“Ava, you’re not hearing me.” Dominic holds my shoulders, his bearded face close to mine. “We’re gonna find him.”
“He’s out there.”
Something breaks inside me.
My gaze floats and flits around the room—to Mack at the helm, staring hard out the window, expertly guiding us down one wave and up another; to the stack of charts; to the instruments on the dash, lit up and blinking; to the radio, microphone dangling from the hook; and finally to the hooks hung with yellow rain slickers and orange life vests.
He’s out there.
Christian is out there. Dominic is right—he’s close. I can feel him.
Time stretches and stutters, words floating around me.
Mack is a stoic, stolid presence, and Dominic is a manic, bustling one.
Time hiccups and lurches.
How much times passes? I don’t know.
He’s out there; that’s my only thought, as hours or minutes pass in jumps and taffy-slow stretches. The storm howls and rages.
He’s out there. My husband, my Christian, he’s out here again. I can feel him, as if a string is tied between my heart and his, binding us. If I could reach out, if I had the arm of a god, I could pluck him from the Sea.
He’s out there; how can I stay in here, waiting, doing nothing? How can I sit by and wait for him to die, wait for him to sink beneath the waves?
He’s out there, and I’m in here. I can’t handle that reality any longer. I just can’t. I have to find him. I have to be closer to him.
He’s out there; it repeats inside me like a skipping CD.
Repeats until I cannot stand it any longer.
I stand up. Grab a slicker off the hook and put it on, along with a life vest. Dominic watches me for a moment, and then springs into action as I make for the door.
“What the fuck are you doing, Ava?” he snaps. “You can’t go out there! There’s nothing for you to do!”
I shove him, hard. “LET ME GO!” I hear myself scream it. “He’s out there. I feel him. He’s out there!”
I’m so broken. Shattered. I need him. I’ve traveled thousands of miles to find him, and now he’s been taken from me again. Why? Why?
I’m outside before Dominic has time to recover. The wind blows me sideways, and I stagger. The rain is cold and beats against me like icy stinging fingers, like a million razors. It spatters against the rubber of the slicker with a ticking, spacking clatter. I can’t see anything. I’m tumbling across the deck. I hit something hard with my shoulder, and instinctively grab onto it.
Christian—where are you?
I see him, in my mind or in reality, I don’t know. I see him—he’s twisting in the grip of a wave, tumbling, pummeled and crushed, swimming desperately.
I’m sorry, Christian. I’m sorry for everything.
The deck beneath me lurches. My stomach drops out, and I’m weightless.
I hear a shout, but it’s lost in the howling shriek of the wind and the roar of the rain and the crash of waves.
A cold so piercing it feels hot as it smashes through me, envelops me. I can’t breathe. Salt sours in my mouth. I’m thrown like a bit of stick, and I taste air, and my lungs gulp at it.
Is this what it’s like to die in the Sea? She has me. Your mistress, the Sea, she finally has me. She has us both.
Christian?
Christian…
* * *
Ava?
I hear her voice.
I feel her presence. It’s a pull on my heart, a tug on my soul.
A tiny, quiet voice whispers to me, a voice hidden somewhere in the deepest recesses of my soul: Swim, Christian. You’re not meant to die like this. Choose life, Christian.
And so, I swim. My hands pull at the waves. I seek air, and suck it into my lungs. I have no life jacket this time, only the ring around my chest. I’m tumbling under, unable to keep my head above the waves, swallowing too much water.
I’m cold. Or am I hot? Numbness—a sign that hypothermia is taking hold.
Lightning flashes—is it lightning? It is too bright, too steady for lightning. Sweeping evenly and rhythmically side to side across the waves, seeking and searching—what I see is a searchlight. Do I hear a rumble under the shout of the Sea?
I’m plunged under the waves and try not to breathe the brine. I fight for breath, and when I feel rain on my face, I cough and splutter and suck at the air.
Yes, it’s a searchlight, and the rumble of a propeller churning, an engine grinding.
A wave throws me skyward and as I tumble I catch a glimpse of a massive shadow against the waves—a freighter. I recognize, even in a quick glimpse, the soaring superstructure and the endless deck and the high rounded bow.
I’m tumbling again in the twisting churn of the waves, surfacing, spluttering, then plunged under again, and the next time I surface, the freighter is towering above me, and the spotlight sweeps across me, returns, and I hear distant voices shouting.
Déjà vu.
Ava’s face dances in my mind as my hands reach for the life preserver as it hits the water in front of me.
I see her face. Her black hair, loose around her cheeks and chin. Her blue eyes on mine.
One more glimpse of her—it’s all I want.
Another part of my brain is telling me that what’s happening right now, being found, is statistically impossible. Logistically impossible. The fact that I survived going overboard in the middle of the Atlantic once is in defiance of all the odds and realities of life at Sea: if you go overboard in the open ocean, on any ship, large or small, you will die, with almost total certainty.
I didn’t die.
I survived.
I suffered hypothermia and broke a shitload of bones, and was dehydrated, and I lost my memories, but I survived that first time.
I knew, when I hit the water again, just minutes ago—or is it hours?—that I would die, this time.
Yet here are hands reaching for me. Pulling me in. Wrapping me in a crinkly, loud, awkward silver blanket made of what feels like tinfoil.
How?
Is that You, God? Are these Your hands, plucking me from the Sea?
I don’t believe in You.
You stole my son from me.
You stole my wife from me.
You stole my joy, my happiness.
And now You save me from the clutch of Your merciless Sea, yet again?
What do You want from me?
Why pluck me from the jaws of death a second time?
In the hours of my drunken sorrow, after Henry’s death, I cursed You. I railed against You. I told You I hated You. I didn’t believe in You, but I needed someone to hate, so I cast my hate upon You.
And myself.
Thus the gallons of whiskey to numb the sorrow and guilt and hatred, to dull the edge of shame, to blunt the razor of agony.
Thus the running away, like Jonah.
All of which I blame You for.
Even still.
Even now, as I cling to life yet again, I know You, and recognize the feel of Your hand meddling in my life.
Why?
Death’s jaws are snapping at me, behind me, echoed in the roaring churn of the Sea all around me. And from this certain death, not once, but twice You have snatched me.
Why?
To what purpose?
What am I?
A whiskey-sodden wretch with a dead son and a wife who assuredly hates me, who is better off without me, who couldn’t be bothered to even glance at me in our time of greatest sorrow.
I am nothing, no one, a fool with a ready pen and no substance; I am a soulless golem of cracked and drying clay, crumbling as the weight and sorrow and pressure of Life becomes too crushing.
Yet…
I hear Dr. James telling me to make the most of this gift of life.
Louis’s voice, his words: You LIVE. It is better.
I hear the voice whispering to me from the waves: Choose life.
I will live—I will
live.
I choose life.
As I drift off to unconsciousness, I see you, Ava.
I see your hair framing your face, your eyes cerulean and bright, glowing with love. Gazing up at me. Your hands flutter up to my face, and you drag the back of your hand along my jaw. You laugh as I pretend to resist your advances, and your laughter is music. Your lips find mine and our breath tangles and skin brushes skin and then we’re moving in synchronous beauty, and each touch is electric, each kiss a fiery burst, each thrust wondrous and silken.
I see you, Ava. I see you.
Then I see nothing, dizziness and unconsciousness and blackness subsuming me.
* * *
When I wake up again I see walls and exposed pipes, hear the clang of bells announcing the changing of the hour, soles squeaking on floors beyond a door. Fluorescent tubes buzz, hidden behind translucent plastic cases on the ceiling above me. There’s an antiseptic smell. My eyes close again, exhaustion weighing me down.
A voice nearby, brittle and throaty with age. “Been at sea my whole life. Worked freighters and cruise ships, worked on destroyers and cruisers and even a carrier in the navy. Seen plenty of men go over in my time, and only a tiny handful ever even got found dead, much less rescued alive. Storm like this? You don’t survive it. You just don’t. Even finding a corpse is a laughable notion.”
“He survived it.” A much younger voice, then. “And so did she.”
“My point exactly. People talk about the impossible odds of surviving going overboard, but a youngster like you wouldn’t really understand. It’s like winning the lottery—it ain’t that the odds are against you, it’s that the margin of possibility is skewed so far against you there ain’t really any worth in thinkin’ on it. So, these two, both going overboard in the same storm, and both getting picked up by us?” A disbelieving laugh. “That math don’t work. It ain’t possible. It just ain’t. I don’t believe in miracles, but…”
“But there they are, together in our sick bay.”
A sigh, from the elder voice, almost annoyed. “Exactly.”
I’m tired. So tired.
Thirsty. Dizzy. I still feel the twist and churn of the waves, even though I’m lying on something firm and soft—a gurney or medical bed.
I hear a groan—it’s from me.
“Hey, now. Easy, bub. You been through a hell of a time.” The older voice, his hand on my shoulder, gentling me.
Something tugs at me. Not physically, though it’s like a physical sensation; something pulls at my attention.
My head lolls on my neck, twisting to the side: I’m on a cot in the sick bay of a large ship, cabinets and counters, a blood pressure cuff, a hand washing station, a sharps container; another bed, near mine, not six feet away.
A thin form lies on that bed, chest rising and falling, wrapped in a silver blanket like my own, teeth chattering.
My heart lurches.
Stops.
Black hair, sodden and tangled. A familiar sweep of neck and line of jaw. A temple I’ve kissed countless times. Is she awake?
Is it really her?
I have to know.
I force myself into motion, ignoring the protests of the doctor. I kick and bat away the crinkly blanket. My feet touch the floor, and I try to rise, but my legs refuse to take my weight. I collapse to the floor, boneless, the exhaustion and hypothermia a brutal enemy.
I’m dreaming.
I have to be dreaming.
Why would she be out here? Why would they have pulled her from the Sea?
I’m dreaming.
I am dead, and this is my purgatory.
I crawl across the floor, ignoring the hands trying to help me, the voices speaking to me—they know my name, somehow. I ignore them and crawl to the other bed.
My hands latch onto the side of the bed and I pull myself up. I’m tired and weak and shaky and cold and chattering and shivering—am I naked? No, I’m clad in some kind of clothing, spare scrubs or pajamas or something, pilled and scratchy cotton. Why did I notice this? I don’t know; my mind is going a million miles a minute, and yet as each moment crawls by, as I force myself upward.
Her teeth chatter, I can hear them clicking together. I see her whole body shivering. I’m at eye level with the left side of her face. There, just below her left earlobe where jaw meets neck, is a spray of freckles, six of them; I’ve lain awake at night tracing patterns in those freckles.
There is a tiny white scar on her jaw, on the underside near her chin, where a tree branch once whipped up and cut her; I have licked and kissed and nuzzled that scar, collapsed breathless in the moments after I have poured myself into her.
“Ava—” My voice is hoarse. “Ava?”
Her eyes are closed, her long lashes resting against her cheeks. At my voice, at her name on my lips, those eyelashes flutter.
I’m arrested by a memory—it hits me like a bullet, stops time, freezes me:
We are lying in bed together. Dawn is far away, still, and I’m not sure what has awoken me. I can see little but the shadows of our room, the shapes of dresser and door and the reflection of shadows in the bathroom mirror, and the dim ripple of the Sea out beyond the windows. I’m sleepy, my eyes wanting to slip closed again; I’m warm, comfortable, happy. I turn, and nuzzle against Ava. She murmurs sleepily, and twists to face away from me in her sleep, but her hand catches at mine and drapes it over her bare hip. She wiggles her butt against me, and then she’s snuffling as sleep pulls her back under. Minutes pass, and I’m nearly asleep again. She shifts and twists back to face me. My eyes open and I gaze at her. A moment, then, when she’s still asleep, her eyes closed, and then her eyelashes flutter and she blinks awake. The moment she sees me, a sleepy smile crosses her face, love filling her features.
I’m slammed back to the present.
She just blinks at me for a moment, unsure if she’s awake or dreaming.
“Ava?” I whisper her name.
Her features twist through a barrage of emotions—hope, relief, puzzlement, fear, love, anger, joy.
“Ch—Christian?” Her voice is a raspy whisper.
“Ava.” My voice breaks as I say her name for the fourth time.
The silver blanket crinkles, and her hand wriggles free. She reaches for me, fingers trembling. Her fingertips touch my face with delicate hesitancy: Am I real?—that’s the question in her touch.
I make a mangled sound: laughter and sob, disbelief and joy, love and wary hope.
“Is it really you?” Her voice is so soft, so quiet, and so broken that my heart is shattered by the fragility I hear in it.
“It’s me.”
19
He’s real.
He’s here.
I can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think, can’t process. I’m cold. I’m thirsty. My brain is full of cotton.
He’s in front of me, and I see his mouth moving, but I hear nothing.
His hair is long, hanging past his chin, lank and wet, sticking to his cheeks and neck. His face is obscured by a beard, wild and unkempt and thick, also wet. A long scar runs across his forehead, into his hair, a thick, ropy, pinkish line of puckered skin. He’s thinner than he’s ever been, but healthy looking despite that. His eyes search mine. His warm, familiar eyes sear into me, lush deep liquid brown, bleeding emotion.
I want to cry, but I can’t; I want to reach for him, but I can’t—I’m too weak, too tired, too cold. All I can do is stare at him, trying to process that it’s really, really him. He’s alive. He’s here. He’s real. My Christian, my husband, my best friend…I’ve finally found him.
What happened? I don’t remember.
I’m so tired.
My eyes won’t stay open. I don’t want to fall asleep, though. I fight it. If I fall asleep, he’ll be gone when I awake.
His hand is cold and clammy as he cups my cheek; I can finally hear his voice. “Sleep, Ava. Sleep, my love. I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here when you wake up. I’ll never lea
ve your side again, I swear.”
His hand on my hand. His cheek against mine.
Never leave my side again…
I have a momentary glimpse at the maelstrom of emotions swirling inside me, all the things I’ve been repressing and suppressing and ignoring and halfheartedly sorting through, all the emotions I’ve not known how to even begin to let myself feel. There’s so much; too much. A glimpse at that storm of emotions inside me, just a glimpse, makes my heart twist and slam, and then I push it all aside. I’m too tired, too cold. I can’t stay awake. I can’t deal with any of that. Not yet.
I stare at Christian, squeeze his hand in mine, and then I feel my eyes sliding closed and I can’t fight sleep anymore.
* * *
I wake up briefly, but fall back asleep again. I have no idea how much time has passed.
Next time I wake, I see that I have an IV in my arm.
When I wake up yet again, Christian is nearby on another bed, also with an IV in his arm, and he’s asleep, facing me, mouth open, snoring lightly. I stare at him, taking in his features. He’s changed so much. Thinner, harder. Long hair and beard where he was once clean-shaven and kept his hair neatly cut. The scar on his forehead belies some of what has happened to him since he left Florida all those months ago.
His eyes open and meet mine.
We just stare at each other, locking gazes for I don’t know how long.
There’s so much to say, but neither of us is ready to say any of it.
I’ll never leave your side again, I swear.
My eyes struggle to stay open. I fall asleep with Christian’s eyes on me.
* * *
“…Storm’s finally blown itself out.” I hear the rough twang of the doctor’s voice. “Captain says the storm has put us behind schedule, and going out of our way to find you and Ava has put us even more behind, so we can’t afford the time to detour out of our way to take you anywhere.”
“So what are our options?” I hear Christian ask.
“There’s a Coast Guard cutter about a hundred miles from our position. They’re sending a helo to pick you two up, and they’ll see you home.”
There's No Place Like Home (The One Series Book 3) Page 18
