He gripped her fingers. "Jesus, Nikki, you just don't know how bad it was."
"Or maybe I know how good it can be."
Her optimism could be contagious, dangerously so. "I'm glad that you've had a life that leads you to trust that easily."
"So you're walking out again?"
"We're on a boat. I'm not walking anywhere." They were definitely stuck here until they hashed this out one way or another.
Her jaw shot out again. "That's not what I meant and you know it."
"Being with you scares the crap out of me, no question about it. That night I saw you at Beachcombers, it rocked me. Hard."
The mast creaked and groaned as an ominous silence stretched between them. "And you've been dry since last May? No more blackouts?"
He'd already answered that once. What was she driving at? Even as he understood he hadn't done squat to deserve her trust, he wouldn't escape the sense of impending doom, thickening the late-afternoon air. "I'll admit, seeing you at Beachcombers that night was tough for me."
The boat pitched to the side, mast cracking, leaning.
Falling.
Seconds away from crashing into Nikki.
Chapter 14
Screaming, Nikki grappled for the boat rail. Anything stable in her abruptly tilting world as the mast leaned, held only by a couple of pathetically frayed metal lines.
"Carson!" she shouted, extending her arm toward him as she slid backward, toward the ocean.
"Jump!" he barked back. "Get clear of the lines before the boat pitches—"
A crack split the air as the mast careened out of control. The boat lurched to the side, catapulting Nikki airborne with only a few frozen seconds to gather her thoughts before...
Water gushed up her nose. Frigid and dark as she sank, not at all like the clear depths of a pool.
Up or down? Nikki couldn't determine which way since the bubbles swirled all around. All she'd learned in swimming classes said follow the bubbles but the underwater world churned and her senses shrieked conflicting messages.
She kicked. Against seaweed? No. Stronger. Slicing. Lines from the boat.
Ohmigod. Panic urged her to gasp, but she kept her lips pinched shut. She struggled to slide the metal lines—shrouds, Carson had called them—off her ankle and wrist. Shrouds? How horribly ominous that sounded.
And what an interesting word to tell her little student later. What an off-the-wall thought that stung her eyes with tears over the possibility she might not get to share in expanding his vocabulary any longer.
The watery world closed around her, wrapping like a blanket. Or a sail. The fabric sealed to her skin.
Her lungs burned, her skin numbing. Her brain even more so.
Panic gave way to terror that this might really be beyond her control. She could die.
How could she have been caught so unaware that she didn't notice the mast crashing toward her until too late? She'd been obsessed with the dream of Carson in the VOQ room the night Gary died.
Carson. Terror squeezed tighter. Where was he? If he'd been knocked unconscious, he could be drowning even now.
No. Hell no. She wouldn't let it happen.
She didn't care what he may have done the night Gary died. If Carson had been there, she was certain he didn't remember. . .none of which mattered if she couldn't find him now. She kicked against the restraints seeking to suck her deeper, ignoring the bite of metal through her skin.
The bubbles sparkled, brighter, her head lighter, her arms and legs sluggish even as she continued to fight. Not much time left. Now that she was seconds away from checking out, too, she realized that the image of Carson had come in a dream, not in a memory flash like the recollections she'd recorded in her journal. Her confused and terrified mind could well have been playing tricks on her.