Stroker: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Teagan Kade

I take a deep breath of salt and brine.

  I paddle into the impact zone.

  The sound grows in my ears, the water churning and angry.

  Lux, what are you doing? You’re out of your league here.

  I push the inner critic away, try to dampen down the fear, but the closer I get the more it rises up. I watch a wave break and the reef is exposed. It’s like the ocean has been sucked away completely.

  I watch another form in the distance and start paddling. Here goes nothing, Dad.

  It’s on me before I’ve even had time to register. I set myself up but my board just drops away. I manage to get up on it, but everything’s disappearing, changing. I hurtle halfway down the face of the wave and know something’s wrong. The wave kicks out hard, a wall of water smashing into me. I go over the falls, trying to shield my head.

  I close my eyes and wait for the impact.

  It comes like Thor’s hammer.

  The water is like stone, compressing me hard down against the reef. I skim over the top spinning and rolling, trying to remain calm and hold my breath, but it’s terrifying, all sense of place and orientation lost.

  I wait until the world stops moving and kick hard for the surface. I rise up spluttering, forced to dive back under as the set continues to pound through, the next wave crushing me back down.

  I’m blown under the water again, feet looking for purchase and any sense of direction gone.

  Again I surface and again I’m pressed under.

  My lungs are hot, strained. I’m struggling for breath, to find the energy to get free again. Under and under I go, rolling, tumbling in the torrent.

  Something firm wraps around my arm and pulls, but I’ve taken on too much water. The world becomes a pinprick.

  Not like this.

  I try to breathe, but I can’t, my lungs full.

  The world slips away.

  I open my eyes, hot lips pressed against my own. I see him, blurry, breathing into me.

  My head snaps to the side. He holds it there as all the seawater and brine is ejected from my body.

  I cough and splutter against the board, the taste of wax and salt in my mouth, eyes stinging and head numb. I’m shaking, conscious but caught in a kind of limbo.

  I can hear the break continuing to crash in the distance.

  It all comes back to me—the wipeout, the brothers now gathered above me.

  I’m so lost in the simple act of trying to breathe I haven’t even realized the top half of my wetsuit has been torn away completely by the reef. I’m more or less naked from the waist up.

  Deacon throws a towel around me as I continue to convulse, brings me up into a sitting position while I shake and quiver.

  “Fucking hell, you almost drowned out there!” he shouts, angry. Behind him Razor’s holding two sections of what used to be my board.

  My throat’s hot and dry. “I… I don’t know what happened.”

  “You wiped out, hard. That’s what fucking happened. I told you. This break’s not for you.”

  He doesn’t seem happy he’s just brought me back to life. No, he seems positively livid about it.

  “Thank you,” I offer.

  He points to the horizon. “You can thank me by flying back to fucking Hollywood.”

  “I, I—”

  Bo stands with his hands on his hips looking down at me. He speaks to Deacon. “You should take her to a hospital, bro.”

  Razor laughs. “The nearest hospital’s a half-hour boat ride and two hours on the road after that. The town doc will have to do.”

  Deacon stands in the middle of his brothers, the three of them watching me sitting on the board below, knees to my chest and convulsions continuing to rack my body no matter how much I try to suppress them.

  Deacon shakes his head. The anger has dissipated, but he’s still not happy about it. “You know, I’d say you’re lucky to be alive, but luck’s got nothing to with it. I’ll take you back into town, get the doctor to look over you, but after that I suggest you find your way back to the airport. The last fucking thing we need out here is another dead kook who thought they were Kelly fucking Slater.”

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