“Right. Just testing.”
She put a hand to his forehead. “You’re really cold.”
“Yeah, well—”
“No smart remarks about my trying to keep you warm.”
“So selfish.” He tried another smile, but she had started to unzip his suit. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to warm you up. You’re—oh no.” She had his suit unzipped down his chest. “Your stomach is distended.” She pressed around his abdomen, and it felt like she’d dropped an anvil on his body.
He groaned, too loud, but the pain turned him weak.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be okay,” he gasped.
“We gotta get you out of this suit.”
“Please.”
“Be serious.”
He looked away. “How about this for serious? Open the porthole. I want to see the sunrise.”
“What?”
“And I can’t seem to move my arm, so could you take off my eye patch too?”
She made a funny noise but pulled the patch from his eye. He could see—barely, right in the center, but everything else looked blurry, watery. His vision might have improved, just like the doctor said, if he’d given it a chance to heal, tried to use it. Instead he’d dug into his grief, covered his eye up in darkness, and let it atrophy.
Scotty stood and uncovered the porthole on the top of the life raft. “I don’t know if we’re facing the right—”
“It’s amazing. C’mere. You have to see this.”
She settled next to him again. The sky after the storm had turned a light, glorious pink, with streaks of crimson and gold.
“In the summertime, Darek and Casper and I would camp out on the dock. We’d wake up to loons calling across the lake and a sunrise just like this. Once, my sister Amelia camped outside, and we all were so worried about her that we each snuck out to protect her. My brothers and I got in this terrific wrestling match. Grace fell in the lake—and we all made such a commotion, the neighbors across the lake called the cops.”
She laughed, and it made him want to live.
“Your family sounds amazing. I would have given anything for a sibling.”
“I loved summers at Evergreen. It was the only time I felt like I was a part of the family.”
“You should go home.” She pushed up on one elbow. “When we get rescued, the first thing you do is hop a plane. I don’t care how stupid you feel or if you think they can’t forgive you. You go home.” She traced her finger down his face. “You don’t really know what it’s like not to have family, Owen. Don’t find out.”
His eye started to blur further, perhaps with the disuse, and probably she would think he was crying.
“Nah. I . . . My brother and I had a fight—like a real fistfight. It was ugly and . . .” He grimaced. How did he get here, to the wretched truth? “I keep reliving it. Yeah, I should call my mom, but Casper—he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.” He could hear his voice as if far away now, and he fought to pull it back.
“What was the fight about?”
“Me. Being a jerk.” He swallowed, not wanting to tell her but feeling a strange catharsis in just blurting it out, like releasing a poison too long eating his insides. “I had a one-night stand.”
He met her eyes but saw no censure in them. She lifted a shoulder. “And—?”
“Just so you know, I wasn’t the same guy back then. After I got hurt, I was all about proving I still had it all or that it didn’t matter that I’d lost it. But I’ve changed—”
“It’s okay. Are you kidding me? The first thing every deckhand does after he leaves the boat is visit the Dutch Harbor Saloon.”
“That’s not me. I mean, I wouldn’t . . .”
Except he had been that guy.
“Calm down, Owen. I didn’t expect you to. I’m just saying, you can’t surprise me.”
“Maybe not, but you should know that . . . six months ago, not long after I got paid from the opie haul, I woke up in a hotel room, hungover and robbed.”
She took this in without a blink of shock. Right, a cop.
“By the woman you brought home that night?”
He nodded. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. I looked at myself, once I dragged myself out of bed, and could see that I’d been in some kind of fight I couldn’t remember. As I stared in the mirror, I didn’t know that guy. Or I didn’t want to. I was sick of myself. But I didn’t know how to escape him.”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
“I thought of my parents and what they’d say—probably tell me to go to church. But right, like I could step foot in church. So I went down to the docks, hoping I could sign on to a tuna boat, and who did I see there but Carpie.”
She raised an eyebrow. Nodded. “Say no more.”
“I’m no saint, Scotty. Far from it. But I am trying to figure out how to be a guy who deserves forgiveness instead of the reckless, angry, bitter ex–hockey player who took everything he had left and threw it away.”
And now he’d never get it back.
Oh . . .
He couldn’t die, not yet. Not when he had so much left unsaid. So much of his life he wanted to reach out and grab. Forgiveness, yeah. But . . . maybe also a fresh start.
Not this.
“Why did you and your brother fight?” Scotty asked, her voice soft.
“That’s when things got complicated. My brother Casper apparently fell in love with the girl I’d . . . Her name was Raina. He dated her after I left, and when he found out that we . . . well, he just went off. Completely unraveled. He decked me at my sister Eden’s wedding. I didn’t know what to do, so I hit him back, and it turned into a brawl.” He shook his head. “I keep seeing my mother’s expression and the way my dad looked at me like he didn’t know me. Maybe I saw a piece of myself that I didn’t recognize either. So . . .”
“You left.”
“I left, yeah. And kept moving west, all the way to Seattle. Finally got hooked up with some guys headed to Alaska, just in time to sign on with your old man during opie season.” He made the colossal effort to meet her eyes. “And hung on long enough for my luck to change.”
She frowned.
“I met you.”
Scotty bit her lip, her eyes darkening with concern. “Owen?”
He looked away, back to the sunrise, the pressure now a band around his chest. He’d noticed it for a little while, his breaths too difficult, turning shallow.
He just wanted to sleep. But he kept his gaze on the sky, the way the reds bled into the gold, dissipating into one orange glow.
He had no doubt that the Coast Guard would find them—or rather, Scotty—alive.
And that thought made him drill down, unearth the words, because really, it wouldn’t matter. He turned to her, found her eyes shining, her face glowing in the dawn.
“If I go back, you have to come with me,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“Back to Deep Haven. You know . . . meet my family.” He closed his eyes, the weight too much to hold them open. “You’d like them. They’re loud, and yeah, we fight, but it’s not unlike being on the boat with Juke and Carpie.”
“Owen . . .”
The tremor in her voice caught him, and he held it in a quiet place, forcing his own tone to stay light, despite the cold hand of truth moving over him. “In fact, since we just spent the night together, I think you should probably do right by me—” he took a breath, then another, gathering his strength—“and marry me.”
He opened his eyes just to catch a glimpse of her face, her gray-green eyes so beautiful as they widened in surprise.
Perfect.
He smiled. Now maybe she’d stop thinking about the fact that he was dying and start arguing with him again. Get worked up enough to hold on until she could get rescued.
Then blackness began to seep over him, blurring his vision, his thoughts.
“Owen!”
Mmm-hmm? “Is that a yes?”
And there went the song again, round and round as he faded into darkness.
“You’re waiting from the back roads by the rivers of my memories, ever smilin’, ever gentle on my mind.”
“Owen?” Scotty ran her knuckles down his sternum. He barely responded with a grunt. “Owen!”
She leaned over, listened to his chest. His breathing sounded garbled at best, rattling. As if his lungs were drowning. In seawater or blood?
“No, you don’t die on me!” She lifted his arm, took his pulse, found it erratic, light.
That’s when she tugged up his T-shirt and discovered his belly and chest had turned purple. Whatever he’d hit had shredded his insides. And he’d been lying here, slowly bleeding to death.
She leaned over him, slapping his cheek. “Wake up.”
But he didn’t even groan, and that had her raising her voice. “Listen, fine. Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you! Yes, do you hear me? But you have to live. You have to stay alive.”
He didn’t open his eyes.
He looked, in fact, peaceful, like he might be sleeping, the sun turning his beard to rose gold, his cheekbones high, his hair curly and long around his neck.
She pressed her hand to his chest, feeling it rise and fall. Then she closed her eyes, still, paralyzed.
Now, right now, she wished Carpie were here. Because he’d pull out his Bible and thump it a little, and then he’d pray, and if God was really listening, really cared, He’d do something.
Because Carpie believed.
Have a little faith.
Owen’s words, and after hearing his story, it all clicked. She’d seen him hanging out with Carpie when he was reading his Bible, so maybe he’d meant faith.
As in the kind that came with looking into the sunrise and knowing that it was created by Someone. And believing that Someone cared. Watched over. Intervened.
Scotty sat beside Owen, wishing her hand could warm his body, wishing he hadn’t told her about his life because she could see it—his devastated mother, wondering why he’d never called, and his siblings, white-faced. His brother Casper regretting a stupid fight over a woman.
Have a little faith.
“How could you have a family and not . . .” She shook her head. “You’re right, Owen. You’re a jerk. First you save me; then you flirt with me; then you make me hungry—I’d love a chocolate chip cookie right now, thank you so much. And then you, what—propose? Of course you do. Because you know you’re dying, and it won’t matter. Well, listen up, bub: you’re not getting out of that proposal so easy. You’d better live because I say yes.” She leaned over him, her voice in his ear, so close she could kiss him. “Do you hear me? Yes.”
Oh, she wanted to kiss him. The crazy urge just about made her touch her lips to his. She didn’t know how he’d managed to crawl under her defenses so quickly—except it hadn’t exactly been quick, had it? Because she’d watched him with a keen eye since that first day.
Had wondered, yes, what it might be like to be in his arms.
And for a moment last night—only hours ago—she’d discovered herself there in his embrace, feeling all those solid planes of his body, muscles wrought from hard work and hours at sea. If she’d been a smart girl instead of a proud girl, she might have wrapped her arms around his neck, held on. Given the pirate a chance before life threw them overboard.
She checked his breathing again. Slight, ragged.
Slowing.
Scotty sat back, wiped her hand across her face. “You better not die on me because I want a wedding. Flowers and a dress.” Not really—what would that look like? While she deserved to wear white, she hadn’t worn a dress, well, ever. Because she wasn’t the kind of girl who believed in dating or true love or happy endings.
Have a little faith.
She took his hand, folded it between both of her own. Clutched it to her chest. “Do not leave me, Owen. Do not leave me in this boat by myself.”
His hand tightened. Or maybe just a spasm, but she searched his face for life.
Please. Oh . . .
She didn’t care that her eyes filled or that she’d begun to shake. Have a little—
“Fine! Please, God. If You exist, if You’re up there at all . . . if You see us, if You care in the tiniest bit, keep him breathing. Just keep him breathing.”
Owen’s hand spasmed again, and she held it to her face, her voice cut thin, bare. “Just keep him breathing.”
The ocean had calmed and Scotty rode the gentle waves, watching the sunrise bleed out into perfect blue skies. Owen refused to rouse, but his chest kept moving. Up, down, up—
And then she heard it. A humming, a whap-whap-whap, then a horn.
A helicopter. Searching the sea. She leaped up, stood under the porthole, waving her arms outside.
She saw nothing, but she could hear the rotary blades chopping the air.
A flare. Except without the gun . . .
She ducked back inside, found the supply case, and opened it, taking out the last stick flare inside.
She stood up again, aiming the flare through the porthole.
Please work. Please.
She broke the flare and it lit, a shiny, bright signal. It burned in her hand, and she waved it, hoping to catch a mirror or binoculars or whatever they might be using.
“Help! Help!” Probably expending her breath wasn’t wise, but it seemed the right accompaniment to her frenetic waving.
The stick burned, and as she threw it in the water, she listened for the chopper.
Gone. No hammering of the air, no drone of an engine.
She sank back inside, listening to her heartbeat rage in her chest. Then she crept over to Owen. “It’s going to be okay. They’ll find us.”
She settled her hand back on his chest.
It was still. “No . . . Owen, no!” She jammed two fingers against his carotid artery. Nothing. She cupped her hand over his mouth. No breathing.
Silence.
“Owen!” She rose above him, began to pump his chest. One, two . . . all the way to thirty, just like she’d been trained.
C’mon, Owen . . .
She leaned in, listening for breath sounds. Gave two strong breaths, then more chest compressions. Her stomach clenched with the exertion but—
Outside, again she heard the chopper.
Breaths.
Compressions.
It seemed louder as if the chopper might have looped back. She braced herself so the waves wouldn’t dislodge her.
Breaths. She stared at Owen’s face. He looked pinker, maybe.
The helicopter sound droned louder still.
Please, God. Please. She might have even started begging aloud.
Compressions.
The rotors chopped the air, the raft walls beginning to ripple.
Breaths.
Then a voice. “Hello, the life raft. If you’re in there, please acknowledge.” The rotors chopped the air.
Compressions. “Owen!”
She stared at him, saw his color had definitely improved, but he stayed still, no life.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry.” She jumped up and stuck her head through the porthole. “I’m here! We’re in here! Help! I need help!”
Above her, a beautiful black-nosed, white-and-orange MH-60 Jayhawk chopper hovered over the water. She wanted to weep with the sight of it but turned away, back to Owen, as a rescue diver clad all in orange dropped into the sea.
Breaths.
Compressions.
Hurry.
She heard the Velcro door separating, then the diver opening the hatch. “Hello?”
Breaths.
He climbed inside.
Scotty moved back to compressions, her face wet. “Help me. Please help me.”
“Ma’am, I need to evacuate you—”
“Not without Owen.”
“Ma’am, we’ll take over.”
“Listen, he saved my life, and I’m not leaving until
you have oxygen on him and his heart is pumping, so either help me or get out!”
The diver radioed the chopper.
“Breathe, Owen. Please.” She added breaths.
The diver moved alongside her, started compressions.
Another diver appeared, this time with a medical kit. He climbed inside the raft. “We got this, ma’am.”
Breaths. “I’m not stopping!”
The medic opened his kit, pulled out a rebreather, cupped it over Owen’s face. “We’ve got him.”
“He’s been bleeding for hours. Into his gut, but maybe into his lungs too.”
The medic checked Owen’s pulse, then pulled out a stethoscope. “It looks like a hemothorax. Get her in the basket. I need to relieve the pressure and maybe we can get his heart beating again.”
“Ma’am—” The first diver took her arm.
She yanked it away. “I’m not leaving him.”
“The sooner we get you in the chopper, the sooner we can send down the basket for your friend.”
The medic doused Owen’s bare chest with antiseptic and pulled out a large-bore needle.
“Ma’am, let’s go now.” The diver stood at the door, gripping the edge of a basket lowered next to the raft. He grabbed her suit.
She couldn’t take her eyes off Owen. “He has to live, do you hear me? Owen, you have to live!”
“We’re doing our best.”
The medic had inserted the needle, and dark, thick blood began to drain into a bag. He glanced at Scotty. “Please. The faster we get him on board the Coast Guard cutter, the better his chances.”
She climbed into the basket. Held on as the chopper winched her aloft.
Another diver strapped her into the chopper and she watched, not breathing herself, as they finally loaded Owen into the basket, pulling him up. He wore the oxygen mask, two black patches on his chest where they’d probably shocked his heart.
Once Owen was loaded in beside Scotty, the medic closed the door. “His heart’s beating, for now.”
Then probably hers could too.
As the chopper headed away from the raft, she peered down at it, their nest in the middle of the inky-blue ocean.
Then she reached down and clasped Owen’s hand. Looking again at the medic, she shouted over the noise of the chopper, “You can’t let him die because I’m going to marry him!”
You're the One That I Want Page 6