Chapter Ten
I press both hands against the mast and try to heave it off me, but it only forces me deeper.
My lungs start to burn in my chest. I frantically try to figure out what I’m caught on, walking my hands down the mast. At first all I feel is a jumble of wires and metal and sail.
Finally my fingertips slide across a jagged piece of steel that’s hooked on the rope around my waist.
My emergency “don’t drift out to sea” line is trying to kill me.
The water gets darker as I’m forced farther from the surface. Pressure builds in my ears, getting worse the deeper I go until my eardrums feel like they’re going to burst.
Salt water burns up my nose.
I try to flip myself feetfirst toward the surface to dislodge the rope, but even when I’m eye level with where it’s caught, it won’t budge.
My lungs are screaming for air.
The rope around my waist pulls tight without warning.
I don’t know if Jackson has the other end or if I’ve sunk as far as the rope will allow.
I almost grab for the knife in my bathing suit, but I can’t risk dropping it into the ocean.
Instead I press my feet against the mast, grab onto the section of rope between me and the snag, and pull with all my strength, yanking from side to side.
I imagine the jagged edge of the steel like a big serrated knife slicing the rope one thrash at a time.
The tension shifts in my grip, and I can only hope that means it’s working. I close my eyes and heave.
With a great snap I can feel in my teeth, the rope severs.
The mast slides away from me, and I kick up and away before anything else can hook me. The sail floats in the waves above me. I kick as fast as I can, carving through the water to get to the open space between them and the boat.
When I finally break the surface, I gasp in a lungful of air and saltwater. Arms close in around me, and I almost scream that breath right back out until I realize it’s Jackson. I twist in the surf and throw my arms around his neck, filling my lungs so fast it makes my head swim.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
“Is she okay?” Emmy shouts above us.
I try to tell her I am, but all that comes out of my mouth is a croak.
Jackson slides the emergency ring under my arm, then grabs onto the rope and uses it to pull us closer to the boat. He swims us around to the ladder at the back. It takes a great effort to unlock my arms from the float and his neck, but I force myself to grab onto the metal rungs.
My lungs ache. My legs ache. My chest hurts. Salt water burns my eyes.
Jackson tightens his grip on me. “You first. I’ll help you.”
I genuinely don’t know if I have it in me to pull myself out, but Emmy appears at the top and grabs my hands.
Between her and Jackson pushing from below, I spring from the water.
Once again, I find myself collapsed on the deck.
Emmy drops down on one side of me, and Jackson barely clears the top of the ladder before he lands on the other side. All three of us are breathing hard.
Jackson rolls onto his back, still gripping the emergency float. “You’re not going in that fucking water again, Hannah,” he says, pressing his fists into his eyes in a way that looks painful.
Emmy brushes hair from my face and busies herself untying the useless frayed rope from my waist. When it comes away from my skin, we both look down and find an angry line of friction burn around my middle.
Emmy winces and tears her eyes away. “For once, I agree with the devil spawn. I thought you were never going to come back up. The weight of the mast yanked the rope right out of Jackson’s hands. He couldn’t pull you in.”
Her voice shakes, and she chucks the rope overboard like it personally offended her. I sit up so I can hug her. She clings to me like I clung to the life preserver. “It’s okay. I just got caught for a minute. It looked worse than it was.”
Probably.
My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of sand, turning every word into a scratchy, clipped version of my normal voice.
Emmy pulls away. “I’m going to get you some water. Don’t move.”
She sprints toward the cabin and disappears inside.
The moment she’s gone, Jackson lets out a sigh and drops his fists from his eyes.
He rolls toward me and sits up, letting the life preserver fall to the deck.
He grabs my hand and holds it tight between his, but he doesn’t say anything.
He stares down at where our skin touches with an expression that looks a lot like fear.
When he looks up at me, his eyes blaze. “I thought that was the last time I was going to see you. I can’t deal with you dying right in front of me, Hannah. I can’t.”
I squeeze his hand, still breathing hard. “I’m fine,” I croak. “It was just a little swim.”
It’s meant as a joke, but he doesn’t smile.
He leans forward until his forehead presses against mine. I think I stop breathing again. “That’s not funny. Not even a little bit.”
“I know.”
“Promise me you won’t go back in the water.”
I take a shaky breath. “I won’t go back in the water…unless there’s no other choice.”
Jackson pulls back to glare at me.
I clear my throat again. “We’re stranded out here. Who knows what we’ll have to do to get back to shore. But I promise not to go back in if I don’t have to.”
“If we need to go back in the water for any reason, I’ll do it.”
“But—”
“No. No buts. I don’t care if you can’t pull me back in. I don’t care if it makes more sense for you to do it. I only care about you being safe on this godforsaken boat. Okay? I need you to be safe, Hannah.”
I sit in stunned silence for a beat too long.
“Promise me,” he says.
I give him a shaky nod. For a moment, I’m living half in the present and half in long-banished memories of winter break. Hot chocolate and fingers in my hair. My stomach twists, thinking about what happened next. What he did next.
The look on Jackson’s face makes me wonder if his thoughts went in the same direction.
“Sorry,” Emmy shouts, coming back up on the deck. “Yours was empty, and it took me forever to find an unopened water bottle…”
We spring apart, and she stops short, furrowing her brow.
My heart pounds in my ears. A lie forms on the tip of my tongue, ready to brush this off as nothing. Because of course it was nothing.
But Emmy blinks and hurries across the boat, holding out a water bottle without saying a single thing. I take a long drink and hand it to Jackson when I’m done. He shakes his head and pushes it back to me without looking up. His gaze stays on the deck.
Emmy cups her hands over her eyes and looks across the ocean.
The sun is making a real effort to peek through the clouds, but only a few sad stripes of sunlight make it.
The air is so warm that I’m already drying, but my hair is plastered to my head.
I attempt to wring it out as Emmy continues to inspect the horizon. Her lips press into a thin line.
When she sits, she sighs deeply. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Everyone’s silent until Jackson climbs to his feet. “We’re going to make a plan, that’s what. We have to get to shore somehow. We can’t wait to be rescued, and floating aimlessly in the ocean is a death sentence.”
“How do we know which direction takes us to the marina?”
He frowns. “I think we need to lower our expectations a bit, Em. We have no idea how far the storm blew us. If we can reach dry land of any kind, that’s going to be a win. We can worry about finding civilization from there.”
“What about the jungle? Captain Keith said the mainland has whole stretches of wilderness. How would winding up on shore be any better if we’re in the middle of nowhere?”
“There’s better potential for food and water, and flagging someone down with a signal fire,” Jackson says.
Emmy interlocks her fingers, and her knuckles get a little whiter from her grip. “I guess you have a point. How are we supposed to get to shore?”
“That is the question of the hour,” he says, looking toward the front of the boat. “For now, Hannah made sure the mast isn’t going to sink us while we figure it out.”
It nearly sunk me though.
I pull myself to my feet. A portion of the sail is bunched by the broken section of the lifelines, with a swath of them trailing into the water.
“Let’s pull the sail back on the boat. If we’re out here when the second storm hits, we might be able to use it to prevent more water from getting inside.
Or to create shade here in the cockpit while we figure out how to make the cabin usable again.
There has to be a way to get the water out of there. ”
Emmy tilts her head to one side. “What second storm?”
“Do you ever listen?” Jackson asks, sounding exhausted. “The guy at the marina said there’s more than one storm rolling in. Which means we don’t have time to mess around. We have to figure out a way to get moving.”
“Okay…but whether we get moving or not, we have barely any food,” she says. “We’ll run out today or tomorrow, and then what? We die on some abandoned stretch of beach?”
Jackson tugs her into a hug. She wraps her arms around the back of his ribs like she’s hanging on for dear life.
The next time he speaks he’s completely calm. “You aren’t going to die, Em. We’ll find a way to get back to shore, or someone will spot us trying. We have options. Okay? We just need to be smart.”
She nods against his chest, and I shuffle off toward the sail to give them a moment.
Not for the first time, only-child jealousy rears its ugly head.
Those two bicker like it’s an Olympic sport, but I’ve watched them drop everything to help the other dozens of times.
No matter what, Jackson and Emmy have each other’s backs.
Like last fall, when Emmy snuck out to surprise her boyfriend while his parents were out of town—and caught him making out with a sophomore instead.
After Emmy stormed out of his house, her piece of crap car wouldn’t start, leaving her stranded five miles from home after midnight.
Of course Tanner The Cheating Asshole wouldn’t give her a ride.
Jackson was home for the weekend to do laundry and caught me not so stealthily pulling my extremely loud Volvo out of the driveway to rescue her.
The moment he found out where I was going, he got in the car.
It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night.
If Emmy needed help, Jackson was always right there, even if it meant helping me jump-start her POS in the dark.
It’s only ever been me and my dad. I barely remember my mom. Having the Coles next door gave me the closest thing I’d ever have to a sister, but it’s not the same as what they share.
I start dragging the wet canvas over a portion of the lifelines, and another pair of hands appears next to mine. Jackson starts hauling it in too, only he’s much faster than me.
Emmy moves past me and starts dragging the end of the sail toward the bow of the boat to make room. She raises an eyebrow at me. “What’s with your face? You look like you’re plotting something.”
I smile. “I was thinking about Tanner’s poor PlayStation, actually.”
Emmy grins.
While we were jump-starting her car, Tanner might have yelled something rude about Emmy out the front door.
And I may have taken offense on Emmy’s behalf.
What happened next was hardly my fault. If he didn’t want me to run into his house and rip his PlayStation out of the entertainment center, he should have locked the door.
Allegedly.
Jackson barks out a laugh. “I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came running out after you. I thought he was going to pass out when you smashed it against the curb.”
“He’s lucky you have little arms, or he might have lost his Xbox too,” Emmy says.
“I couldn’t grab the Xbox before he made it around the sectional,” I admit.
“You would have smashed both?” Jackson asks, hauling another armload over the railing.
“Are you kidding? After what he did to Emmy? I would have smashed both and the TV if I’d had the time.”
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Jackson says. “Or at least give me a head start to pack up my game consoles before I run for the hills.”
He winks at me. A full-on flirtatious wink.
Before winter break that one little gesture would have made me swoon right off this boat, but now all I feel is a stab of annoyance. One that grows into a full flare of anger when the words run for the hills settle into my brain.
I should keep my mouth shut, but it’s been a long ass twenty-four hours—I’m sleep deprived, probably dehydrated, the boat is broken, I almost drowned, and I’m sick to death of making myself smaller to better suit Jackson Cole.
I yank another section of sail toward Emmy and glare at him. “Run for the hills? Interesting choice of words…though I suppose that is your specialty.”
He freezes and looks back at me with a furrow between his eyebrows. I clock the exact moment he makes the connection—and that furrow morphs into one hell of a scowl. “If you have something to say, Hannah, I’d prefer you just say it.”
“Since when?” I snap.
Jackson takes a step closer and lowers his voice. “If this is about winter break—”
“Hey, is everything okay?” Emmy calls back to us.
I hold his angry stare and answer without looking at her. “Yeah, we’re fine.”
“Yeah. Fine. Sure,” he mumbles.
I grab for more fabric, but he bats me away and moves to my other side.
“I’ve got this on my own,” he says.
“Right. Jackson Cole, ladies and theydies. The guy who never needs anyone.”
He whirls on me. “If you think for one second that I wanted to—”
I watch his gaze catch on something behind me, and whatever else he’d been about to say dies on his lips. I whirl around and see smoke billowing from the cabin. Dark, cloying smoke as black as the water was during the storm.
For a second I can’t process what I’m seeing.
Smoke in the middle of the ocean? My brain conjures images of the forest fires back home, of orange-red hell skies and iPhone alerts about unsafe air.
Of acres of Oregon forestry burned to the ground, leaving nothing but charred black earth in their wake. There, fire is an inevitability.
Out here, surrounded by water, it feels impossible.
How does a boat dripping with water catch on fire?
“Oh my god,” Emmy shrieks. “Ben!”
Almost on cue, gut-wrenching screams ring out from inside the boat.