The fall. The cold. You should have a doctor look at you.”
“N-n-no.”
“Harper. You’re freezing.”
There’s no way to argue that point, not when I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering. I think that’s a good sign. I read that somewhere. It means the body is warm enough to shiver, but I can’t get the words out through the violent movement.
He curses again and disappears from my view. I close my eyes in quiet despair. He’s gone to get Daddy, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. The week we would have spent at sea, now we’ll spend it in some fancy emergency room even though I’m fine.
Not enough time has passed when hands force their way under me. Then I’m lifted, tucked close to a body as wet as mine but so much warmer. Christopher carries me belowdecks, turning carefully to the side so I don’t bump against the narrow walls.
He lays me down on my bed, and my arms are made of lead. My legs might as well be anvils, that’s how useful they would be if I were in the water right now. I’m helpless in front of this person who should be my enemy. Poor little rich girl, he called me, and I want to cry and rage because he’s right about me.
His hands move to the button of my jeans, and I suck in a breath. My mind was on sharks and freezing water, but now I’m thinking about roofies. I’m thinking about a girl who can’t protect herself. About Poseidon and Medusa.
“Christopher,” I whisper, though I’m not sure what I’m asking.
He glares at me, his eyes black with a strange heat. “You have two options. Either I call your dad here or I make sure you’re warm. You pick.”
You pick. In those two words he restores my faith in him—strange, because I wouldn’t have said I had faith at all. I know I need to get out of my wet clothes, and my body is too hurt by the freezing cold to be useful. “Don’t look.”
After a beat he nods, facing away from me. Then he turns off the dim bedside lamp, bathing us only in moonlight from the port window. He undresses me with clumsy efficiency, his fingers clearly numb and struggling against the waterlogged fabric. I feel somehow colder by the time he’s done, the damp clothes in a heap on the floor, my naked skin exposed to the room.
And then I watch while he undresses himself, faster and rougher with his body than he was with mine. His clothes land on top of mine, and then he pulls us both under the covers.
He’s naked. The thought is enough to make me blush, even when there shouldn’t be any energy in my body for such an act. But he holds me close, tight enough I can’t make out where his male parts meet my female parts. There are only two bodies here, clinging together for warmth, creating a little cocoon. Exhaustion makes my eyelids heavy.
“One of my mom’s husbands got into bed with me once.”
Every part of his body becomes stiff. “What the fuck?”
“It was bad. Not like this. This is nice.”
“I swear to God, Harper.”
“It’s okay,” I say, the words slurred together. “I told Mom the next day and we moved out of his mansion, even though it was really nice. He owned this big job website. Don’t tell Daddy. He would freak out even though it was a long time ago.”
He holds me tighter, his face pressed to my hair. “I’m not going to touch you. I’m only staying here until you don’t feel like an ice cube, and then I’m moving to the chair.”
“Thanks,” I say, the word coming out long and slow.
He sighs. “Go to sleep, Harper. And for the love of God, don’t die.”
A death wish, he’d called it. “Want to live,” I mumble before the dreams take me down. It’s only later that I think that everything changed that night. Not because I fell into the bay or because he pulled me out. Because I confessed that in my sleepy-shocked state. It set us on the course to ruin, what made him the white knight to my damsel in distress.
I wake up gasping for air, a nightmare of being submerged in water pressing against my consciousness. My muscles ache as I stretch in the bunk, looking up at familiar knots in the ceiling. What the hell did I dream about? There’s grit in my eyes