Butterflies in Honey (Growing Pains #3)

by K. F. Breene

  The next couple waves were just as awesome. She did a tumble and roll, which was a bit scary, but she washed up on the beach in one piece. She ended up sticking more waves than she fell from, which was a huge achievement, and decided on one more to finish out the glorious day.

  It was always that one more that did it.

  As Krista was sitting out past the waves, waiting for the last golden ticket, she noticed the two surfer guys that had been near her all day were gone. There were still a few people around, and plenty on the beach, so she wasn’t completely alone. If anything happened they would probably notice and get help.

  The next set of waves started coming in. It was here that Krista got a pang of unease. They were bigger than what she had been surfing all day. Much bigger. As in, too big. She floated over the first and watched it break and rumble down onto the distant beach. She stayed where she was, hoping the next set would be back to normal—or even smaller.

  No such luck. Big wave after big wave came rolling in. The day was getting older by the minute. She needed to find a way into the shore, and she wasn’t really keen on surfing in. Bad news was there wasn’t anywhere else to go. It wasn’t a pool—you couldn’t just swim over to some steps and get out. She was either swimming into a bay in Mexico, or she had to ride a wave in.

  She steadied her resolve. If she could catch it and hang on past the first slope down, she might make it. If she didn’t—well, she had gotten rolled before. Surfers got rolled all the time. Granted, she could have been a better swimmer for this venture, she was no Olympian after all, but she could make it.

  The next monster was rolling in, so Krista started paddling hard, ignoring the tired strain of her muscles. Her arms churned as fast as they could, trying to get her speed up. She just barely caught it, right on the cusp, and popped up. The free fall this time was out of this world! Past adrenaline. She was riding on ragged fear as she plummeted down a steep cliff of crystal blue water. She could feel the board under her feet but her balance was all over the place. Everything seemed too slippery—like she wasn’t glued on. It didn’t take long before she was falling head first into the waiting blue jaws.

  Like a rag doll in a washing machine, Krista was churned head-over-heels and rolled like a tumbleweed along the desert floor. Bubbles scraped across her body like sand paper as she fought to remember which way was up. She forced her body limp, allowing the tangling world of white to move her along its course, hopefully to spit her out at the end. There was no ground to stumble along, no sky to glimpse; she was pushed down deep, into the belly of the wave as it rumbled toward the beach.

  Finally, after years went by, Krista got enough slack in the furious currents to kick and stroke her way to the surface. Her head broke the plain of water just in time. She took a gasp of the sweet breath of life and looked for the beach. It was then she noticed a wall of white bearing down on her! The next giant wave was crashing and she was still in the kill zone!

  She had barely enough time to take another big gulp of air before she dived as low as she could. The violent surge of water rolled over her, giving her a yank upward as it thundered by. She surged upward again, stealing another gasp of beautiful air before the next wave was baring down. Her heart sank. It was another monster. Everything coming in was monstruous. She was but a small fly caught in a sticky web.

  She dove under the next. Then the next. She was waiting for a break to start heading toward shore, but she wasn’t getting one. It was merciless. One after another, the waves came crashing down, barely giving her time to get a breath. Never giving her body a chance to rest. One after another, she was confronted with a beast. Then its brother. And then a larger, meaner cousin.

  After five monstrous waves, Krista’s body was past tired, and starting to give out. She couldn’t keep going. She couldn’t find any reserves. The waves were getting bigger, if anything, so there would be no hope to wait it out. Being that Krista had never been in that situation before, nor ever remembering Sean mention it, she didn’t know if she should start swimming, or just let the wave pull her into shore. She did know, though, that the wrong choice would result in drowning.

  No pressure.

  She would swim. Maybe she could get a few feet closer before the wave grabbed her. She could hold her breath for a while, so she would let the wave drag her in and hope for the best. She didn’t have much of a choice.

  The next time she came up, she put her plan into action, frantically swimming toward the shore with everything she had. Stroke after stroke she pushed. She felt the water pulling her back and heard the thunder on her heels. This was it!

  She took a mighty gulp of air just before the wave was on her. She closed her eyes, tried to keep her directional bearings, and let the wave squeeze her in its claws and carry her with it.

  She had the claw part right, but the carrying—not so much. She was shoved down, down, down into the dark abyss. Bubbles seethed around her, tearing at her. Currents pulled her arms and yanked her legs. She lost sense of herself, vaguely remembering up, and losing the direction of the beach altogether. She held her breath, waiting for it to be over. Wondering when it would spit her out onto the hard sand. Waiting.

  Instead, she churned, over and over, round and round, ass-over-head, no surrender.

  Her lungs burned. Her eyes stung. Her legs and arms were wrung out of strength. She couldn’t control her body. All she could do were some futile kicks and small hand flutters. Darkness crowded her thoughts, blotted out her hope. Still no surrender.

  Her chest was on fire now. Her limbs were ice. She needed to take a breath. She knew she couldn’t. She also knew, eventually, she would anyway.

  She would die.

  It wasn’t a thought she had. It wasn’t like she was capable of contemplating cause and effect; she just knew it. She needed air. She wouldn’t get it. She would die down there, in the blackness. Her body would probably hit the beach eventually, but it would be long after she could hang on.

  It was amazing how quickly the thoughts came. She spun there, in a different world, years and years away from safety, consumed by the fuming ocean, and she was filled with unspeakable sadness. Not for herself so much—he thought Jim would have killed her long before now—but because she never really got that chance with Sean. She never really got to know real happiness with him before this day came. She’d wanted to grow old with him. She’d wanted to share her life with him; share the miracle of birth with him. She wanted to share so much with him, and now she never would.

  Something occurred to her as she lost her will to fight for the surface and let the craze of currents take her where they willed. He was the second thing that mattered in her life that she gave up. That she quit. Right then, in utter hopelessness, she realized the only other thing she didn’t fight for that mattered, that really meant something, was Sean. The two most important things of her life, one being life, and the other her future, she was now giving up.

  With that thought, she gave over to the boiling water and encroaching darkness. She allowed her body what it craved most: a breath.

  Acid reigned into her throat and burned through her chest as air was replaced by water. She felt her body spasm and a vice on her arm as she was tugged down into the maw of the earth.

  And then a funny thing happened. Instead of utter darkness, her eyes were seared with blinding light. She saw a kaleidoscope of images. A swish of piercing blue. A bronze shoulder glistening in the sun. A powerful arm stroke cutting through white foam. The lick of brown, grainy sand. The velvety blackness of surrender.

  She heard her name called. It echoed and ricocheted through the void. Someone turned on a vacuum in a freight train and the world was washed in a whoosh of sound that culminated into one big POP.

  “Krista! Oh God please, please KRISTA! Can you hear me? KRISTA? Please Krista, please!”

  The blinding light baked her eyes. An angelic voice flirted with her ears and breathed on her face. She was floating.

  “KRISTA?! Kr
ista, can you hear me?”

  She wanted to answer him. Of course she could hear him. She knew that voice better than she knew her own. But that way meant pain. She could almost feel it. Her chest, her throat, her stomach. Better not get too close. Better to slip further down into the soothing darkness.

  “Please Krista, please don’t leave me. Oh God, not her. Please don’t take her. Please!”

  “Help is coming, man! Keep her alive. Help is coming.”

  Krista’s mind drifted away from the pain. Floating in nothing, it was easy to get lost. She remembered how sad she felt before she gave in. If the mother of all the world could shed one tear, it would be for the love she lost. That unspeakable sadness that consumed her when she realized it. That love she let go.

  People gave up on life all the time. What was life anyway? Nothing but a bunch of memories stacked together. If there was a heaven, Krista had plenty to remember while she sat on a bench somewhere, feeding the birds. Actually, probably kicking the birds because she hated seagulls.

  She let herself keep drifting, the pain receding from her awareness.

  Except…wait…she was missing some memories, wasn’t she? That sadness… Hearing her child cry for the first time with Sean holding her hand. She didn’t have that one. What about her wedding day? She didn’t have that one, either. What about waking up to Sean’s smiling face, his eyes turned gold by the early morning sun, as he looked at her, dripping with love. No, she had that one. She had a few of those, actually. But Sean always looked the same. She didn’t have one with his hair salted and his laugh lines etched deep in his face. She didn’t even have one in his new house, their life spread around them in pictures and memorabilia. If she gave up now, she wouldn’t have half her life to take with her.

  She heard the begging again. She heard sirens behind it. Her chest was rising and falling by foreign wind pushed into her lungs. Her mind was a murky black swamp. She distantly felt the pain.

  “Krista, please come back to me. Please Krissy.”

  It was calling her Krissy that did it. She’d always loved that special name that no one else but the love of her life used. It reminded her of slow mornings with soft sunlight, making love, feeling skin on skin, breathing in his smell, basking in his love.

  This was going to hurt something awful.

  “Look! Her eyes fluttered!”

  “Krista? Krista!”

  She coughed and sputtered, acid spilling over her mouth and nose. She was tilted to the side as her stomach emptied. By the look of it, not for the first time. She blinked a few more times, but everything was foggy.

  That was when the world exploded. She heard people shouting, sirens blaring, the never ending crash of those vile ocean waves, and behind it all, Sean’s voice saying her name over and over again as he hugged her so tight her ribs felt like they were going to crack. She surrendered to the blackness again. This time just for a little while. Just for safe keeping.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sean watched, helpless, as Krista was rushed into the emergency room. There was nothing he could do now but wait. Wait and hope. But she had coughed. She had coughed before she’d passed out at the beach. She moved of her own accord for that brief second. That had to be a good sign. It had to mean there was hope.

  Sean sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. He needed to call her friends. They needed to know what happened. He needed someone to lean on.

  He took out his phone stiffly, grief much too close to the surface. Blinking away the moisture in his eyes, he made the hardest call first.

  “Hello?”

  “Kate?” Sean said with a thick tongue.

  “What do you want, ass? And don’t start that shit about you being my boss because it’s Sat—“

  “It’s Krista,” Sean croaked, barely holding it together.

  “What? Are you okay? What do you mean it’s—what’s Krista, Sean? What’s happened?”

  “Krista got caught in a wave.” Sean’s voice sounded foreign, even to him. “She got caught—I think I made it in time—”

  “What? Sean, what the fuck are you saying? Is she okay?”

  Sean told the story, breaking down halfway through. He had to walk outside, away from people, unable to stop sobbing like a baby. Kate barely listened to the whole story before she was demanding which hospital it was and making plans. The last thing she said was, “Call Cassie, Sean. You need to get this out so you can stay strong when Krista wakes up, because she will wake up, okay? If she made it through Jim, she can make it through anything, okay?”

  Sean wiped his face and dipped his head. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t spoken an affirmative, Kate had already hung up. He did call Cassie next. And sobbed again while she stayed strong to talk him through it. He just didn’t know what would become of him if he lost Krista. There would never be another. Not like her. She had everything he wanted in a woman, and what’s more, everything he needed. She kept him grounded at the same time as lifting him up. She leveled his head at the same time as helping him accomplish his dreams. He saw a wife in her, a mother to his children, a future. Everything around him could fall down, but if he had her, he would be okay.

  Sean sat and listened to Cassie praying.

  ~*~*~*~

  Krista blinked the dim light of a hospital room. The smell was unmistakable, as was the uncomfortably hard bed. There wasn’t any beeping, which must mean she wasn’t on life support or anything too serious. The TV was on and the news was playing. A story about some dog that fell down a well was just wrapping up. The dog was saved. Hooray.

  Next came a story about the larger than expected ocean swells that came in that afternoon. It must’ve been Saturday evening, then. She didn’t lose all that much time.

  Seeing it on the news, the waves Krista was dealing with weren’t even the tip of the iceberg. Some beaches had record high swells. Surfers were drawn from all over the world to ride them. They were expected to remain until sometime on Sunday, but you just never knew with waves. It didn’t stop the avid surf lords grabbing a plane ticket or starting up their RV and heading out. Tourism in San Diego was booming.

  The theatrically somber news woman reported two fatalities. Krista’s blood froze in her veins as the newswoman recounted the unlucky stories of one swimmer and one surfer that got caught. It was on two different beaches. They were both pulled out, but not in time.

  Krista gasped as her photo took up the TV screen! The news woman talked about the heroic tale of a lucky female surfer who was pulled from the water in the nick of time. The words fell away as she saw a shaky image from a cell phone of a tiny head disappearing under a massive, tumbling wave. The waves were every bit as big as they looked from the ocean—no exaggeration from the memory. There was yelling and pointing while everyone strained to see where she went. The tiny head bobbed up again and started swimming—the recording was late in her foray.

  The viewers at home, her being one of them, could see how hard and fast she was swimming for the shore. Harder and faster than she thought she had been. It hadn’t been enough, though. Krista watched in horror, a spectator at that point, as a giant wall of white bore down on the tiny swimmer. It ran her down and crunched over her.

  The video got shakier and people started screaming. More than one guy was at the water’s edge looking for her, but not knowing where to jump in. That was until one guy came running into the shot. He was shirtless and lithe. Without slowing down, he dove into the water. Even from the distance, you could see his long, powerful strokes as he cut through the water as if he was born to it. His head bobbed, stayed down for a while, then came back up. It bobbed down again, came back up. He was fighting the waves and the walls of torrid water as he searched for the missing surfer. When he came up after the third bob, closer to the beach than when he went in, he had Krista in toe. He must have been the vice on her arm. It was a good thing she had given up her fight to the surface because she would have been kicking for the bottom instead of the sky.


  Despite the hammering waves, the swimmer tugged her along behind him, having only one arm to head for the shore. He was slowed, but he did not look tired. The shaky cameraman ran toward the spot he was washing up on shore. Another surfer took to the water with his board to meet the rescuer. Everyone else vied for space like a welcome party, safely out of harm’s way.

  A limp Krista was loaded up on the board, her limbs dangling off the side. If she wasn’t sitting there in a hospital, having been saved, she would think the girl was dead. She would think they were too late. The gasping of the news woman, the tsks of the news man—it was a tragedy they were showing. The ending wasn’t happy.

  The procession was quick after that. Krista reached the shore and the swimmer scooped her up and hugged her close as if she was a recovered treasure; a priceless relic. Miraculously, her bathing suit was still on and covering all the important parts, because with the speed she was being transferred up the beach, no one would have bothered to cover her up.

  New motto: When in the face of death, always be thankful for the small things.

  The cameraman got a front row seat to see the swimmer’s large back hunched over a still limp and deathly pale Krista. It was Sean. Of course it was—she knew from the second he came into the screen. It still came as a shock, though. It was still unbelievable. First, that he was in San Diego when he was supposed to be in L.A., second that he found her, and third that he found her in time to heroically save her life. She had done a lot of stupid things in her life, but giving up on him had to be number one.

  Sean worked hard at resuscitating, everyone else standing back to let him work. When the ambulance showed up, they cleared Sean away and took over. It was the first time the camera got a good look at Krista’s savior, and what a sight they saw. He was perfectly sculpted and bronzed in the afternoon sun. His cut body glistened as he stood with his hands on his hips, panting. He looked down with worry, his vivid eyes deep and troubled. He was still the most handsome man Krista had ever seen. He was the love of her life, and she had never, in all her life, seen him look more scared.