Ten minutes to go. Maybe twelve. The tide was definitely going out, and Karen was definitely ahead of me, but I wouldn’t have a problem catching up.
A third of the way back to shore, and I was gaining on her very satisfactorily indeed. I didn’t want to look back. I didn’t want to take the time. Admirably or otherwise, I didn’t care much for the idea of losing.
I looked back anyway. Too ingrained in me, by now, to check on the team.
It isn’t always easy to spot a head in the water when there’s any kind of swell. You have to bob up on the wave, hold yourself there, and scan until your quarry isn’t hidden by a wave top. My vision also wasn’t the best without my specs.
I squinted. Over there. That was a head, and an arm. Good.
I couldn’t tell which of the kids it was, though, and I couldn’t see the other one. I searched a while longer. No luck.
I headed back out. Fast.
You knew better. You should have insisted.
Not helpful.
I only found him, in the end, because of Dougie. I was still swimming, bobbing up every few meters to search, when I saw the kid hauling himself up on the boulders a quarter of the way down the island. Or more like—I saw a somewhat blurry, long, skinny shape against the rounded gray shapes. I swam over there as he waved at me. Frantically. I could see that, too.
“Over there!” he was yelling as he pointed. I saw the other kid, then. Farther out from the island than I’d expected, up toward the Mount. No arm waving going on, just the dark, round shape of a head, appearing and reappearing, almost languidly, as he drifted farther away from his goal. I knew what that meant. A swimmer who was losing his strength. Drowning isn’t a noisy, splashing thing, the way people think. It’s a quiet thing. Slipping under. Slipping away.
I covered the distance as fast as I ever had, pushing it, and then pushing it harder. It felt like ages before I found him, his head just slipping under the surface again. I grabbed the first thing I could reach, which was his hair, and yanked him up, kicking ferociously, damning the foot that wasn’t there to help.
When I hauled him in and started to get my arm across his chest, he flailed. His fist caught me in the nose, and he nearly knocked me loose.
“Stop,” I told him, putting all my command into it. “Hold still. I’m pulling you in. You’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t listening. He was gasping, his arms windmilling in panic, and this time, he hit me harder, bang on the cheekbone. He got me around the neck, then, and pulled us both under the water.
No more mucking about. I got loose from his grasp by hitting him in the side of the head, yanked him to the surface, grabbed him tight under both arms, and shouted into his ear, “Shut the fuck up!” Words I was sure he’d heard before, that would get through. “I should let you drown, you ungrateful little shit.”
“Wh-what?” At least he wasn’t flailing anymore.
“Hold still. I’m getting you to shore. Pull me under again, though, and I’ll leave you there.” He could mess us both up well and truly if he started panicking. I needed him to trust me, and sounding like a Maori uncle was my best bet for that.
It wasn’t fun, hauling along eighty Kg’s of resistant Artie. But at least I wasn’t getting hit anymore.
That was what I got for dragging two stupid seventeen-year-olds into a race I’d known was too much for them. But then, a man’s wounded ego is a dangerous thing.
Karen
I was getting close to shore, and I hadn’t even seen the flash of a long arm in the corner of my vision. I was that much faster than him? Huh. It was harder work swimming against the current, and I was getting the kind of endorphin rush I hadn’t felt in too long. The kind that could lead a woman into foolish decisions.
I needed to know how far back he was. Would I rather beat him, or have him beat me? It wasn’t a question that would even have occurred to me before. All I knew was—I wanted it to be a contest.
When I took a quick peek, I still didn’t see him. I saw somebody wedged between two of the gray boulders that edged the steep slope of the island, though. Somebody in green board shorts. Dougie, who’d been nervous about the swim, stopping to take a rest.
Where were Artie and Jax, though? I hauled myself out of the water as far as I could, but I couldn’t see them.
Five seconds. Ten. There. That was somebody, out there a ways. Or more than one somebody.
Something was wrong.
I headed back out, swimming hard, trying to focus, trying not to think too much. A few minutes, and I could see Dougie with every other breath when I turned my head that way. Still on his rock, his knees pulled up and his arms around himself. Getting cold, but he was OK.
Another stint of popping up like an otter, and this time, I saw them quickly. Not far away, and the water was churning. I was swimming on the sight, rising a couple times to find them again, and then I was turning onto my side so I could talk to Jax.
He had Artie on his back, holding him with an arm across his chest, under the arms, the way you did when you were rescuing somebody. Artie was struggling, though, saying, “I can . . . swim.” Not sounding convincing at all, but at least sounding alive.
“Shut up,” Jax said, “or you’ll swallow more water. As soon as we can climb out, I’ll let go of you, no worries. Try pulling me under again, though, and I’ll smack you.”
“I can take over for a bit,” I said.
Jax didn’t look at me. “No,” he said.
If I’d been his objective for a little while there, that was clearly over. But then, I wasn’t loving myself right now, either. The kids had been dumb and overconfident, exactly like I’d been at their age. And I’d egged them on, pushed them into this, out of . . . what? My own bruised ego? Wanting to win at something, even if my opponents were kids?
Being honest with yourself isn’t always fun.
I said, still swimming beside them while Jax motored along, perfectly calmly, like he’d done this a hundred times, “I’ll go get Dougie.”
“You do that,” Jax said.
Dougie, needless to say, wasn’t thrilled at the idea of my helping him. “I’m good,” he said through chattering teeth. “Having a rest, eh.”
I was doing the breaststroke below his rock to keep myself in place as I called out to him where he crouched, hugging himself. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the wind had picked up, the way it did in the afternoon.
“Strong current,” I said. “Surprised me, too. Wrong time, wrong tide, wrong decision. When I tell my Koro about this, he won’t be happy with me.”
Dougie’s face shifted, a spasm of cold, or possibly of disgust. I was popular here, that was for sure.
“You’re not Maori,” he said. Ah. It had been disgust, then. He didn’t say the rest. You don’t get to call him that. That’s our name.
I’d been so sure I was right, back there on the beach, when I’d punched that kid in the nose, and when I’d upped the challenge. Could life give me just a little more of a smackdown? Maybe I hadn’t gotten the message yet. This whole thing, in fact, was a lovely referendum on my judgment. Exactly how much trouble had Artie been in out there, for Jax to need to haul him in? He’d been talking, fortunately, and I was about as sure as you could be that Jax would get him out safely. I was starting to suspect that he’d lost his leg in something much more dramatic than a motorcycle accident.
“Come on,” I told Dougie. “We’ll swim back together until we can climb out, and then we’ll run back on the track. You’ll still have run and swum the whole race, and it hasn’t been easy. He toa taumata rau.”
Courage has many resting places. I couldn’t see those places, Koro had meant every time he’d said that to me, if I judged too fast. Which, of course, I always did. Which meant he always pointed it out. Which meant I had the proverb memorized.
“You’re American, though,” Dougie said. It wasn’t just his teeth that were chattering. His whole body was shaking.
“Guilty,” I said. “I
’m also getting pretty cold hanging out like this, and the sooner you get yourself into the water, the sooner I’ll be having a coffee. You’re not going to finish this thing by wishing. He manako te koura e kore ai. The wish for fish will bring none. There, I did it again. I’ve got more, too. Pretty soon I’ll be telling you not to die giving up like an octopus, and nobody wants to hear that they’re a chickenshit. Including a girl. That’s advice for your future, which you’ll have a chance at if you swim back with me instead of freezing to death on the rocks.”
“Maybe I believe you do have a grandfather,” Dougie said. “And that he’s Maori.”
“You should,” I said. “He’s real. You had your rest. Get in. Swim hard, and you’ll warm up. Kia kaha.” Stay strong, that meant. I didn’t say, If you get in trouble again, I’ll get you out. He didn’t want to hear it. Anyway, the fear was half the problem, and stinging his pride was half the answer.
I’d wait until I got him safely out of here to think about how close Artie had come to real trouble—or, face it, death—and that I’d put him there. Not to mention how much of a debt I owed to Jax, what he was going to say about it, and that I was going to have to take it, because he’d be right.
So much for the butterflies in my belly. So much for impressing a guy who knew how to do more than pretend to be tough. A guy who actually was that strong, and who’d watched me take off my shorts like he’d wanted me to keep going. I’d bet he didn’t have a fountain pen. I’d bet he wrote with a cheap ballpoint, in whatever color ink the pen happened to have, and that his handwriting was that sexy, firm, angular kind. Too bad I was never going to find out now.
Way to do your first day, Karen.
Karen
Dougie made it.
I stayed to the seaward side of him, swimming painfully slowly toward shore, counting off every ten meters aloud, and watching the slope of the island get less and less steep to our left, until finally, I said, “We can get out here, I think. I’ll go first.” I hauled myself out of the water and onto a sloping rock, got my body wedged into a crevice with only a moderate amount of shin-scraping and toe-stubbing, then turned and held out my hand for him.
“I can do it,” he said, or more like—gasped.
I had to roll my eyes. “Pretend I’m another guy,” I said, “and let’s go.” I hauled up his string-bean body, waited while he lay down and did some more gasping, then said, “One more push. Follow me,” and didn’t wait to hear about how he could do it himself. Honestly, boys were like four-year-olds on that one. I chose a path up the rocks, scraped my leg some more as I slipped, and grabbed his hand and hauled him up the hard parts, and he did OK. At least, he stayed with me all the way until we were up the tumbled rocks, over the scrubby grass, and onto the sandy track.
“All downhill from here,” I told him.
A family was on the track, too, heading back to shore and looking about ninety-seven percent less disheveled than us. Mum, dad, a boy of five or six, and a toddler in dad’s arms. The dad asked, “All right there?” Which, in Kiwispeak, meant, “You appear to possibly be dying. I’m here to help, but I’ll be casual about it.”
I asked him, “Do you have an extra water bottle, maybe?” The mum hauled one out of a beach bag and handed it over, and I gave it to Dougie and told the family, “Cheers.” We stepped aside to let them go on ahead, then waited for another group coming up the track from shore, and the whole thing felt disconcertingly mild, like everybody else had just had a lovely day out, and nobody had realized there’d been a full-scale emergency. Except, of course, Jax.
When I saw him and Artie on shore, I got some trembling legs of my own, and one of those light-headed surges of adrenaline that’s so much less useful after the fact. The redheaded kid, Colin, was with them, and the other kid was running back over the beach from the road holding a few more bottles. Artie was sitting on the sand, his head bowed and his hands laced over his legs, and Jax was putting his leg on.
Well, good, I told my stupid, overreactive body. Jax hadn’t called for the ambulance, and I was guessing he knew how to evaluate the need for it.
I asked Dougie, who was still shivering, “Run or walk?”
He said, “Run,” and started to do it. Jog, more like, and not the steadiest thing I’d ever seen, but he was moving.
“Well done,” I told him again. We ran the last three hundred meters together, and Dougie finished slowly, but he finished.
Which was all good, except that when we got back, Jax wouldn’t look at me.
Not an enormous surprise.
Jax
I didn’t breathe easy until I saw Karen hauling Dougie up the rocks. I’d been about thirty seconds away from going out again for him, once I’d known Artie was going to be all right. I hadn’t done it, though, because Karen had stayed with him the whole way. When they started running, she kept on staying with him, too, instead of trying to prove that she was faster. He was going all right, but it was good that she wasn’t pushing him.
When he staggered up the beach at last to join the rest of us, I handed him a bottle of Gatorade and said, “Well done, mate.” After that, I handed my half-full one to Karen, and she took it without looking at me.
Ouch.
Dougie sank to his knees like he couldn’t have run another meter, drank down half the bottle, and said, “I reckon you win.” Which showed some mental fortitude.
“Nah,” I said. “I put you both in danger to prove my point. That’s not winning. We’ll say we all did it, and good on us for getting out of there. And next time, we’ll show a bit more respect for the sea.”
He asked, “What happened to your leg?”
“Afghanistan,” I said, and all the boys’ heads came up. Karen’s as well. I went on, “Which wasn’t too different from this. You train for the situations you’re likely to get into, you look out for your mates, you front up when you have to, and you try not to do anything too stupid. Rules worth remembering, eh.”
They digested that a minute, and Karen got busy toweling off and pulling on a dress, a short thing with a flower print and a halter top that looked just bloody fine with all that arm and leg and neck. She still wasn’t looking at me, and not in a sexy “I’m not looking at you, except when I glance over and look away again” sort of way. In a way that said, “Not much of a hero, are you, mate, letting that happen?” More or less what I’d been saying to myself for about half an hour now. Finally, she said, “I’m glad you’re all right, Artie. You should probably head on home, and Colin, you need to get some ice on your nose. My car isn’t too close, but if you can wait fifteen minutes while I run to get it, I can give all four of you a lift.”
“Already sorted,” I said. “We were just waiting for you and Dougie. My own car’s just across the road, in the apartment’s garage. I’ve got room for four passengers, so we’re all good. If you want to have a shower and warm up while I’m gone, Karen, I’ll take you for that coffee once I’m back. We could let that run straight into dinner if you like.”
“Oh,” she said, “I think I’ll quit while I’m behind, thanks.” Which was easy enough to interpret. I’d probably issued the challenge in the first place to impress her, and it had worked about as well as that sort of thing generally did, all the way back to when I’d engaged in a rock-throwing competition at the age of six with Tom Harper during school recess. It’d had something to do with impressing a girl with blonde plaits, as I recalled, and had gone about as well as you’d expect. The girl had rolled her eyes, and Tom and I had been sent to the head’s office.
On the other hand, I’d kissed that girl, seven or eight years later, standing in the shadows of a carpark after a school dance. Violet Carmichael. I still remembered the way my heart had pounded when I’d taken her hand for the first time, and how I’d thought I’d actually pass out when I’d finally been holding her, her body centimeters from mine. I’d wondered how this could be legal, getting to hold girls right there at school. I’d barely been able to breathe, and at the
same time, I’d dreaded her getting any closer and finding out how hard I was. The shame and the thrill of it, and the shock, too, half an hour later, when my lips had met hers in that first-ever kiss. The sweet citrus of her scent, like girls just smelled better and felt better, too, so soft and pretty.
Maybe the rock-throwing hadn’t been pointless after all, just a little slow on the payoff. Except that Violet had been six and fourteen during those events, I’d been better-looking and possessed of all my limbs, and Karen didn’t seem like she’d be overwhelmed by the idea that I could throw rocks.
I wouldn’t mind the dancing, though. Or the kissing. She didn’t look any worse wet and sandy than she had at any other time today, and her dress left her shoulders bare and swooped most of the way up her slim thighs at both sides. She wasn’t as soft as Violet, but kissing her would be a contact sport all the way, and I could feel the electricity just from having her this close. Exactly like I was fourteen again, and pulling that girl into me for the very first time. Now, though, I knew what to do with her.
Oh, yeh, I wanted to take her out.
She was bleeding, though. A long scratch up her shin from which a trickle of red ran, and a bashed knee that looked painful. I finally got my leg on—not easy, when it was sticky with salt—stopped thinking about how I looked, and said, “You’ve hurt yourself. Come along to my place and clean that off. If you need bandaging, we’ll get that sorted once I get home. We’re headed over there now.”
She shook her head, did some more not-looking at me, picked up her bag, shook hands with the boys, one after another, and told Artie and Dougie, “You did well. I pushed too hard. My fault.” The words came out jerkily, like she’d forced them.
I said, “Stay.”
She said, “I can’t. I need to go.”
The boys and I watched her head down the beach in the opposite direction from the apartment, and Dougie said, “She’s pretty cool. Pity she doesn’t like you better. Could be because you don’t have a leg, I guess. Could put girls off, eh.”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 6