Chapter 23 – Bonus chapter
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BONUS CHAPTER
Holden
I touch the side of her neck for what has to be the twelfth time in the past hour. Maybe more. I’ve stopped keeping track.
I don’t precisely know what compels me to do so. It’s not exactly like she needs it. She's fast asleep—has been since I tucked that strand of hair behind her ear and whispered something quiet and stupid like, You’re okay now. Maybe I needed to hear it more than she did.
The only sounds left on this damn island are the wind curling through the open cabin slats, waves gnawing gently at the shore, and the sharp crack of birds smashing shells against rocks. And her breathing.
Soft. Even. Her lips are parted just slightly—pink again, thank fuck, not that terrifying blue—and warm air spills out in the kind of rhythm that would normally lull me to sleep, if I weren’t this fucking strung out.
Still, I keep touching her. Not to wake her. Not to hover. Just… to feel the soft thrum of her pulse under my fingertips. Just to prove that it’s still there. That she is still here.
Because I can’t stop remembering how cold her skin felt just hours ago, how her body didn’t fight me the way it should’ve when I wrapped her up in my hoodie, when I held her as close as I dared.
I’ve seen shit go sideways in the field before—lost equipment, riptides, broken bones, even a panicked diver or two—but I’ve never felt the kind of fear I did today. Not even close.
I saw her get caught in the current near the corals.
Watched the moment it pulled her too fast, too far.
I almost went after her right then, but I didn’t.
Because Coralie Taylor is capable as hell, and one thing I’ve learned about her is that she will always fight to solve her own problems. So I trusted her.
I watched. And she did handle it—precise kicks, sharp turns, the kind of technique that would make a Dive Master nod in respect.
But then the pressure valve blew.
And just like that, she started sinking. Her bubbles spiraled upward, and she started going the opposite way—down, down, fast—and I didn’t think. I moved. No deliberation, no logic, no self-preservation. Just instinct.
I shoved my regulator into her mouth. Over and over. Bought her seconds, then bought her more. My lungs screamed, legs nearly gave, but I didn’t stop—not when she smiled at me, that dreamlike, almost peaceful kind of smile that told me her mind was slipping somewhere it shouldn’t go.
That was the moment I knew. Not just that I was a goner for her.
I’ve known that for a while—probably since Waikīkī, when she wiped out, stood up, and looked at me like I was the one interrupting her day.
That girl—drenched, shivering, impossible—still had the audacity to argue with me. And I knew then. I knew.
But this was different.
This was the kind of knowing that crawls under your ribs and settles in for life.
The kind of knowing that rewires your heartbeat.
Because watching her sink—not metaphorically, not academically, but literally vanish under the weight of the water—I understood in my marrow that there would not be a single day, for the rest of my stupid life, where she wouldn't matter more than anything else.
And yeah… part of me thought about Jacob, too.
My brother. My compass. The person who steadied me when nothing else could. I lost him. Not for lack of love, not for lack of trying—but because sometimes trying isn’t enough. Sometimes, life doesn’t let you reach far enough, fast enough.
But today, the ocean didn’t get to decide. Not this time.
Because Coralie was within reach. And I wasn’t going to let her slip beneath the surface—not when I still had breath left in my lungs, not when she still had so much of her story left to write.
So I held on. And I brought her back.
Now, hours later, she’s here—safe and warm, her breath soft against my collarbone—and still, I keep checking her pulse. Not because I don’t believe she’s okay… but because I need to feel the proof of it. Again. And again.
I shift, trying to find something close to comfort on the wooden floor.
I don’t trust the bunk frame enough to take the top, and I sure as hell don’t want to spook her by sliding in next to her on the bottom.
So I stay here—on the floor, within reach but not too close, elbow bent so I can rest my chin on my arm and just.. . watch.
She’s facing me, her features relaxed in sleep, all the little tells smoothed away. No crease between her brows, no thoughtful pout tugging at her lips, no smile lines crinkling the corners of her eyes. Just peace. Quiet. Stillness.
Even in the dark, she’s still somehow lit from within.
Her hair glints gold where it spills across the pillow, moonlight catching on it like it’s trying to make sense of her.
Her cheeks and the bridge of her nose are kissed a shade too pink from the sun.
We’ve all caught some rays since we got here, but on her, it looks like proof she’s alive, and vibrant, and here.
If her eyes were open, I know exactly where they’d land.
On me. Reading me the way she always does, trying to parse the thousand things I don’t say out loud.
Maybe they’d scowl a little too, like they did before she fell asleep—her soft, subtle way of telling me I shouldn’t have risked myself for her.
She used my own damn words against me. Said I was reckless. Said I broke my own rule: never risk your life unless you’re certain you can save someone else.
But here’s the thing—I was certain. I knew I could get to her. Knew I’d tear the ocean apart if I had to. I wasn’t risking my life. I was making sure hers didn’t end where it shouldn’t.
So, yeah. Maybe I lied a little in that lecture.
Actually, I lied twice.
Because I told them I only believed in two truths. But the third one’s been here for a while, tucked under my ribs, gaining weight and shape and substance.
The third truth is this: I’m in love with her.
I have no damn idea what to do with that particular truth, though.
Because she is her—and I am me. And that gap? It’s not just philosophical. It’s tectonic.
She’s incandescent. Not just brilliant in the sterile, academic sense—but alive in the way ideas spark before they collapse into something revolutionary.
Her mind is relentless, always moving, always hungry for the next pattern, the next theory, the next impossible problem to crack open with nothing but stubbornness and a glint in her eye.
She terrifies me, sometimes. Not because I doubt her—God, never that—but because I know what the world does to women like her.
The ones who don’t shrink. The ones who dare to be exceptional without apology.
And me?
I’m a man still trying to remember how to exist after my foundation cracked beneath me.
Still relearning breath. Still clinging to a grief I haven’t yet figured out how to honor without being swallowed whole.
I’ve built walls around everything soft in me, and she—God help me—she walks right through them.
No permission. No hesitation. Just steps in and starts rearranging the furniture like she’s always belonged there.
And she does. That’s the problem.
But I’m still her TA. I’m still standing on a rung of a ladder that was built to keep people like her out—and people like me comfortable.
And no matter how hard I try to unlearn the power I didn’t earn, it’s still there.
I still benefit. I still have the privilege of not worrying what the world might assume if I walk into a room holding her hand.
She doesn’t get that choice.
She needs someone who doesn’t flinch under scrutiny. Someone who doesn’t carry death like a second spine. Someone who can give her his whole self, not just the part he’s managed to carve out from guilt and silence.
But I’m the one lying here, memorizing the way her breathing settles when she’s truly at rest. The way her lips part ever-so-slightly, like her body finally believes it’s safe.
The freckles. The tiny scar near her temple I’ll have to ask about later.
The exact tilt of her nose. I’ve committed them all to memory like a man afraid they’ll be taken.
And now I don’t know how to stop wanting what I have no right to ask for.
If I’m being completely, brutally honest, I think she probably deserves someone like Theo.
He’s still on the ladder, sure, but he’s a rung over. Adjacent. Not her TA, not her grader, not the direct pipeline between her work and its validation. Nothing he says or does affects her evaluations or her prospects. Which means he can admire her brilliance without being a possible threat to it.
And on paper? He’s everything she should want.
He’s what most people would call light. But don’t mistake that for triviality—he’s not shallow. He’s full of instinct and loyalty and a kind of emotional fluency I couldn’t fake on my best day. He feels what he feels and then, impossibly, he says it out loud.
We met in the least curated way possible—on the water, both of us riding clean waves in Waikīkī.
He was training for a competition; I was chasing clarity the only way I knew how, by letting the ocean file everything else down.
He caught my eye mid-set, tossed me a shaka, and that was it.
Unspoken recognition. Like he knew I’d end up on the other end of his dinner order an hour later.
I was sitting at a bar counter, sand still stuck to my ankles, scanning a menu, when he dropped into the seat beside me and announced, “So I want to order, like, five different things, but I can’t decide.”
No greeting. No preamble.
“Rough day to be you,” I said, barely glancing up.
He groaned, flung the menu down and shook his wet hair in my direction. “What I meant is—if I order all this food, are you gonna help me eat it or am I on my own, bro?”