“The engine’s cooling system’s output port is on the aft, starboard side!” Eve shouted as she pushed up onto the deck, grabbing onto the railing to steady herself as the vicious wind tried to yank her from the boat.
Boom! Another flash of lightning blazed overhead, slicing through the violent sky, cleaving the angry, roiling clouds in two.
“Go check to see if there’s a sooty residue near the port!” she yelled, stumbling toward the Harken roller that would unfurl the mainsail. “If there’s not,” he had to strain to hear her over the howling wind, over the rain drumming against the deck and the waves crashing against the hull, “then try to restart the engine! If there is residue, come back and help me with the mainsail!”
Shit, shit, shit…
Bill had been in some pretty hairy situations before, but usually he was the one who knew what steps to take. He wasn’t used to relying on the expertise of another. Though, he had to admit, if he had to be caught out in the middle of Lake Michigan during a violent squall, he couldn’t think of a better sailing partner than Eve.
The woman had been raised on the water. In fact, his sister had proudly informed him a couple of months ago that Eve was a five-time CYC Mackinac Island racing champ. At the time, he’d told Becky to stuff it, maintaining that he had no interest at all in Eve or her accomplishments. But, he had to admit as he stumbled across the heaving, bucking deck toward the rear of the vessel to check the cooling water output port—please don’t let it be sooty; please let us still have engine function—right now he took comfort in the knowledge that she was a first-class yachtsman…er…yachtswoman? Was that even a word?
Sploosh! A giant gray wave rolled over the vessel behind him, and he turned to squint against the driving rain, his heart in his throat, half expecting to find Eve had been washed overboard. But she was hanging on to the main mast, wrestling with the forestay, the cable that ran from the top of the mast to the deck.
“Hurry, Billy!” she screamed when she caught him staring. It was all the impetus he needed. Clutching the railing in a tight fist, he shuffled forward on the slick deck until he reached the back of the vessel. Taking a firm handhold, he leaned over the side.
“Oh, fuck.” His whispered words were caught and tossed away by the viciously howling wind. “Residue!” he yelled to Eve, turning to make his way back to her.
“Okay!” She nodded, finally defeating the stubborn forestay. “Come help me with the mainsail! It’s blowing at least forty knots! These waves are coming every eight to ten seconds, and some are sixteen feet high! One more broadside could flip us! We have to get control! Now!”
And even though his breath was burning in his lungs, even though his pulse was racing out of control, the way Eve was working, so quickly and so efficiently, gave him a modicum of…not comfort. There was nothing comfortable about their current situation. But knowing Eve, five-time CYC Mackinac Island racing-champ Eve, was in control made him feel as if the odds were stacked in their favor.
And in his line of work, anytime the odds were stacked in his favor he considered it a good day.
By the time he managed to shuffle back to the main mast, spreading his bare feet wide on the water-logged deck, she’d already begun the process of unfurling the mainsail. “We can’t take it all the way up!” she instructed, her black hair plastered against her pale cheeks like long, dark fingers, her blue eyes bright with calculation. “We need it at about fifty percent to give us control!”
“Whatever you say, Captain!” he yelled, water filling his mouth and eyes as he tilted his head back to watch the mainsail climb toward the roiling sky, flapping violently with the wind, its cables clanging loudly against the mast.
When Eve was satisfied with the amount of woven sailcloth they’d unfurled, she instructed him. “Okay, let’s move to the wheelhouse!”
Grabbing her hand, consoled by the feeling of her slim fingers laced with his, they shuffled around the cabin toward the covered cockpit. Ducking under the wheelhouse’s roof was like stepping into a bass drum in the middle of the Rose Bowl parade. Rain hammered against the ceiling, roaring and pounding as towering waves continued to try to roll the boat. Then, Bill watched in amazement as Eve’s hands grabbed the wheel. She turned it a bit, adjusted it a notch, then ducked her chin, water sheeting off her face, to watch the mainsail catch the wind and snap tight. The loud pop echoed even above the clamoring storm.
She nodded, blowing out a shaky breath as she maneuvered the boat into the waves until it was no longer rolling side to side but climbing each swell confidently before plunging down the other side.
“Sonofabitch,” he breathed, holding onto the steering console, shaking his head. “I think I just shit enough bricks to replicate the Great Wall of China.”
She reached up to scrub the water from her eyes. “You were in the Navy,” she said, making a face. “Surely you’ve been in worse storms than this.”
“Just because I was in the Navy, that doesn’t mean I actually spent much time on a ship. And the ships I have been on were so big most storms didn’t so much as make the vessel wobble.”
“Well,” she grinned, “welcome to the Wonderful World of Sailing. It’s exciting here.”
“Hot damn,” he huffed in agreement, loving the way her eyes were bright with enthusiasm. Then, “Holy shit! You’re actually having fun, aren’t you?”
She laughed, shrugging one shoulder. Then her expression changed. Dimmed. Like someone had flipped a switch inside her. “Maybe not fun,” she admitted, “but for a second there, I forget my father or my ex-husband or both were trying to kill me. For a second there, I forgot about what happened to Buzzard…”
And as wonderful as it’d been to see excitement in her eyes, it was just as awful to see such unremitting pain and guilt there. “Sweetheart,” he tried to infuse his voice with understanding, “I told you, what happened to Buzzard wasn’t—”
“I need to go out and reef the sail,” she cut him off. “With the force of these winds, I think we’re running too heavy.”
“Let me—”
“No.” She shook her head, her sopping hair swishing across the thick orange fabric of the life vest. “I’m the one who knows how much sail to bring in. You need to stay here and man the wheel.” She pointed at the compass. “Try to keep it at this heading. That should ensure we’re still going in the right direction for Ludington, but it will also keep up from sailing directly into the waves or having them hit us abeam.”
“Eve, I—”
“You got this?” she asked, taking a step back, indicating he should take control of the vessel.
What could he say but, “Yeah, I got this.”
When he grabbed the wheel, he was surprised by the way it bucked in his hand. It took strength to hold them on the correct course.
Strength…
Not something he’d ever really equated with Eve. But he was learning just how misguided and misinformed he was in that department. Still, the knowledge that she was one hell of a tough lady behind that delicate, fancy, cupcake exterior did nothing to mitigate his anxiety as she exited the wheelhouse and began inching her way across the slippery deck toward the mast. He realized he was holding his breath, trying to squint through the gray haze of rain to watch her every little movement, when his brain began to buzz.
Forcing himself to rake in much needed oxygen, he sent a prayer of thanks skyward when she quickly furled a tiny bit of sail before turning to make her way back to the cockpit.
Boooooommmm!
A blinding flash of bright white light accompanied a bone-rattling, ear-splitting crash that rocked the boat. The main mast lit up like a roman candle, and the hair on the top of Bill’s head and the back of his neck lifted in warning. The metallic smell of electricity burned through the air and tasted like a new penny when he dragged in a harsh breath.
Jesus Christ! They’d been struck by
lightning!
“Eve!” he yelled, turning toward the starboard side of the boat where he’d last seen her. But she was…gone.
***
Cold…
That was the first thing Eve noticed when she blinked open her eyes to find herself staring up into a frightening canopy of cruel, gray clouds. She was cold right down to the marrow of her bones. The second thing she noticed was a feeling of weightlessness, of being born up into the air and sinking back down again.
And then, suddenly, her stunned synapses began firing, and she realized she was adrift. She was adrift in the lake and—
A huge cross-wave rolled over her head, filling her mouth with acrid-tasting water, trickling down into her lungs before her life vest bobbed her to the surface.
“Uhhhhh,” she raked in a breath, coughing and sputtering, trying to orient herself in the water, trying to keep her head above the swells that lifted her aloft before slamming her down.
Oh, God. She was going to die. People set adrift in the vastness of Lake Michigan in the middle of a storm didn’t survive. They just didn’t.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh—
“Eve!”
At first she wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly. She thought it was the wind howling and screaming and playing trick on her ears.
“Eve!”
Okay, and that was no trick. She turned—struggling to tread water—just in time to see Billy throw an arm over her shoulder. He hooked his fingers into her opposite armpit in the traditional lifeguard’s hold.
“B-Billy!” she choked, coughing up gritty water from her lungs. She’d never been so happy to feel the weight of another human pressing against her back as she was right at that very moment.
“Don’t worry,” he yelled, sputtering as a wave slapped him in the face. “I’ve got you!”
Yeah, he had her. But…but who had him?
And then she saw he was using his free hand to pull on the safety line he’d wrapped around himself, trying to haul them through the heaving waters back toward Summer Lovin’. The sailboat bobbed atop the waves some forty feet away.
Turning in his embrace, she grabbed the line. And, hand-over-hand, they managed to slowly, so frustratingly slowly, halve the distance to the boat as the wind and waves tossed them about like waterlogged scraps. In less than a minute, hypothermia was setting in. Eve could feel it in the stiffness of her muscles, in the numbness of her limbs, in the way her strength was ebbing, drifting out of her with each crashing wave.
“Hurry, B-Billy,” she sputtered. “W-we…” Her teeth were chattering so hard, her jaw was locking down. “We h-have to get o-out of th-this water.”
“I know,” he coughed. “Wrap your arms around m-my neck and hang on. I can get us there f-faster—” Another wave rolled over their heads, filling their ears and mouths. And Eve wondered, as the frigid water swirled above her, whether or not they could actually make it. Any relief she’d felt upon seeing Billy beside her leaked from her to sink down to the pitch-black bottom of the lake. If he died while trying to save her, she’d never forgive herself…
Of course, she’d be dead, too. So yeah. There was that…
They bobbed to the surface, buoyed by their life vests, hacking up lake water. “I’ll get us there f-faster on my own!” he yelled.
And though she hated the fact that he was right—because he was right—hated the fact that, in this instance, she really did need saving, her ego wasn’t so big that she let it keep her from doing as he instructed. Releasing the lifeline, she wrapped her frozen, numb arms around his neck. In the next instant, they surged through the chop, his big shoulder muscles and sleek back muscles working beneath her as he pulled them through the turgid water toward the rolling boat.
She didn’t know how long he worked as she did nothing but hang on. It felt like hours but could’ve only been a minute. And then, suddenly, Summer Lovin’ rode the swell directly in front of them. And with a strength Eve would later marvel at, Billy hauled them the last few feet, managing to hook an arm around her waist and boost her up onto the swim ladder bolted to the back of the sailboat.
“Climb up!” he bellowed. And, yep, that should’ve been easy. There were just three measly rungs, after all. But her entire body was frozen.
He must’ve seen her trouble as she clung to the back of the boat, unable to move, unable to feel the fingers wrapped around the top wrung. With a curse, he grabbed the sides of the ladder when the boat sank into the bottom of another swell. Then, somehow he managed to climb over her and into the vessel. Hooking his hands under her armpits, with a grunt and mighty heave, he hauled her aboard.
And the only thing better than feeling Billy pressed against her in all that freezing water? Feeling the slick slats of the sailboat beneath her feet. Well, in all honestly she couldn’t actually feel them. But when she glanced down at her pink, polished toenails, she knew they were there.
Holy moly! We actually made it!
She couldn’t believe it!
“Come on!” Billy yelled, half dragging/half stumbling with her into the covered cockpit just as the rain picked up in intensity. “Sit!” he ordered, pushing her into the captain’s chair and tossing a towel over her shoulders, chafing her arms until her skin began to sting. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Stinging skin was reheating skin.
“W-w-what happened?” she asked through chattering, clenched teeth.
“The main mast was struck by lightning,” he told her, moving his chafing to her sides. “The force of it knocked you off the deck into the water.”
“Lightning?” She couldn’t believe it. Boats weren’t often struck, but when they were, it was usually catastrophic to the electronics on board.
“The navigation system?” she asked, and he moved slightly to the left so she could see the electrical panels on the console. The dark electrical panels. Not one light glowed on the entire vessel when she glanced around.
“The radio is shot, too,” he informed her, raising his voice above the driving sound of the rain on the roof. “And I’m assuming…” He peeled up the Velcro on the pocket of his swim trunks and pulled out his iPhone. Pressing the power button, she didn’t need to see the darkened screen to know the cell phone was a dead stick. The information was written all over Billy’s scowling face. “We’re on our own here,” he muttered. Which was true. Because her phone was shoved in an evidence locker somewhere back in Chicago.
And though her mind should’ve been filled with all sorts of logistics—like the tricky business of navigating the boat without the electronics, like the danger of riding out the storm when the waves and wind seemed to be getting worse and worse—she instead found herself occupied with one and only one thought. This was the fifth time she’d almost died in less than three months, and if things kept going like this, chances were pretty good she might not survive the sixth.
And she’d never told Billy she loved him.
It seemed such an easy thing to say, such an easy thing to admit, so why hadn’t she? Was she still, deep down, that cowardly eighteen-year-old? Was she still—
“Hey.” He pulled her into his arms, pressing her against his warm, wet chest, palming the back of her head. When she sucked a breath in through her nose—a deep breath that brought the crisp smell of lake water combined with the burnt rubber aroma of fried electrical wire casings—she realized her lips were trembling and hot, salty tears were pouring over her lower lids. “It’s all right, now. We’re going to be all right. I know you’ve been through hell, sweetheart. I know it must seem like the world is out to get you. But you just need to hold on for a little while longer, okay? Just hold on for a little while longer, and I promise you—”
“I’ve been holding on by sheer force of will these last f-few days,” she whispered against his shoulder. “H-holding myself together, so you’d see I’m not that same cowardly girl from twelve yea
rs ago.”
“Eve—”
“But I can’t h-hold myself together anymore.” She talked over him, her voice rising with every word out of her mouth. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. “And I c-can’t hold it in anymore. I love you, Billy. I’ve always loved you. And it’s okay if you don’t love me back. Because if these last few days have taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to live with regrets anymore. And I regret not telling you right from the very start that I still love you. And I will always love you.” She felt him still against her. The hands that’d been rubbing up and down her back stopped on her shoulders. “And it’s a love with no strings attached. No expectations. Just a one-way love. F-freely given.”
That’s what she said. And she meant it when she said it. She really did. But, naturally, there was a part of her, a really big, really hopeful part of her, that wanted Billy to reiterate her words, to return her love. So when he gently pushed back, his brown eyes searching her face, his expression somewhere between anguish and sadness, a monster wave of grief threatened to overwhelm her as all that hope was washed away like the water washing over the hull of Summer Lovin’.
“Eve, I—”
“Shh.” She pressed a cold finger over his lips. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“But, I—” Just then, the boat was pulled off course by the power of the current, the mainsail lost the wind, and the vessel rolled violently.
Cursing, Billy turned to grab the wheel.
She watched the muscles in his back and shoulders bunch as he wrestled the vessel back into the face of the storm, as the mainsail once again snapped tight. Then she blew out a shaky breath and thought, It’s done.
She’d gone all in. Put all her chips on the table. Played her last hand. Unfortunately, this time, the cards hadn’t gone her way. Not that she should be surprised, really. The cards hadn’t gone her way in a very long time.
But at least you had last night, a voice whispered through her head. And at least you finally told him the truth…
Born Wild Page 26
