4. Four
Well, West wasn’t drunk anymore. He hadn’t been since he had tripped on the deck chair and managed to fall overboard. And then Kat had tried to save him. Now things had gone from bad to much worse.
His body hit the surface with a thud. It hurt like hell. His back was aching from the impact, as saltwater pummeled his face like tiny fists.
In the light of the moon, he watched the yacht race along the water until it vanished out of sight. A slight breeze whipped through his hair, and clouds covered the moonlight, leaving him in complete darkness.
He pulled on the rope to the life buoy, and to his horror, he didn’t find Kat attached to it. Somewhere between her falling and hitting the water she had let go of the rope, but West couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Terror seized him as he imagined the worst. What if she hit her head while falling? What if a shark ate her? What if she was abducted by modern-day pirates?
His inner imaginings became more and more ridiculous as fear washed over him.
Snap out of it.
He forced himself to focus and stop spiraling. How many times had he pushed panic aside when stepping onto a stage? He didn’t have stage fright, but the anxiety of singing a new song live and waiting for the crowd’s approval, or lack of interest, always made him nervous. If he could set aside his anxiety then, he could certainly do it now. He had caused this predicament, and he had to find her. The last thing either of them deserved was to be floating alone in the Indian Ocean.
Without wasting another second, West dove into the dark waters, calling out her name as he surfaced, desperately searching for any sign of her. Every stroke through the rough waves felt like an eternity as he tried to conserve his energy, praying that he would find her before it was too late, the waves washing over him as he gasped for air.
His eyes darted across the sea, searching for any sign of life among the dense darkness, but all he saw was an endless expanse of choppy, unforgiving water.
“Kat.” He swam, listening for any sounds of her. “Kat, can you hear me? Kat!” He refused to let fear enter his voice, refused to let the frantic thoughts enter his mind. What if she didn’t make it? What if she had drowned? It would have been all his fault.
Dammit, Kat. Why had she even been out on that deck? She was supposed to have gone to bed.
“Kat . . . Kat . . . Come on, Kat, where are you?” He yelled until he was hoarse, waiting for her lilting voice to respond across the water, because right now he’d give anything to hear it.
Taking a moment to rest his muscles, he floated on his back, his arms wrapped around the buoy, his ears going under the water. He imagined what it would sound like hearing her voice. She had a beautiful voice; it wasn’t too high-pitched and had a nice timbre to it. Surprisingly sultry for a woman who could be quite prickly.
When he had decided to take on backing singers for his tour ten years ago, her voice had immediately stood out to him. It had been smooth and velvety and had wrapped around his soul. It had melded well with his, and, after a test run with various women, he had wanted her.
He imagined hearing her calling his name, always his full name, never West. Only his father and Kat called him Weston. He heard his name again, Kat’s perfect voice calling out to him in his imagination. Was he . . . He sat up so fast that he bumped into something, and there she was, looking disheveled, her body shivering.
“Weston!” she said, nudging him. “I thought you were dead for a minute. You were just floating there, and you had this weird smile on your face, and you weren’t answering me, and oh my god, why are you smiling at me?”
He grabbed her waist, hauling her into his arms. “You’re alive! Christ, I thought you were dead. I was yelling and yelling for you.”
She was warm, and he pushed back from her, unwilling to think about the jolt of awareness that had just gone through him. They were floating in the fucking Indian Ocean right now; his body had no business reacting to touching hers.
“Here, hang onto this.” He handed her the buoy.
She grabbed it and pushed it toward him. “This isn’t Titanic.” She smiled. “We can both hang on and not freeze to death.”
West gave a slight chuckle and grabbed hold of the buoy. For a long moment they just bobbed there in the water, the truth of their situation setting in. He could see the emotion play across her face. They were alive, but now what?
“What now?” she asked him, as if she’d read his mind.
“I don’t know, wait to flag down a boat, I guess.”
She gave him an annoyed look. “Really? That’s your master plan? Wait here like bobbing buoys for a boat? That sounds like the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard. If you want to float around like shark bait, be my guest, but I’m finding land.”
“You asked,” he said, anger lacing his tone. “Do you see any land?” He gestured around splashing water everywhere. “Because I sure don’t.”
“Why are you getting angry at me? This is all your fault.”
“My fault?” He thumped his chest for emphasis. “My fault? Why on earth did you think you could pull me up on your own? I told you to get help! If I had fallen in, at least you could have told the captain to turn around. Now nobody knows we’re out here.”
Kat shivered again, and West was almost tempted to take pity on her, if he hadn’t already been so annoyed at her..
Her head turned, mouth agape. “You’re mad at me for trying to rescue you?” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re the one who drunkenly fell overboard.”
“You should have run and gotten help—the captain, Luke, one of the guys.” He took a deep inhale, forcing his anger down. West never did angry. He spent a lot of time in meditation to harness his emotions, to hold back the anger and frustration he always believed he wasn’t allowed to have. But Kat was pushing his last nerve.
“So you’re saying because I’m a woman, I couldn’t save you?”
“That’s not . . . ugh, you know that’s not what I meant!” Weston splashed at the water in front of him, and for the first time his fa?ade—cool, unphased rock star—dropped away.
She smiled, which annoyed West even more.
“It’s dark, Weston, and by my guess, it’s got to be close to sunrise. I bet the sun will come up and we’ll see land any moment now.”
“Fine,” Weston said. “We’ll wait for sunrise.” He laid his head on the buoy between his arms and closed his eyes. She shivered, and, for reasons completely unknown to him, his hand moved out, grasping for hers. Reluctantly, she gave it to him, and he felt how small her hand was in his. The enormity of their situation hit him like a ton of bricks as he thought about how small they both were floating in such a vast ocean. They were royally screwed, but he couldn’t voice that aloud.
“Do you have your cell phone?” he grumbled more to the buoy than her.
She reached into the water, presumably to check her pockets. “No, it’s probably at the bottom of the ocean by now.”
“I’m not sure where mine is. It didn’t work on the yacht anyway, so it’s stashed in a bag somewhere.”
“You didn’t want to use it to take pictures?” Sarcasm laced her tone, but West couldn’t fathom why. Did she have something against him not needing photos of the days preceding his unplanned retirement?
He sighed. “Not really.”
Dread settled between them, and the air shifted as West realized Kat also knew how screwed they were. He squeezed her hand, and heard her sniffle, holding back tears.
They were floating in the ocean. Their only hope of survival was that someone would realize they were missing and turn the boat around, or another boat would find them. Or maybe a shark would eat them. West’s money was on the shark.
They floated in silence for what felt like hours until Kat finally saw the sun crest the horizon. She let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her salvation was at hand in the east. Her body ached, feeling like she had fallen from a four-story building. She lifted her head from the life buoy, her neck protesting in pain. If a whale could come around and eat her now, that would be great.
Were there even whales in the Indian Ocean?
She sat up in the water, her hair plastered to her face, her whole body shivering. It had only been a few hours by her estimation, but her body couldn’t take much more of the water. The Indian Ocean wasn’t freezing, in fact it was rather warm from the summer months now that it was fall. She had no idea why she kept shivering, other than it being her body’s response to fear.
Off in the distance, she noticed something floating and decided after further scrutiny it was worth a look. Maybe it was food, or a phone?
Keep dreaming.
She started to swim away, but a strong, warm hand wrapped around her ankle.
“Where are you going?” Weston asked, his voice hoarse.
“Something is floating over there.” She pointed to the object, then lifted her ankle above the water and peeled his fingers off her. “I’m going to see what it is.”
Not to be deterred, he grabbed at her waist instead, and her heart did a flip inside her chest. What a traitorous organ. It wasn’t supposed to do that when he touched her. With his well-built arms, he pulled her in tightly. His strength had grown, and his body transformed into an impenetrable fortress.
He’d always been long and lean. God knew as hard as she’d tried not to notice him, he was impossible to miss. The way his long fingers expertly worked his guitar, the way he threw his head back when his shaggy hair would fall in his face, how his tattoos stretched across his back whenever he’d take his shirt off.
He had always been a powerful force on stage. Now he was all tall muscle and sinew, with toned shoulders, defined arms, and abs for days. To Kat, West had become more intimidating than ever. There was water all around her, and yet somehow her mouth had gone dry.
“You can’t just swim off. Who knows what that is—we’re in the middle of the ocean, it might be some evil deadly fish,” West said.
“Doubtful.” She tried not to roll her eyes. “For someone who does what they want all the time, you’re quite cautious.”
Weston released her and gave her an indecipherable look, so she swam away to put some distance between them. “I don’t make rash decisions. I have always calculated all the options and angles. It looks like I do what I want when I want, with no care in the world, but that’s not me. The media portrays me one way, and I’ve never changed the image.”
Well, that’s a lot to unpack..
Almost everything she had ever thought of him wasn’t even true, or so he said.
She gave him a dubious glance. “You thought through every last one of those models and actresses you dated?”
He flashed her a lascivious grin. “Of course.” Then he swam toward her with heat in his eyes. When he reached her, his finger glided up her arm with maddeningly slow precision, his voice feathery in her ear. “I can promise you, every single one of those women will tell you our relationship was worth their time.”
His finger blazed a trail of fire across her skin as it roamed across her shoulder and came to rest at the place where her neck and collarbone met. Kat quivered beneath his touch, utterly entranced by the scorching feel of his skin on her body. She could feel the power he had over her—how just one finger on her body could turn her into a pool of desire.
She caught his gaze. His eyes glowed with amusement, as though he was trying to keep from laughing at some joke only he knew. She quickly lashed out and playfully splashed him in the face. “Stop trying to hypnotize me!” she said.
“What?” he asked, laughing as he wiped the water out of his eyes.
“That’s how you do it? You lure all those women in through hypnosis. I knew it!” She pursed her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “Well, that and writing incredibly sappy love songs that have women falling at your feet,” she teased.
Weston laughed this time and splashed water toward her, but she ducked away just in time.
“Whatever you want to believe,” he said, before Kat turned to swim away, making her way to the object, which had moved closer to them.
The waves, thankfully, were not rough, but still impeded her progress. The water dunked her under twice, but finally, she reached out and touched something smooth, and definitely not an evil man-eating fish.
“Darn, it’s just plastic.”
She swam back, disappointed it had been nothing useful, just some random junk thrown into the ocean—a sad reality of how tragically humans treated the planet.
“What a shame,” West said, as he wrapped his arms around the buoy, sighing.
She felt instant warmth move through her at the sound. If her body would stop reacting to every little noise he made, that would be great. She certainly wasn’t having any effect on him. That trick he had done with his finger was just because he could. She was the nearest female in his vicinity right now, and it was imperative she remember that or she was going to be in a world of hurt.
On the first tour they had ever gone on together, after a night of partying, Kat and West had ended up alone together in a dark hallway at the House of Blues. She couldn’t remember how it had happened, but what she did remember was the awkwardness after. She was not his type, and he had made that abundantly clear years ago.
Exhausted, they lapsed into silence. Kat listened to the water as it lapped against her skin. She had always been one to find the music in the world, or at least she used to. It wasn’t just through instruments, but in the sounds that were all around her in nature. The spirit had many ways of talking to people, but most never listened.
With every wave that crashed against them, Kat thought of her Indigenous roots, and was filled with apprehension. Though nature had always been a great source of comfort for her, it seemed almost ironic that she now found herself lost in its waters. Lost in the eerie quiet, waiting for something to speak to her, a message that never came. She wasn’t quite that in tune with Mother Earth lately, and being lost in the middle of the ocean terrified her while any other Native would probably have been perfectly ready for the challenge.
The waves occasionally doused them as the sun beat down. Time passed by slowly as Kat hummed to the surrounding sounds, her body sagging in the water, her arms losing strength as she held on. The ocean winds, the lapping water, the birds flying overhead all lulled her into a false sense of peace.
Wait . . . birds overhead?
She shook Weston. “Weston, wake up!”
“Huh, what?” he said, his head rising from the buoy.
“There are birds!” she exclaimed.
“So?”
“So? That’s a good thing,” she said, excitement lacing her tone. She scanned their surroundings frantically. It had to be around here somewhere, they had to be close. Somewhere on the horizon, it had to be here.
“There!” She pointed excitedly.
“Huh?” Weston squinted in the direction she was pointing. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yes, it is,” Kat said, a smile on her face.
“It’s fucking land!” he said, releasing the buoy.
Kat wiped the water from her face as Weston splashed on her in his excitement. He grabbed the buoy and whooped loudly.
“Thank god, we’re saved,” he yelled.
“Might just make me believe there is a god,” Kat said.
“You don’t believe in a higher power?” he asked her.
Shrugging, she looked around uneasily. It wasn’t a topic she especially loved discussing due to her upbringing in a very religious household after her parents had abandoned their true Indigenous teachings.
“I guess I believe there is something out there—a great creator, if you will—but I don’t buy into all the pomp and circumstance.”
“That’s fair,” he replied. “Me and my dad aren’t religious at all, but I went on that sabbatical with Buddhist monks in Thailand, which changed the way I see the universe and our place in it.”
Kat held back a sound of disgust. “Yeah, I remember, you came back all holier than thou with your new age meditation and wheat grass smoothies. Such rich kid shit.”
West started kicking toward shore, dragging her along. “What does that mean?”
“It means we can’t all just take off on a sabbatical for five months. Most of us have to work, have responsibilities.”
“I have plenty of responsibilities,” he said, his anger growing.
Kat shook her head, “It’s not the same and you know it.”
West balked at her statement as he continued to propel them to shore. “I don’t think you realize how much work I put in daily to keep everything running. My household, my music, my staff, I have a lot of people I work with.”
Kat rolled her eyes, “It’s still not the same as us peons going to work every day just to make sure we have a roof over our heads.”
“Because your job is so bad,” he said sarcastically.
As much as Kat wanted to argue her point, she was exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. She wasn’t sure she could do much of anything, but they were so close to land and she was done poking at him.
“Whatever, Weston, I’m not saying you don’t work hard, I just don’t think you grasp how easy it is to live your lifestyle. Let’s just get to shore please.”
He squinted at the expanse of water between them and the land and let out a resigned sigh. “You’re right,” he said. “We can come back to my rich kid shit later.” He kicked harder, increasing their speed. Expending all her energy, Kat helped, kicking her legs as much as she could, her body screaming at her to stop.
“I sure hope this island has people on it,” he said.
What happened if it didn’t?
But she didn’t dare voice it aloud for fear she was right.