The Weight of Darkness

47. Remy

I know she can swim. I watched her gliding through the water like she was part fish the first night I met her, the night she got shot at. That was the first night she didn’t take any of the warnings seriously. I brought her with Rhea because I thought she’d be safer, and if she mattered so much to my sister, I was obligated to protect her. I didn’t realize bringing her here would only pull her deeper into my world. But that’s exactly what it did. I pulled her into this dark world without giving her sufficient warning, and she pulled me into her.

As I watch her blonde hair disappear under the surface of the water, I ignore the twisting in my gut. I did so good for so long, pushing away feeling and emotion. I hard-wired my brain to imagine Davos straddling my unconscious girlfriend every time Monica popped into my mind. I found companionship in women content with a night of good things. I learned to crave darker interactions because they fed the beast in me created by my rage and kept it dormant.

And in a matter of weeks, this girl has come into my life and fucked with everything. I’ve been too easy on her, and she’s made me soft in general. It’s past time I remedied that, so I push the guilt away and turn to fix myself a drink while I wait for the sound of her gasping as she breaks the surface.

It happens sooner than I anticipate, the splash of the water followed by a sharp inhale of air. She’ll just be climbing on the deck from the ladder, dripping wet and pissed as a drowned cat, no doubt, by the time I pour myself some bourbon.

Except, when I walk back onto the deck with my glass in hand and a smirk on my lips, she’s still not there. Panic strikes me like lightning as I consider the possibility that I went too far. What if she hit her head? What if her shorts snagged on the side of the boat and she can’t free herself? I run to the bow of the boat, looking over the side in search of her, of any sign that she ever came up at all. But there’s nothing.

I’ve set my glass down and stripped my shirt off, throwing it on the wood that’s slick with rain. I’m just about to dive in when a flash of lightning illuminates the space beyond the lights, and I see her… swimming away from me.

We’re still docked near the shore, but instead of swimming for the ladder on the back of the boat or the dock that would take her into the city, she is swimming further out to sea… in the middle of a thunderstorm.

What the hell is she doing?

“Claire!” I call after her, cupping my hands around my mouth in an attempt to be heard over the howl of the wind and the waves breaking against the hull.

I assume she doesn’t hear me, as another peel of thunder takes that exact moment to clap around us. God, this woman is insane. She has to know she’s going in the wrong direction. What does she really hope to gain by swimming into the abyss?

My irritation piqued, I hoist the anchor and decide I’m going to have to chase her. Of course, it’s sketchy in this weather to motor next to an unprotected body, but she’ll likely kill herself swimming out like that. At least this way, Rhea will have a body to bury, because I’m going to fucking kill this girl.

Squinting to see through the onslaught, I find her and lock my gaze on the shape of her head bobbing along the surface as I chase her. She wasn’t lying. She is a great swimmer. I can’t fathom how she got so far away from me in such a short time.

But no matter how fast Claire is, she can’t outswim the boat. I catch her in a matter of moments, cutting her off by whipping in front of her so that she has no choice but to acknowledge me. I see her scowl when she notices me, but she doesn’t even hesitate before turning to continue her path parallel to mine.

“Claire!” I yell, my anger swelling like the waves in the distance behind us. It’s been raining for hours—it was before we fell asleep. But the storm only seems to be growing in intensity, the whitecaps in the distance looking distinctly precarious.

Whether she doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care, I get no answer as she continues to swim away from me as if she’s just doing laps in my family’s pool. I could follow beside her, waiting until she tires and sucks up her pride to climb aboard. But I’m not in the mood to wait.

She doesn’t hear me jump in behind her. I’m sure that she’d turn back if she had, but she just continues forward, fully focused on staying moving. She should be fully focused on keeping her head above the water though. “Claire!” I growl, anger burning in all of my limbs as she ignores me, so recklessly swimming on.

Without the protection of the boat to break the waves, they’re growing choppier, faster, and bigger as they break around her small form. And she fucking swims fast, putting more distance between us than I would have even considered possible.

I’m definitely going to kill her when I catch her. Wrap my hands around that little throat and use that grip to shake her, maybe knock some sense into her.

“Just fucking stop!” I yell after her. She may be a good swimmer, but she’s been in the water longer than me, and the waves push her around much more easily. She’s expending at least twice as much energy as I am just to stay afloat.

Finally, she must tire a little… or maybe she just hears me for the first time, because she turns back to face me as if she’s surprised I’m there. I get a moment as lightning forks overhead to take in her parted lips that I’m going to punish once I catch her.

And then a wave crashes between us and she disappears entirely.

If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. The lightning disappears just as she does, leaving only the darkness between us and the falling rain, the crashing waves.

Fuck. I swim faster, my heart hammering harder than it ever has as I try to close the distance between where she was when she went under and where I started from. But without anything around to serve as a marker, it’s impossible to tell. I keep watch for any sign of her—a flash of her silvery hair, a glimpse of her jean shorts. But there’s nothing, so I take a deep breath and plunge beneath a wave as it breaks, looking for those same things below the surface.

Its too dark. The ocean is pitch black at night when there are no stars or lights to distinguish anything in the abyss. It’s impossible to see where the surface even is as I glance up at it a second before pushing myself deeper. The drop-off here is steep, and I push myself as deep as I can go before the ache in my chest forces me up.

It seems to take longer to get to the surface than it did to push myself under, but when I finally break it, I suck in a breath of relief, trying to get all the air I can into my chest so that I can dive back down.

A wave crashes into me before I can go back below. Unprepared, the force knocks me loose, sending me cascading through the water. I have just enough warning to fill my lungs with air before my head goes under and the darkness returns.

Its peaceful under the water, even as I’m thrown around in the surf. The angry sounds of the sea and sky above don’t reach down here. It’s the most profound silence I’ve ever known. And yet, I know not to be entranced with it. My chest still burns with the need for air.

And Claire.

I get control of myself enough to break the surface again, spinning around to see how far that set me back. I can’t even see the shore from where I am, but the boat isn’t too far. I can get there in a matter of minutes. But if I don’t find Claire, she won’t have minutes. It could already be too late, and that makes my chest ache harder than the need for air did.

The lightning that’s been dancing in the sky, painting the clouds silver in intervals, strikes somewhere in the not-so-distant space beyond my boat. It offers me the briefest chance to see a flash of something silvery before we’re plunged in darkness again. But that flash is all I need. I swim toward it without abandon, eyes locked on the space that the night has reclaimed, moving on instinct because it’s all I’ve got.

My fingers tangle in her hair first, the web of it drawing me in. In the dark, it could be anything, but I fist it in my hand, using it to draw her against me. And as I drag her through the water, it’s clear that it’s not just anything. I’ve got her.

“Claire!”

Her eyes are closed, her lips parted. Maybe it’s the dark all around us, but they look blue. She doesn’t react to me, doesn’t hear me, or feel the tug on her hair. I tuck my arm around her ribcage, pulling her with me in a football hold as I swim toward the boat. This time, we’re swimming with the waves instead of against them, and I use their momentum to propel us forward as fast as I can.

When I reach up and close a hand around the ladder, lightning hits again so close that I drop the metal, hissing when my fingers burn against the pole. Flames dance along the back of the bow, creating a ring that spreads slowly from the point of origin right where my hand was a moment before.

I grit my teeth and tighten my grip around Claire, hauling her over the side of the boat with me and letting her body drop onto the ground. I fall on top of her, tilting her head back to let the light show me the trickle of blood on her head. It’s not much, and I can’t even see the source, so it’s the least threatening problem. I slam my hands into her chest, pumping harder than necessary. Rather a broken rib than death is what they always told us when we took our lifeguard course over the summers.

I’m just about to press my lips to hers when she gasps, her eyes flying open. I don’t even get a second of relief, because she’s choking on the water I just pushed out of her lungs. Spinning her face to the side, she is able to cough the water from her throat before she falls back against the deck, her body exhausted.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I growl, slamming my fist into the ground beside her head. Claire doesn’t even flinch at my anger, her blue eyes focusing on mine for a moment. I think she’s about to say something, and then she glances behind me.

“Fire!”

I stay focused on her just long enough to let her wonder if I’m crazy enough to let us go down in flames, and then roll off of her. The fire extinguisher is just where it always is, under the bench seat, so I whip it out and pull the pin, spraying it back and forth until the white foam coats the flames on the back of my boat and effectively kills them.

Claire is getting to her feet shakily beside me by the time I drop the extinguisher and turn to glare at her. “I’ll ask you again, Claire. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Her jaw hardens, and I see the stubbornness in her eyes. “I told you I was a good swimmer. You wanted me to prove it, so I did.”

“You didn’t prove anything.” I laugh because I can’t help it. She’s being so absurd that she can’t be serious.

“I could have swam all the way back to your house if you hadn’t jumped in and distracted me.” Her chest heaves, and I don’t know if it’s from anger or her body trying to readjust to breathing oxygen normally.

“I distracted you?” I shake my head. “You’re fucking delusional.”

“You threw me over the side of the boat!” She snaps, pointing angrily to the bow that’s been devoured by flames. “But you think I’m delusional? What’s the game Remy? You want me to fucking run from you?”

“You should.” I tell her honestly.

“Yeah, well, I tried. And every time, you fucking come after me.”

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t!” I growl, remembering how Wes had held the knife to her throat. The truth is, we both know she wouldn’t have been dead. They were going to keep her alive, at least for a while. But she would wish she wasn’t.

“Do you want to be the white knight or the dark prince, Remy? Cause I think you don’t even know yourself!”

Ouch.

That hits harder than I’ll let her see. I cover the pain with a laugh, so she doesn’t see me flinch. “Do you want to be the damsel in distress or the vixen in charge? Cause I’m not sure you know, either!”

I don’t know what I expect her to say back to that, but it’s not what she says. “I don’t know!” Her answer gives me a moment of silence to contemplate that, but she continues before I’ve had the chance to understand what she means. “I don’t know who I am, Remy. I never have. I look in the mirror, and I feel like…” She pauses, her breaths making her chest rise and fall quickly as she contemplates whether she wants to tell me what she’s actually thinking. “Sometimes I feel like I know who I am. And then I look in the mirror, and I see…” Her voice lowers with a sigh, “It doesn’t match the way I feel.”

I try to understand what that’s supposed to mean. I’ve heard of things like body dysmorphia and subsequent eating disorders, but I don’t think that’s what she’s trying to get at. So, I stay silent, watching her face as she struggles to find the words to help me understand.

“It’s so hard to not know who you are. I feel like I’ve never created an identity for myself—and sometimes that makes me feel like I don’t actually exist. But then there are moments—usually moments where we’re together—where I feel alive. And I feel like I know who I am.” I watch her throat work as she swallows. “And then you go and do something that makes me question myself all over again.”

“Claire—”

“It’s not fair to put it on you, Remy. I know. Because it’s not you. But—”

“But?” I prompt, needing to know where she’s going with this.

She shakes her head, turning away from me. My hand snags around her wrist, forcing her back to me. “But what?” I demand, grabbing her chin and forcing her eyes to meet mine.

I think she’s going to ignore me until she presses her quivering lips together. “But I want you to be the one who makes me see myself.”

“Claire—” I start, my voice even colder than I feel.

“I’m not asking you to love me. I don’t think anyone ever could. I’m just asking you to break me so I can put myself back together.”

I stare at her, unblinking. There’s more in that simple statement than I can even begin to wrap my head around. “You want me to… break you? So that you can put yourself back together?”

“I know it probably doesn’t make sense.” She runs her hand through her wet hair, her fingers twisting it at the scalp as she struggles to make me understand. “I think I was always fragile, probably. So, it’s no surprise that I broke. And when I did, nobody was going to come clean up the pieces for me. Nobody was going to try and shape me back together, so I just did what I could. But I clearly did something wrong because I—” Her voice breaks, and this time she does turn away from me, hurrying to the other side of the boat like she can’t possibly get enough space between us.

“Because you what?” I press, following her. She opens the door into the kitchen, but I step behind her, pressing her into the edge of the counter. My lips find her ear, my hands coming around her to pin hers against the marble. “Because what?”

Her voice shakes when she answers me. “Because I’m fucked up.”

I blink, taking a moment to let her admission settle. That’s certainly not what I expected her to say. “What?” I laugh, wrenching her chin around so that her neck tilts back to face me. But Claire isn’t laughing. Tears stream quietly down her face, and my stomach plummets. “You’re not fucked up.” I tell her, finishing the thought I’d already had. But I can tell the words glance off of her. She doesn’t believe me.

She spins to face me, pushing off the counter as leverage. Her small body presses into mine, and the burgeoning erection from a moment before turns hard. “This is fucked up.” She gestures to the finite amount of space between our bodies, and I have half a mind to devour the rest of her words in a kiss. But I don’t. I watch her. “We are both fucked up, Remy. But this? Whatever the hell this is? This fucking and fighting and then repeating? It’s toxic.”

I never meant for it to be. She’s hard to resist, and the first time we fell into one another, it had been so chaotically passionate that I didn’t have a chance to think about stopping. But I know she’s right. We’re pushing each other, pulling so hard we’re just tugging one another through a mess. “But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I like it. I like that you don’t love me. I like that you want to hurt me. I like that you make me want to hurt you.” Claire swipes at her cheeks angrily. “That’s not healthy, is it? Not normal?”

I don’t know how I’m supposed to know what normal is. Maybe I knew it once, ages ago, when I had Monica. But I was an entirely different man then. My parents certainly never gave me anything to model my opinions of healthy relationships upon. “That doesn’t make you fucked up,” I argue, instead of answering the question.

“It does.” She whispers. “I’m infected. He got under my skin and burrowed so deep I’ll never get him out.” Her body sobs, heaving with that idea, but her tears have stopped. “He ruined me, and now I just want someone else to ruin me better than he did.”

I stare at her as she looks up at me, her eyes cold, her body colder. Her lips are still faintly blue, and I’m just realizing she’s shaking. That, at least, is easily remedied. I wrap my arms around her even as she goes stiff, not wanting to accept my warmth, and hold her so tight that I think our heartbeats sync.

She’s wrong about so many things. She’s not fucked up, she’s not damaged or unworthy. She isn’t ruined or broken.

But she’s right about one thing.

No matter how tight I hold her against me, I can’t put her back together.