Hot & Heavy (Lightning 2)

I’m expecting Sage to go off on me the second I make it into the boat—it’s what most of the women I know would do. Lose their shit and then wait for me to pet them out of their bad mood. Throw in a few gifts or a shopping spree and I’m usually golden.

But once I’m back on board, Sage doesn’t even bother to look my way. Instead, she stays where she is, sitting on one of the benches near the front. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her legs, cheek resting on her knees. If ever there’s a pose that says she wants to be left alone, this is it.

For the first time since she punched me in the gut, worry starts gnawing away at my insides. Because this isn’t the look of a woman who wants to talk, and it sure as shit isn’t the look of a woman who wants to work things out. No, with her defensive body posture and her eyes focused far out to sea, Sage looks like a woman who wants to be anywhere but here.

A woman who’s already regretting whatever decisions she made to get to this point.

It’s that thought more than any other that galvanizes me, that has me crossing the deck at pretty close to a run. I have no idea what I’m going to say to her, I just know that I have to say something. I can’t stand that she feels so far away from me, that she’s right here in front of me and somehow completely out of reach.

I call her name, but she doesn’t look up, even when I’m standing right in front of her.

I wait for several excruciating seconds, but when she doesn’t say anything—when she keeps staring out at the horizon—I finally say the only thing I can think of to make things better. “I’m sorry, Sage. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

When she doesn’t respond, I crouch down next to her, put a hand on her leg. “I wasn’t thinking. I just wasn’t. I dove under just to do it, then I started wondering how deep I could go. So I just kept going down until I was almost out of air, just to see how far I could get.” I don’t tell her just how far below the surface I went, or that I ran out of air about a hundred feet before I made it back up.

“It’s not like it’s my first time,” I continue when she still doesn’t speak. “I’ve been free diving for a couple of years now. I even took a few classes, learned some mind-body techniques to help me go longer without breathing while underwater. It’s not like I just went down and didn’t come back up.”

She does look at me then, her eyes a fiery nearly electric green that seem to see all the way through me. “You don’t really think telling me you’ve been doing this for a while is actually going to improve your case, do you?” she spits out.

“I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t unprepared. I didn’t just swim down without knowing how I was going to get back up.”

“Well, good for you for having a plan.” It’s a snide comment, one that’s crackling with indignation right below the surface. “Kind of like you had a plan when you climbed that mountain and nearly fell off, right? Like you had a plan when you dove off that ridiculous cliff in Acapulco.

“Turns out there was nothing to worry about, guys,” she says, raising her voice so the others can hear her. “Because the mighty, indestructible Shawn Wilson had a plan.”

Everyone hears her but no one says anything, so she goes back to looking out at the ocean. The first stirrings of anger come to life inside of me. “I’m a grown man, Sage, not a recalcitrant child, and I’d appreciate being treated like one.”

Her eyes snap back to mine. “If you want to be treated like a man and not a child, you should probably start acting like one.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’re a spoiled little boy who wants everything his own way and to hell with the consequences. And that may be how it works on the football field, where everyone worships the great and amazing Shawn Wilson, but that’s not how it works in the real world.”

“You think you live in the real world?” I hiss as fury explodes inside me. “You, who spend your days hiding in a yoga studio with a bunch of freaks.”

If possible her eyes go even more molten. “You know what? I think we should probably stop talking for now.”

“I don’t want to do that.” I move to sit beside her on the bench. “I want to have this out so we can move on.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t. Not here, not in front of your friends who are trying really hard not to listen. You need to back off.”

“Look, you’re making too big a deal of this—”

She shoots a hand out, slaps it onto my chest. “You don’t get to tell me when I’m making too big of a deal, and you sure as hell don’t get to tell me that my feelings aren’t valid because you’ve ‘taken some classes.’ If you want to talk, we’ll talk when we get back to land and can have some privacy. I am not having this conversation in front of other people. I’

m just not.”

I start to argue again, not because she isn’t right but because I can’t stand the idea of waiting forty-five excruciating minutes to clear this up. But one look at the expression on Sage’s face tells me that I don’t get a vote. On this, her way is the only one that matters.

Normally that’d be enough to piss me off all over again, but her dead serious tone has frissons of unease working their way down my spine. Sage isn’t just pissed off, she’s quietly, coldly furious. More, she’s obviously rethinking some things about our relationship and that makes me nervous as fuck. Because no matter how irrational I think she’s being right now, I can’t help wanting her. Can’t help needing her.

“Fine,” I tell her after several long seconds have passed. “But I’ll be right here if you change your mind and want to talk.”

She snorts. “Yeah, well, don’t hold your breath. Even free divers can only go so long before they suffocate.”

There’s nothing I can say to that that won’t cause a bigger problem, so I do as she asked and back off.

It’s harder than it should be, way harder than I imagined it would be considering I’m just on the other side of the boat. But the longer I sit here watching her, the more I see her withdrawing from me. And I hate that, hate feeling like I’m losing her before I ever really had a chance to have her. Hate even more that she won’t even give me a chance to explain.