Chapter Forty-Eight
Forty-Eight
It’s showtime.
The overheads are off, leaving only the pool itself glowing, a glassy, ghostly expanse that throws streaks of blue across the walls.
“To make it feel less clinical,” Carson explains, cast in fractured ripples, “less like a lesson.”
He wants us to start in the deep end. No wall to grab, no gradual slide in.
I nod, though my heartbeat stutters out a different truth.
Nervous. Scared.
Excited?
Is this when I finally learn what I’ve earned?
The surface shimmers like glass lit from beneath, and I don’t like the way it hides the depth, how there’s no bottom in sight. It’s just a slow gradient into shadow.
“You’ve got this.” He’s already in chest-deep, and his eyes catch the glimmer like it’s meant only for him. “Remember: breathe in, spring from your toes, and trust the fall. The water will meet you halfway.”
Come on. Just inch forward.
Why is it so hard?
“You’re overthinking. Don’t.”
Easy for him to say. He’s carved from confidence and calm.
“I’m not ready,” I whisper.
But I’m here. I’ve made it this far. It has to count for something.
“You never feel ready, baby.” He flicks the surface, lazy arcs catching light. “You just go.”
You just go.
So I do. One breath. Knees bend. And before I can stop myself, I jump.
The water swallows me whole, cold first, then warm, then everything all at once. Panic nips behind, threatening to pull me under, but I push back. My body doesn’t listen at first. I sink too fast. Flail too long.
But my legs begin to remember. Kick, kick, kick. The rhythm they’ve been taught. Soon I’m surfacing, breaking on a ragged gasp.
I did it.
“You did it.” His pride cuts through everything, clearer than the air I’m gulping in.
I’m too high on the buzz to notice how blurred the world is. It’s only when his hands brush water from my lashes that I realise. Only then that I catch the outline of his smile. Hazy, but still so real.
“How’d that feel, huh?”
“Terrifying.” My own voice barely makes it past the thunder in my chest. But stronger is this—“I made it, though, and that makes me want to try again and again.”
“Of course you made it.” His palms cradle my cheeks, eyes so lit with pride it almost hurts. “You can do anything, Bri. You’re built for it all.”
When he says things so soul-deep like that how can I not believe him? How can I not feel invincible, even if only for a breath?
He starts me off slow, half-laps at an easy pace, giving my muscles space to remember motion.
“Focus on the glide,” he instructs. “Ease your shoulders.”
He stays close, never leaving my orbit.
I’m hyper-aware of everything—how the water slicks my arms, how my legs drag a little. The way I still forget to breathe at the right moment.
But there’s progress too. Real progress. I remember when my body used to seize, when every inhale caught on panic. Now, even when I falter, there’s resolve in my strokes. A kind of persistence.
It isn’t just muscle memory; it’s a mind-game finally loosening its grip.
Carson notices. “It’s different now, isn’t it?” He glides over, droplets sliding down him. Something flickers in his eyes. “You’ve come a long way since that first night.”
Even though he says it low, I hear it loud and clear. And just like that, I’m back there—soaked, shaking, steadied in his arms.
It burns into my mind, that vision, as I muse, “Who would’ve thought we’d end up… here.”
Here.
Him surrounding me, not just outside, but stamped across all the inside parts of me too.
“Feels like a lifetime ago.”
“I think…” he tilts his head, “that even if I hadn’t been there that night, we’d still end up here.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes.” Not a flicker of hesitation. “You were always going to find me, Brielle. I was always going to find you.”
I float, but I’m not weightless; I’m vibrating. Like the water around me has become something else, something charged, and alive. Like it’s waiting. Waiting for…
It’s too much.
I look up. Stars glint through the skylight, the infinity of the night pressing down on us from above. We’re just specks in all that vastness so why does whatever’s between us feel too big for the space we take up?
He’s watching me. I feel it, the pressure building. Building. But he holds it back, not giving shape to what I feel forming.
“Sometimes,” he says at last, “I’d float here and wish so badly I could see Polaris.”
Polaris.
The name sticks. Catches, then sparks, dragging up a memory I’d let sink. My balance falters, a dip I can’t stop, and his arm is there before I can fall.
The world narrows. Suddenly he’s so close, too close, and my eyes tick rapidly between his. My breath snags, suspended.
“Carson…” The book falling. The scrawl. “Where did you get that Polaroid?”
He freezes. I didn’t even realise he was still drifting, like he was trying to be in my skin, until the motion cut off. The pool may be dim, but it isn’t shadows that darken his face. It’s something older.
“You saw that?”
“Yes.” I won’t let him deflect. “Tell me.”
His jaw tightens. He scrapes a hand down his face, water beading across his knuckles, and I can’t look away. “You already know where I got it from.”
I do. Those knuckles. I remember them split and bruised as he held my face.
“You beat him up.” It’s not a question; the confirmation is in his blank stare. My voice is small. “Why?”
His isn’t. “Why?” The word rips out of him.
“Maybe ‘cause he was creeping on you? I saw it. I saw you bolt. Saw him following you like—” He breaks off, maybe trying to calm himself, but when he continues the momentum only crescendos. “You’re not his to photograph. Not his to follow. You’re not anyone’s but—”
Another cut-off. But it’s too late. Something’s already shifted. His eyes blaze, and his chest pulls taut with what he leaves unfinished.
And I realise—this isn’t just anger. This is him saying something.
It terrifies me. It terrifies me so much that I drift backwards a fraction, only a fraction, but the pool doesn’t let me hide. Water coils between us, marking the retreat like proof.
Something fractures in his expression. Not anger this time, but hurt. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Run.” It’s not harsh, but it’s not soft either. “You did it after that night, you’re doing it now. Don’t.”
That night. The night? A part of me can’t believe we’re going back to then; we haven’t spoken of it once, not since that morning broke. I might’ve convinced myself it was a fever dream if I didn’t still remember each breathless second of it so vividly.
My pulse climbs, ricocheting off my ribs. “You don’t get it—”
“I do.” He surges forward, all lean mass rippling. “I do. You feel but you don’t let yourself believe, Brielle.”
“I—” The words jam in my throat, every part of me short-circuiting. “I’m not— I can’t—”
But then something hits me. Slams right into me. “Wait.” I blink. Wait. “Polaris… Polaris is the North Star?”
His silence tells me everything.
In that second, I falter. My body dips in a clumsy fall that shouldn’t happen, but I’m too tangled in the revelation.
Polaris. Written on a picture of me.
Strong arms catch me, and haul me close. His forehead presses to mine, nose brushing nose, our breaths shared and shallow. His lashes drip, but I see him clearly enough to know: this isn’t the same ocean. Even beneath the same stars, everything has changed between that first night and now.
“Why?” It’s all I can manage.
“Don’t you get it?” The storm in his eyes rages. “What do you think we’ve been all these weeks? Friends?”
I shake my head, choking, “We’re not—we can’t be—”
His inhale trembles, and something in him spills over. “You can’t tell me what you are to me, Brielle. You can’t tell me you know what I feel unless you feel the same way.”
Static. Silence. And yet—thud, thud, thud. My heartbeat louder than everything.
“How do you feel?” I ask, careful against the roar.
It doesn’t even take a millisecond. “Like I can’t live without you.
” Unyielding. Raw. “Like you’re the one I could never have dreamed of—because I didn’t think magic like this was real.
Like when you’re not here, all I’m thinking about is when I’ll see you again, when I’ll hold you again.
Like having you in my arms is a place I’d trade nothing for.
” He’s shaking now, emotions spilling like they’ve been caged too long.
“You’re it for me. You’re never not going to be it for me.
I wake up thinking about you. I sleep thinking about you.
You’re in my heart, my soul—” His voice splinters.
“I fucking love you, Brielle.” His lips barely brush mine, but the sensation ignites.
“My guiding light,” he whispers. “My Polaris.”
Silence. The pool is endless, the night is endless, but we’re sealed away from everything. It’s just us. Just this.
His eyes beg mine. “Say something.”
I am. I’m saying everything in the sting of my eyes, the shaking of my frame, in how he’s the only reason I don’t go under.
“Please.”
“Carson.” My throat closes, reopens. I shake my head. “I’m scared.”
“Yeah.” He nods once, firm. “I am too. But Bri, Brielle, baby—tell me.” A plea like I’ve never heard. “How do I make you feel?”
I— I—fuck it.
“Higher than any high has ever taken me.”
With that single confession, something in him breaks. The air between us goes with it, and his surge drags the water into waves around us as if the whole pool shares the force of it.
It’s not careful. It’s not neat. It’s a collision, two storms slamming together and splitting open. His hands frame my jaw, but the way he pulls me in is erratic, desperate, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip.
I gasp with him, the water rippling more and more as he pulls me close, closer.
My fingers dig into his shoulders, half holding on, half surrendering, and I can barely breathe but I don’t need to.
All I need is this. This flood of everything we’ve never said, but felt. It’s more than enough to keep me alive.
“I… love… you,” he rasps between broken moments, hoarse. “I love you. God, I love you.”
He keeps giving me his truth and as the night hums on beyond these walls of water, another truth slams into me.
I’m not falling anymore.
I’m already caught.