Chapter 4
Riley, you gotta wake up.
I’d know Nate’s voice anywhere, but there’s a different tone to it now, kind of like he’s screaming but the sound is soggy and muffled, barricaded by something thick, but not too far away.
Riley .
It’s like I’m underwater and he’s yelling from the surface.
Something hits me in my chest. The blow makes me nauseous.
“Open your eyes, Riley.”
I can’t. They’re too heavy.
“For fuck’s sake, Riley, we’re sinking.”
Well, that gets me going.
I wake up right into a fucking nightmare. It’s a world painted with blood that cakes my hair, ice cold water freezing my feet through my worn-down Converse.
When I manage to find my breath, I choke on it.
“What happened?” Through the windshield, all I see is water. Some of it is the heavy rain still pelting Nate’s cruiser. But the rest of it rises. Fast.
Nate shoves me a bit. “Get your seatbelt off. Now. ”
It’s hard to focus on the task when my feet splash in the rising water below my seat.
“Holy shit. We went off the bridge.”
Nate’s car tilts forward as we begin to go under. Everything is in slow motion.
Until it’s not.
When we thump, I hit the damn ceiling even though I’m still buckled in.
“Fuck.”
“You need to stay calm, Riley.”
Calm. Right. We’re twenty feet down at the bottom of the bay in a car .
I’m calm as a fucking sea cucumber.
Suddenly there’s a flash of light, but thankfully it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. Nate beams a flashlight in my face.
“You straight?” He’s breathing heavily, his eyes squinting as they scan mine. “Riley? You good?”
I nod, because all things considered, it could be worse.
We could be dead.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see the other car stop short so I swerved, hit the median and we must’ve bounced off the bridge…Damn. Your head.” Nate lifts the flashlight, but drops his arm quickly before it can peak, almost as if the weight of it is too much.
That’s when I really start freaking out. Because nothing is too much for Nate.
I state the obvious. “We gotta get out of here.”
Water covers my knees. I’ve surfed in some seriously cold water but this deep stuff is so freezing it pierces my damn bones. I push through the throbbing in my head and try to think, to rack my brain that’s already been rattled. I turn to the door, as if it’s that easy.
“You’ll never get it open. We’ve got to wait until the pressure stabilizes.” Nate leans against the headrest and the noise makes me jump. It’s awfully quiet down here. I bet I could hear a pin drop if my heart wasn’t beating louder than a drum in a marching band.
Nate’s hand brushes my shoulder as he reaches between us, sliding the small door leading to the space Tides normally rides in. “We need to break the window. Try back there. My baton should be behind me. We’ve got a minute to get out of here, if that.”
By the time I pull my legs up, water rises to my seat. I turn, reaching the opening that is so small, Lucas might have a hard time squeezing through it.
“Alongside the wall.” Nate lets out an uncomfortable groan. “There’s a baton fastened with velcro.”
My shoulder screams from the unnatural position I rotate it into, but finally my fingertips stretch against the felted wall and graze the rounded, metal bottom of the baton. My teeth slice into the inside of my cheek because of how hard I press my face into the partition, giving it everything I have until I free the baton.
I drop it in front of Nate before collapsing into my seat. Water splashes and the flashlight floats back over to me.
“Okay. We got this.”
When Nate doesn’t give me an encouraging answer, I move the flashlight down to where he stares at his lap.
“Yeah. Yeah, we got this,” I say when the light shows me his fucking femur sticking through his skin below the surface. Past the protruding bone, I catch sight of the rest of Nate’s leg where it sits beneath the water.
What I can see is mangled. The rest of it? Hiding somewhere in the crushed metal of the front corner of the car.
And still, I tell him, “We got this. Just get your seatbelt off.”
“Riley—”
With the flashlight in one shaking hand, I take the baton in the other.
“Seatbelt,” I command again.
I’m looking around frantically, as if I expect to find help in the darkness—a gang of firefighters with the jaws of life, Nate’s police buddies, the Avengers, the tooth fairy. I’m looking for a miracle.
But what I find, what I feel as my arm skims the rising surface of water that has no business being in a car, is a tulip bulb severed from its stem. It’s counterparts float between us.
Tomorrow is Tulip Tuesday.
I get that we’re already at the bottom of the bay, but my heart sinks to a lower level, even though I fight to keep it where it should be—just a bit higher where there’s still hope.
“Riley—”
“You have a kid.”
I point the light down, and my fingers fumble beneath the water for the button to get his seatbelt off. I can’t look at Nate. I’ll see Lucas in his eyes, in the shape of his mouth, the smallest jut outward of his ears. I’ll fucking lose it and I won’t be able to get us out. I’ll either drown by sea water or my own tears.
“Lucas just turned eight,” I tell him. “You’re supposed to teach him to surf. He wants to go to the Grand Canyon and there’s like a million things he needs a dad for.”
Something warm and wet slides down my face and it has to be sweat, because I’m overheating down here in this dark, frozen tundra. I’m burning with rage and determination. I’m getting him out of this car, no matter what.
Nate grabs my hand and I don’t know who is shaking more.
“Riley...”
I rip my hand away.
“Your wife is expecting flowers tomorrow. She’s expecting you to bring her flowers tomorrow. Just like she does every fucking week.” My voice cracks when I add, “And you’re going to do it.”
“Riley, will you—“
“Stop it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut .
“Harper, she’s stubborn,” Nate says, “And she’s going to think she doesn’t need anybody—”
“Shut up. Shut up and help me cut you loose.”
Nate does stop talking but now I realized it was a mistake—an awful thing to say. Because when I don’t hear his words, I hear his faint, wheezy breathing and I hate that I know what dying sounds like.
Now I just want him to keep talking.
“Harper, she’s a major pain in the ass,” I tell Nate. “I don’t know how you put up with her, man. She’s bossy and a know-it-all and—”
“She’s usually right.” Nate gives a weak laugh. “Don’t tell her I said that, though.”
I grab his arm beneath the water that now reaches the lower part of our chests. “You’re going to tell her yourself.”
Nate’s lips, pressed together, begin to quake, but he keeps it at bay.
“Can’t trust her alone with Lucas. He’ll be too high strung if she’s the only one to raise him.” I don’t even care if Nate doesn’t think I’m joking. I don’t even know if I’m joking. I just need him to listen, to focus on the fact he’s the one with a family who needs him.
No one in this world needs me anywhere close to how Lucas and Harper need Nate.
My entire body shakes, but the worst is my hand which Nate holds with whatever strength is left. It’s waning, seeping out into the water, the thing that’s threatening to claim his life as it almost did mine on the day we met over twenty years ago.
I’m punched in the gut by the memory, overwhelmed by how much I wish I could change it. I wish Nate let me drown that day so we would never have the chance to be friends. I wish I died when we were both kids, so I’d never have the honor of watching Nate grow into the better man, the ultimate father, everyone’s hero.
I wish it was me. It should be me .
“You make sure Lucas knows how lucky he is that Harper… that she’s his mom. Tell him he’s gotta try to be brave for her. He just has to try…”
Nate’s voice cracks and it’s so powerful I know that whole sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me thing really is all bullshit we tell kids so they toughen up.
These words—Nate’s words—how he says his son’s and wife’s names in a way he thinks it’s going to be the last time…fuck broken bones. They can be fixed. What his words do to my heart I’ll never recover from.
I’ll never forgive the bastard.
“You gotta take care of my family. Promise me.”
I can’t even see Nate’s face because I’m crying hard. “Stop talking like you think I’m leaving you to die in this car. You have a wife. You’ve got a kid.”
That’s all I have, even though they’re not mine. That’s all I see—Harper and Lucas's faces, their distraught faces.
“They’ll be alright because they have you. I know you’ll make sure they’re always okay.”
I curse in protest and tuck the flashlight between my neck and shoulder so my free hands can yank Nate by the waist.
He doesn’t just scream. He shrieks . But I’ll rip his damn body in two if necessary. Because Nate is so great the world only needs a piece of him. It just needs to be the piece where his heart still beats.
But my attempt is futile and I can’t hear these torturous noises anymore.
“Break. The. Window,” Nate snarls. “Break it and get out of here.”
I go to lift him again, swallowing water as my face tips down. “No.”
I wish his body felt lighter under the water. That’s the way it should be. We move at ease no matter how heavy our hearts are. It’s why I love the water in the first place. And now it’s about to take the one person in the world who showed me how good it can be to just ride a wave and it’s going to trap and suffocate him and steal everything .
With my face angled up to the ceiling taking in the last pocket of air, I find Nate’s hips again beneath the water, and that’s when I don’t even realize he’s stopped fighting me and grabbed the baton.
“You’re gonna be okay, Riley.”
In an instant, I’m screaming, but it’s muffled, muted, and utterly meaningless. That’s because I’m entirely under the water which has now rushed into the car through the passenger side window.
The flashlight falls and all I can see of Nate is his crushed leg as I struggle against him, waiting. I’m waiting wait for a dose of the super-human adrenaline you’re supposed to get when death threatens to knock early. But it’s a struggle to both fight Nate and hold onto him. He always overpowered me, as kids, teenagers, and of course after he joined the Marines. My strength, it dwindles, and I’m desperate for the same amount of adrenaline that pumps through his veins, the one giving him the power to peel my finger back, breaking the bone and my hold on him
I know, as he pushes me through the window, my chest lit by a fire I’m desperate to harness and fight with, the reason Nate is stronger in this moment is because he’s the one who is going to die.
I’ll never forgive the world for not letting it be me.