by K. F. Breene
The newswoman came back on and explained that Krista was revived and currently recovering. She would have no lasting injuries.
That’s good news.
Next there was a story of a shooting. Krista just had her ten seconds of fame and she was comatose for it the whole time.
“At least my hero was super-hot.”
Krista was looking for the remote when the latch on the door jiggled. Krista glanced up as Sean walked into the room, his face a mask of misery. He was still in his swim shorts but donned a smiley face t-shirt. He must have bought it in the gift shop. When he saw Krista he stopped dead and dropped the hand that clutched his cell phone.
“I hear I owe you a thank you,” Krista said evenly. She had to work to keep the tears out of her eyes. Despite her desperate hope to keep upbeat about this whole thing, she nearly died. It was kind of a big deal.
Sean moved to her slowly, eyes roaming her face. He sat gracefully in the chair next to the bed. His face was troubled. He didn’t look like he planned to speak.
Krista opened her mouth to ask how he knew where to find her, trying to get the conversational ball rolling, when the door opened slowly. Kate’s worried face peeked in. Worry was replaced with relief, and then anger. Then the door was kicked open.
“You are one stupid bitch, you know that?” she yelled as she stormed into the middle of the room.
Jasmine and Ben came in behind her. Jasmine looked stern, Ben looked totally freaked out.
“Hi,” Krista said, not sure what else to say.
“Do you know that you fuck-turd? A stupid fucking bitch! I told you not to come down here all broken hearted and do something stupid! Look what you did! You did exactly what I told you not to do and nearly got yourself killed, you fucking anus! If you didn’t look so broken and pathetic, I would slap you across the face for scaring the ever loving shit outta me. No, wait—yeah, I’m gonna slap you!”
Kate stalked up to the hospital bed with balled fists. Krista had time to shrink back before Sean’s big arm flung out and stopped Kate’s progress.
“It’s the best thing for her, Sean. You know it is!”
“Krista, what were you thinking?” Ben asked reasonably.
“Guys, look, I wasn’t planning on surfing those big waves. When I first got there, the waves were manageable. I surfed for a while and I was just fine. I was already out in the water when those monsters started coming in. What else was I going to do? Stay out there all day?”
“You shouldn’t have been surfing alone, Krista,” Jasmine said in a low, even voice. “Sean has told you that before. You still have a lot to learn.”
“Obviously!” Kate burst in. Now she was looking out the window with her hands on her hips.
“People surf alone all the time. People swim alone all the time, too. I can’t always have someone around,” Krista reasoned.
“Krista, you aren’t the best swimmer,” Ben said.
“I know that—“
“No, you aren’t the best fucking swimmer,” Kate burst in, needing a break from silence. “Yes, you know that. Also, and stop me if I bore you with common knowledge, but you don’t know the rules of the ocean! You don’t have the first clue about tides and currents and waves and all that. Not the first fucking clue! But there you go, trying to surf with the big boys.”
“Guys, the waves weren’t all that big to start. I wasn’t doing anything stupid in the beginning. Seriously. I don’t understand why all the hostility. Aren’t you a little glad I’m okay?”
Kate started to crack slowly. Her hard exterior was melting. For the first time Krista saw how frightened she had been. That was right before she took two fast steps and slapped her across the face. Hard!
“You’re lucky as hell to have Sean as your guardian angel!” she spat. Then she walked out of the room.
“She thought you were dead until Sean got an update. We all did. Him included, though he won’t admit it,” Ben said quietly. “It was a long car trip here.”
“We are glad you’re okay, Krista,” Jasmine affirmed with misty eyes. “Of course we are. But you gave us a helluva scare. We all deal with it differently. Anger is easiest now that you’re okay.” She walked toward the door. “I better go get her. She’s probably screaming at a nurse or kicking a person in a wheelchair or something.”
“I’ll go, too.” Ben glanced at Sean.
Krista got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She really didn’t want to know what Sean had to say. She had been so horrible to him. She had said some truly awful things. And now there he was, saintly, her savior, sitting quietly next to the bed.
After everyone left, the only sound was the TV.
“So…” Krista said when the silence became deafening. “I can’t thank you enough, obviously.”
Sean didn’t say anything. He just stared at her.
She tried again. “Um…How did you find me?”
Sean’s gaze wavered for a brief second then glued back on. “I got the hotel name from Jasmine. I checked in at the bar to see if anyone had seen you. I met your…friend. He said which beach he recommended.”
By the way he said friend, Krista could tell he didn’t think much of the connection.
“I had to talk to somebody, Sean. I didn’t do anything with him, if that’s your worry.”
“It wasn’t my worry, Krista,” he answered quietly, eyes still glued to hers.
Krista wanted to ask what his worry was then, but didn’t think she would like the answer. She kept quiet for a minute, unable to meet his troubled gaze. After a while, too long for her taste, he finally spoke.
“I’m not sure what to say. There is a lot on the table between us.”
She tried to keep the tears at bay. “Look, I’m sorry for the things I said to you the other day. They seemed right at the time. Hindsight is 20/20, you know? It’s my forward thinking that needs glasses.”
Sean did his classic sigh and got up. He paced toward the window, directing his unwavering gaze elsewhere.
“You were right about the things you said. All of it. You have a way of cutting to the wick with me. You call me on my bullshit. I need that.”
Well…that was unexpected. Krista was suddenly back in that swirling water; she had no idea which end was up with this conversation. She chose to keep quiet and wait it out.
After a while, Sean turned back to her. His expression was grave. “I almost lost you today.”
“Honestly, Sean, I didn’t intend to surf waves that big. I just got caught on the wrong end. I didn’t go looking for danger or anything.”
“I know. You never actively look for danger, but it finds you anyway. Or you always find it without knowing you were looking. Unlike Kate, I don’t blame you for your close call. I take that responsibility unto myself.”
“Wait…what? I’m trying to tell you guys—I wasn’t all depressed and looking for thrills. Seriously. Why doesn’t anyone believe me? I planned to worry about my heart tonight with a bottle of something strong. This accident has nothing to do with you, Sean. Well, I mean, other than the fact that you saved my life…”
Sean was still staring at her. He was still troubled. It was like he was brushing away all her covers and exposing her gushy insides. It was disconcerting, to say the least. She looked down at her hands and started to fidget until she heard a rustle of fabric and peeked under her eyelashes. Sean had turned back to the window.
“I told Tory I needed to slow down. I told him I would hand in my resignation if the job I had done thus far wasn’t satisfactory.”
That took Krista by surprise. Sean was dancing to his own rhythm with the conversation. Krista figured she might just play as his side show act for a while instead of as a participant.
To that end, she commented with, “Oh.”
“He told me I had beaten his expectations. Those are tall words coming from Tory. Not many people live up to his expectations, let alone beat them.”
“Well, that’s good.” Krista stopped
herself from adding “right?”
“Yes, that is good.”
Krista nodded even though his back was to her. Where the hell was this going? She waited, silent, even though she was extremely uncomfortable with the possible outcomes for his thought process.
“Tory asked what finally made me realize I was working too hard,” Sean continued.
“Uh huh.”
“I said you left me.”
Krista’s stomach dropped. He said it in past tense, so in his mind they weren’t together. So that was bad. On the other hand, he came to San Diego. So that must be good. Silence was definitely the right way to go on this one.
“He said he was wondering how long it would take you. He was surprised you stuck it out for as long as you did. He said Emily didn’t wait as long. He said you must really care for me to ‘cope’ for so long. That was the word he used, cope. He thought the situation was as funny as it was familiar. Called it the ‘follies of youth’.”
“Oh. Hmmm.” Krista’s skin was prickling. She was waiting for the hammer to drop.
“He said we were a good team. Hoped we would continue to be. It was a hint, obviously, and I heard it loud and clear.”
That was good. This was going in the right direction. Albeit slowly and randomly.
Sean turned back around. His eyes traveled the length of her and his face was pained. “He got another call he had to take and had to quickly say goodbye. I was sitting in my house for the call. I hadn’t decided to come to San Diego yet.”
“Oh?” Get to the damn point!
“If that call had lasted five more minutes, you would be dead.”
Hammer.
That was a pretty realistic view of the current events.
Sean stepped closer, his eyes were glistening. His face was peeled of every defensive layer he possessed. The result was raw pain.
“If I hadn’t filled up the car last night even though I didn’t really need it at the time…If I hadn’t decided to skip fast food because the drive-thru line was too long…If that idiot hadn’t been at the bar when I asked about you…Krista, there are a million and a half things that might have delayed me. A million and a half. If any one of those things happened, you would be dead. As it was, it was a narrow miss.”
“But it was a miss. I am okay. I made it—thanks to you. There is no sense replaying everything that might have gone wrong. The fact is it didn’t.”
“I thought I lost you when you left San Francisco. But I didn’t. Not really. I shrugged it off the other day when you said all those things to me. I didn’t think you were really gone. Not for good. I work with you—I’d still see you every day. But today, when you weren’t breathing on that beach, and I couldn’t revive you…” his voice hitched. He clenched his jaw as a tear leaked out of his eye. “I almost lost you. For real. And it is killing me.”
Sean’s voice broke. He stood rigid, trying to be the man of the 1940’s when the rule was, men don’t cry. All he needed was a soft wind and his card house would come tumbling down. Krista knew she was that wind, and she needed to go to him. Problem was, she was hooked up to a freaking IV even though she could just drink some water and problem solved.
“But you didn’t, Sean. You didn’t lose me,” Krista said softly. She gestured for him to come to the bed, but he didn’t budge. This wasn’t over. He wasn’t done purging.
“This is my fault because none of this should have happened. You shouldn’t have been alone. Not for any of it. Not the car ride down—I bet you didn’t even sing along to the radio because you were thinking about my not calling you…”
He was right. She didn’t even have the radio on. She hadn’t been in the mood.
“You shouldn’t have had to talk to that reject at the bar. You shouldn’t have been at that beach—which is the number one spot in San Diego for drowning, by the way. The waves there are unpredictable, as you saw. You shouldn’t have been surfing alone. And you shouldn’t have been planning to drink yourself into a stupor tonight. I swore that if I got you back when I got to L.A., I would hang on to you. I would do everything in my power to make you happy. And look, I nearly killed you.”
“Now, that is just stupid. You had nothing to do with my near miss, as you call it. Sometimes I get into fixes, but I don’t need you to be my shadow to keep me safe. Except for today, obviously.”
“Don’t you? It seems to me like you have a habit of doing foolhardy things. Kate, Jasmine, and Ben all know this. But it seems to escape your notice.”
“I’ve made it this far.”
“Barely. All I am trying to say is, I need you to keep me level, and you need me to talk some sense into you when you stop relying on logic. If I change, if I work less and spend more time with you, will you consider coming back?”
Sean stood five feet from her, his eyes still glistening from unshed tears, his hands limp at his sides. He was a strong, powerful man that currently looked so fragile, he might topple over and shatter.
“When I was down in that water, I thought of two things I gave up on that mattered. Only two in my whole life. One was the fight to survive that…predicament.” Pain flashed across Sean’s face. “The other, and the one that made me so unspeakably sad I still hate thinking about it, was the fight to keep you. Not ever. Not when I left San Francisco, and not when you were working all the time. I just let it go. Let you go. I once told you that you were a coward. Well, you weren’t the only one. I was afraid you didn’t want me. It was easier to leave than to hear it.”
“I do want you, Krissy. I want you forever. I want to add your name to my property and my bank accounts. I want to share my life with you. And most importantly, I want to stop hurting you.”
“Well…that’s a bit overboard. Would you have come if Tory didn’t hint about it?”
Pain lanced Sean’s face again. “Yes. But not as soon. I would have sat and thought about it some more. Thought about what I would say. How wrong I was. Tory took the thinking out of it. Thank God. He saved your life.”
“No actually, you did. I saw your rescue on the news. You might be a celebrity. It was risky, though. You might have gone down with the ship.”
“I’ll tell you the story once, and then I would prefer never to talk about it again, okay?”
She nodded mutely.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I went straight to the beach that idiot sent you to. Because of the currents and tides, also because of the unpredictability of the waves because, as I said, it is an intermediate surf spot. Great waves, but they come at a price.
“I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. From the time you walked out of my house earlier in the week, I had a bad feeling, and this heightened it. You tend to lose sense of yourself when you have things on your mind. Judging by the frosty reception I was getting from your friends, you definitely had things on your mind. I can always tell how the winds blow with you by how Kate responds to me. You have loyal friends.
“Anyway, I saw your car at the beach and knew two seconds of relief. When I got to the top of the path, overlooking the beach…”
Sean paused, his eyes glistening again. He was fighting to keep back emotion. “I saw the group of people at the water’s edge. I looked where one of the guys was pointing. You had just bobbed up. I knew it was you the second I saw your head. It was a long way away, but I just knew it was you. Then that enormous wave came crashing down on you…” Sean paused to quickly wipe his eyes.
“I started jogging down the path. I didn’t know you had been stuck in the waves for a time. I thought it would sweep you up and spit you out near shore. You’ve gotten better at diving the waves, I guess.”
“I had to learn fast. The waves earlier in the day weren’t nearly the size you saw, but they were still bigger than I was used to.”
“You are an idiot. A brave idiot.” A tear leaked out of Sean’s eye again. He didn’t turn away.
“When you came up again and started swimming,” Sean shook his head, “I heard
snatches of conversation when I was making my way down the beach. You had been caught a while. You aren’t the strongest of swimmers. Then you were trying to swim out…”
“So you ran in to save me.”
Sean slumped into a chair. “I saw that wave wash over you and thought, ‘there goes the woman I love.’ I thought I just saw you alive for the last time. I knew you couldn’t swim out of those waters. I should have been there with you. How scared you must have been. All alone.” Sean bowed his head and suddenly Krista knew the fear and pain from it was overwhelming him, like that wave had her.
“I stopped thinking,” he went on after a pause, “I went in after you. I didn’t think about my chances of reaching you in time. I didn’t give up hope when I dove down and couldn’t find you. And if it came to the worst, I couldn’t let you die down there all alone.” Sean wiped his face, still shaking his head.
“Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo…” Krista muttered. It would have been a romantic story if Sean’s emotions weren’t so raw and bleeding. Ben was right. Like Kate, he had thought her dead for a time, and it played hell on him.
“On the third dive, I felt something that might have been an arm. I clamped my hand on it and started yanking it toward the beach. The arm was limp…” Sean took a deep breath, small sobs escaping from his clenched jaw. “But I couldn’t swim straight up or we would never get out of the waves. I had to chance you had a little bit longer. Once you broke surface and didn’t take a breath…” He shook his head for the hundredth time.
“I swam you in as fast as I could. Someone came out to meet me. We performed CPR and, for a while, I thought I was too late. Then you started coughing.”
Sean put his head in his hands and his body heaved.
“Krista, what if I didn’t catch your arm? Seconds. All you had were seconds.” Sean pleaded.
She knew she had to go to him. He wouldn’t come to her. She couldn’t stand the hurt he was in. She tried to disentangle the wires connecting her with the IV and struggled to sit up. Man, she was sore.