real life, it’s effortless and happens without sound. Panic sets the pace of my hammering heart. My head dips below the water and pain shoots through my entire body, as if a thousand knives are stabbing me all at once. I can’t speak to tell him, yeah, it’s me. I want to, but no words come out.
Falling to his knees, his hands frantically reach for me. He gets a grip on my jacket and yanks me onto the stern as if I’m a fish.
Water-logged and shivering, I stare at him. Is that him? You tell me, I think maybe the cold has gone to my brain, and maybe I’m not really seeing him. I’m hallucinating.
“Jesus Christ.” Okay, not hallucinating. It’s him. I can tell by the anger in his voice. “What were you doing?” he asks, yanking me into the cabin of the boat with him. The muscles in his clenched jaw pulse. “That water can kill you in minutes.”
“N-Not lik-ely,” I tell him, my words stammering out of me. Holy crap. I think I felt warmer in the water than I do out of it. Shaking uncontrollably, I wrap my arms around my waist, a puddle of water at my feet. “It t-t-takes thirty m-m-minutes at l-l-least,” I pause and try to inhale a breath and calm myself down. It doesn’t help. I only shake harder. “I-I-In temperatures around forty-five d-d-degrees.”
He stares at me with a flat expression. My heart recoils at his disinterest. He snorts at my useless facts about hypothermia and reaches for a blanket next to the captain’s chair. If he thinks my hypothermia facts are annoying, wait until I randomly tell him all my useless dolphin facts. I’ll save that for another day. I used to want to be a marine biologist, so I studied sea life for two years by reading useless articles on them. Used to, being the key words here. Some facts scarred me for life.
With hasty movements, Lincoln begins moving around me. He turns on a heater and basically shoves me onto the couch and starts stripping off my jacket. Haven’t been out of the water two minutes and he’s already getting me naked. At least there’s Willie Nelson music playing softly over a small radio in the corner. Sets the mood a little.
I let out a nervous laugh and brush my hair away from my face, the scent of the ocean on my tongue. “That was pretty insane back there.”
He laughs. It sounds genuine, believe it or not. Rare and brief, the laughter dies quickly, and his expression turns stoic. “You nearly drowning?” His jaw clenches. “I wouldn’t call that insane. I call that stupidity.”
My brow bunches together. Is he calling me stupid? I came out here to thank him, and he’s calling me stupid? “I wasn’t talking about that,” I snap. “I was referring to the bar.” I motion to his face while the ocean below us breathes, rising and falling in rhythmic ease. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugs it off. As if my anger isn’t justified.
I try to laugh at his nonchalant attitude, but it comes out as a shuddered breath, my skin breaking out into a field of goose bumps when his hands trail up my thighs.
His eyes are on mine, as callous as his touch. “Take your clothes off.”
I fight off a smile. “Why?”
“They’re soaked. You’ll warm up faster if we take them off and warm you as opposed to your clothes. They’re drawing your body heat away from you.”
Okay, when he puts it like that, it makes sense. I strip out of my hoodie and then the T-shirt underneath it. He takes them from me and lays them next to the heater and hands me a flannel from a bag on the floor. “Here. Put this on.”
The shirt hits me in the face. Scowling, I take it. I slip my arms inside the warm fabric and bring the oversized sleeves to my face and sniff. It smells like seawater and smoke. Raising an eyebrow, he smirks at my quirkiness and stares at me like I’m crazy, and I probably am.
“It’s clean,” he notes, as if that’s why I was smelling it.
Sadly, I’d still wear it even if it wasn’t. I inhale again, wishing my sheets still smelled like him. “It smells like you.”
With a quick nod, he takes my shoes off one at a time and sets them next to the heater as well. I listen to the hum of the heater, the