Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Derek
Hunter was right . We should have gone to a resort.
Or I should have spent this week with Cole so I could distract him from his worries and get some time with him before his baby comes.
I should have read through some indie scripts to see if any are interesting enough to take on.
Anything but trapping myself with a bunch of strangers, with no places to hide.
And while I’m terrified of Donovan, she’s a whole lot less daunting than a boat full of fans.
At least there’s some space between us and the other boats now that we’ve been on the river for a while, and after that disastrous start this morning, I’ll take every positive spin on the day that I can get.
“So,” Donovan says after an hour of blessed, torturous silence broken only by the creak of her oars. “I have a question.”
She probably has many. “Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll answer? Or ‘okay, but keep your mouth shut’?”
“The second one.”
She twists her head to smirk at me, which I expected. “Nice try, Riley, but my job is to get you down this river safely, and I intend to do that.”
“Nothing about this river is dangerous,” I argue lamely. I know what’s coming in a couple of days, but right now the water is as flat as ever. It has a current, but I could jump in and float in my life jacket for the next several miles without issue.
Donovan shifts the blade of her right oar all the way forward, tucking it between the spare oar strapped to the side of the boat and the boat itself.
Then she does the same on the left, and I brace myself for when she spins around to face me, crossing her legs underneath her and leaning her elbows on her knees.
“A panic attack can be dangerous,” she says, lifting her eyebrows.
Hide. Keep calm. Tuck it all away. I blink, delaying my response as long as I can, as if it might delay this conversation. “I didn’t have a panic attack,” I say eventually.
She smiles again, but this time it’s softer. “The river is a safe space, Derek. You don’t have to hide. Not from me.”
Donovan told me that she hates everything about me, and she’s kept things close to the vest just like I have.
“Trust goes both ways,” I say, sharper than I mean to.
But I think I’m allowed to be a little moody after the trouble I caused with the paddle.
Maybe, if I had slept better, I might have been able to control my reaction, but I didn’t.
So I got stuck in my head, which is a bad place to be left unrestrained.
I was losing control of my chariot and flying too far from the earth. And Donovan saw it all.
Narrowing her eyes, she tilts her head and studies me for a long moment. Then she surprises me. “You’re right.” Unfolding her legs, she stands and steps backward, straddling the middle of the boat with one foot on each metal box strapped to the frame. “How about you take the oars today?”
I blink, staring at her and wondering if I heard her wrong. “What?”
She folds her arms, a bit of a challenge in her gaze as she looks down at me. “You’re paying me to teach you to row, and you’re not going to learn if you don’t try it.”
My fingers itch to grab the oars and take the opportunity while I’ve got it, but lingering panic holds me back. I got stuck in a spiral from one tiny mistake this morning. What happens if I mess up while rowing and put the boat in danger? Put her in danger.
As if she reads my thoughts, Donovan glances at the calm water surrounding us. “No better time than now to learn, unless you’ve changed your mind and don’t want—”
“I want.” Wincing, I clench my jaw and take a steadying breath. “I’m just surprised you’re giving me the chance.”
“‘Trust goes both ways,’” she repeats, the corner of her lips twisting up.
My thoughts stray to the way she looked at me under the stars last night, but I don’t let myself linger on it for too long.
Instead, I think about the amazing script that brought me here in the first place.
Even with my name attached to it, that movie won’t succeed unless it’s made as well as it can be, and I don’t want to be the guy river guides complain about when they talk about the few whitewater movies that exist.
I have to do this right.
No mistakes.
“Okay.” Not nearly as graceful as Donovan was, I crawl from my uncomfortable seat and settle in the middle of the boat, sitting on the ice chest as my heart rate kicks up higher than I would like.
I get this way every time I try something new, but usually the nerves don’t last long. I’m a quick learner, but I’m not on my game today. It’s as much Donovan’s fault as it is the exhaustion that’s been following me for weeks now.
In position, I free the oars and swing them out perpendicular to the boat, holding them above the water. They’re lighter than I expected for being at least ten feet long, but I can already tell rowing isn’t going to come naturally. Even after a day of watching Donovan do it with ease.
“Key things,” Donovan says, lowering herself onto the waterproof bags directly in front of me.
Once sitting, she reaches forward and wraps her hands around the handles, nearly close enough to touch my fingers.
“You want your oars to be mostly straight up and down.” She twists them so the blades are flat over the water, then lifts my hands to plunge the blades into the river.
“If they’re turned like this, you’re going nowhere. ”
I push forward on the oars and grimace when they slice straight through the water. “Noted,” I mutter and twist them so the blades are vertical again.
“More like this,” Donovan says, shifting them to a slight angle. “You’re pushing against the water and want as much surface area as you can get. Try it now.”
The blades resist the movement this time, and our raft inches a little faster than the current as I push forward.
“Great.” Donovan’s smile is bright as she leans back again. “Try that a few times.”
The motion isn’t as awkward as I thought it might be, easing some of my worry as I fall into a rhythm. That rhythm only lasts a few strokes before Donovan grins.
“Twist your oars,” she says without looking away from my face.
To my surprise, the oars are almost flat again, and I adjust them to the proper angle as my chest grows tight from the mistake. “Thanks.”
“I’m here to help.”
Why do I get the feeling she’s not talking about rowing when she says that? As I continue my forward motion, words seem to climb up my throat as if desperate to get out, no matter how hard I try to swallow them down. Trust goes both ways, I told her, and either that was a lie, or I’m a coward.
I like to think neither is true, but Hunter thinks I already trust Donovan more than I should. If I can’t talk to my friends, the only people in the world I trust, I shouldn’t be able to talk to a near stranger who has unnerved me from the very beginning.
And yet…
Wondering if this is a bad idea, I adjust my oars again and say, “I don’t like messing up.”
Donovan only glances at the oars for a second, apparently realizing what I mean. “No one does, Derek.”
“But I…” The words catch in my throat, like admitting them out loud means I’ve officially lost the control I worked so hard to get.
Pursing her lips, Donovan watches me for a moment, then says, “Try turning the boat. Push forward with your right oar, and we’ll go left. Forward with your left will turn us right.”
I try both oars, soaking in the way the raft is more responsive than I would have guessed.
The blades aren’t wide, and they’re only a couple of feet long, but I’m slowly starting to get a feel for the physics of it all.
The oars are long and far enough out from the boat that I don’t have to use a lot of effort to make a big change.
“It’s the opposite if you’re pulling back on the oar,” Donovan says, grabbing one of the handles again and pushing me into a backwards motion with the left oar. The boat swings left. “Play around with it a bit and get a sense of your level of control.”
My eyes jump to hers, and again I wonder if she’s talking about rowing or about me. Maybe that’s why I say, “It’s worse for me. Making mistakes. It’s called maladaptive perfectionism.”
She’s still holding the oar handle, like she forgot to let go as she studies me. “Big words.”
I swallow. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had this bone-deep need for things to be perfect. It became obsessive, and while it meant I excelled in school, it messed with my head. When I did things right, I was fine. If I messed up…”
“You would freeze.”
I nod.
Tilting her head to the side, she looks down and slowly pulls her hand from the oar, her eyebrows pulling low. “Was your perfectionism caused by something, or have you always dealt with it?”
I’ve already said more than I should, and even with the NDA she signed, I can’t shake the fear that talking about this is going to mean it’s out in the world for everyone to know. “Pass.”
Donovan’s lips twist up in amusement. “Something caused it,” she guesses. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.” I believe her, which calms my racing heart, but of course she’s not done. “If this is something you’ve dealt with for a long time, why has no one ever brought it up?”
Chuckling with no real humor behind the laugh, I shrug and spin us in a full circle, then resume pushing forward on the oars.
I want to get more familiar with the motion before I try going backward.
“The problem is the solution,” I say with a sigh.
“I have to be perfect, so that’s all anyone sees.
No matter what’s happening behind the scenes. ”
“You don’t actually have to be perfect, Derek. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that,” I grumble, rolling my eyes. “I worked with a therapist who gave me the tools to manage my perfectionism. I’ve never tried to do less than my best, but for a long time, I was able to give myself grace when I needed to.” I frown. For a long time, I thought I was okay.