject me.”
I held on to the top of my hat, my head so hot that I thought the cap might melt. “You’re not making any sense right now. It’s all that coke you snorted and all that weed you smoked. It’s getting to your fucking brain?—”
“This is about her, isn’t it?” Her top lip curled. “Just say it. Admit it. She’s why you’re acting this way.”
“Who?”
“Lainey!”
I was lost.
So lost that no map could ever get me out.
“What does Lainey have to do with this?” I asked.
Her bare foot pounded on the floor of the boat. “She gets everything. Always. Whatever she wants, it’s hers. What about me, Rhett? When is it my turn? When do I get what I want?”
Was I hearing her correctly?
Or was I in a completely different conversation than the one she was having?
Because none of this was adding up.
“What does that have to do with what happened today? Because Lainey isn’t the reason you were all over me, and Lainey isn’t the reason you’re all coked out, and Lainey certainly isn’t the reason you put us in harm’s way.”
“Don’t you get it?” Her eyes dipped all the way down to my legs and gradually glared back up. “This is Lainey’s world. I’m just living in it.”
“No, I don’t get it.”
She put her hands on her head, shaking her hair so each piece loosened from the curls and stood out. “I deserve all the things too!”
“What aren’t you getting?”
Her sigh was long and drawn out. “Everything.”
“You’re going to NYU, the only school you wanted to go to—are you forgetting that? And the guys in our high school you wanted to date or hook up with, you got them too. What do you want that you don’t have?”
A burst of air came out of her nose, and she rubbed it until the end was red. “God, you’re so stupid.”
“You’re right. I must be.” I nodded toward the water. “We have another twenty minutes until we’re at the beach house. Can you control yourself long enough to not almost get us into another accident? I’d like to get there already so I can forget about this shitstorm of a day.”
She pointed at me. “Fuck you.”
Fuck me?
Why was I getting attacked?
What had I done?
This—whatever the hell this was—had spiraled into something so far from where it should have been. Somehow, I needed to get her back to a place where she was at least settled enough to handle the rest of this boat trip, and I’d deal with the aftermath once we were on land.
I kept my voice low and somewhat soft. “Penelope?—”
“Leave me the fuck alone.” She backed up to the right side, leaning against the fiberglass edge.
I waved her over and opened my arms, doing anything to calm her down. “Come here. We’ll hug it out, and then we’ll get going. Don’t forget, we have a joint to share once we get to Timothy’s.”
“You can go fuck yourself!” She flipped me off.
My hands balled into fists, and I turned toward the helm, slamming them onto the cold metal wheel.
She was impossible.
There was nothing I could do.
My anger was peaking.
My frustration was reaching a whole new level.
I didn’t know if this was the person she really was or if it was the drugs making her act this way. It didn’t matter because I didn’t know what to do.
She’d lost her shit, and I saw no way out of this.
She hadn’t reacted well to my yelling—something I should have held in, but I couldn’t—and she’d had the same response when I tried to play Mr. Nice Guy.
Do I pick her up and put her in the seat?
Do I beg for her forgiveness?
Do I ? —
“I’m fucking out of here.” She rocked the boat as she stormed toward the stern.
Awesome. Just what I needed, for her to stomp around like a damn child.
I pulled my hands off the helm and began to turn around. My body was only halfway pointed toward the stern, just approaching the starboard side, when I heard the sound.
A sound that made my heart suddenly stop.
A sound that made every bit of breath hitch in my lungs.
A sound that consumed every part of my body.