Remember When...

by Scarlett Finn

  Not technically, but her anxiety was soaring and she tightened her grip on her hair. “It scares me,” she whispered. “The water… scares me.”

  “I know,” he said, cupping her jaw. “But I’m going to be with you and you have to think about Cam… You want to get over this for him, don’t you? Just like you said.”

  She had to fix herself. Ginger was tired of being broken. Even if she could never jump in and swim like she apparently used to, she couldn’t have the same extreme reaction to the idea of Cam going near water as she had before. He’d probably go swimming at school or with clubs, his friends would want to have pool parties and go to the beach. If she was too scared to let him near those events, she’d pass her anxiety on to him and she never wanted her baby to feel this way. Never.

  Steeling herself, Ginger pushed back her shoulders. “I’ll get changed,” she said and both men exhaled rushed sounds of relief. “I’m not making any promises, Shane. I’ll just… I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I want, Bit,” he said and moved in to kiss her head. “That’s all I want.”

  This was a bad idea.

  A terrible idea.

  Ginger was already cold as she stood on the pebbles that made up the lake shore. Shane was in the water up to his knees with his back to the lake and his arms stretched toward her.

  “You’ve done amazing,” he said and his beaming smile was genuine, but she felt like an idiot, at least, she would if she could slow down her heart. “And you look fucking hot.”

  Trying to control her breathing, she didn’t want him to distract her. “Please don’t flirt with me,” she said, eyeing the water behind him. “I can’t concentrate when you flirt with me.”

  She’d tied her hair up on top of her head, though she didn’t know why she’d bothered when she didn’t think she had a chance in hell of getting in further than her ankles.

  “I know what you mean,” Shane said, wading back another few feet. “I can’t concentrate with that hot figure wrapped in spandex right in front of me.”

  It wasn’t spandex, but wasn’t going to correct him, not while he was still getting deeper. “As you keep reminding me over and over you’ve seen me naked, Shane.”

  “I have, so if you want to skinny dip,” he said and stuck both thumbs into the waistband of his shorts. Gasping, Ginger took a step forward intending to stop him, but when she felt the water on her feet, she squawked and retreated. Shane laughed. “You made the same sound Cam does when he gets a fright.”

  “This isn’t funny, Shay,” she said, pissed off that he could smile like he was. “Life might be one big joke to you, but I’m actually not laughing right now.”

  Shane straightened his face. “I’m sorry, baby. You’re right,” he said, walking towards her. “I wasn’t laughing at you. It was nice to see him in you, that’s all.” When he got near the edge, he held out his arms again. “Will you take my hands?”

  She didn’t want to take his hands, because doing that would mean dropping her arms from their embrace of her body and trying to combat her irrational craziness. “If I take your hands, will you let me go back to the house? Can that be enough for today?”

  “If you want,” he said. “Or you could try taking a step toward me.”

  Cam was coming up for the age when they’d be trying to guide his steps. At the moment, he was a crawler who could pull himself up on furniture as long as the angles were right. Her baby struggled every day, he had to push himself to learn new things and had to keep going even when he fell down time and time again.

  Loosening her arms, she slowly let her hands rise until they slipped over Shane’s. “Don’t let go of me,” she said.

  “Not a chance in hell of that,” he said and squeezed her hands. There was an odd kind of pride glowing out of him, but there was no laughter or amusement, not anymore. “Now just walk forward, Bit. One step at a time, slow as you like.”

  Swallowing didn’t help her dry mouth, but she did it anyway and fixed her eyes on his. “Maybe if I pretend we’re in bed my crazy heart rate will seem normal,” she said and he smiled. “Usually you’re the only one who gets it going this fast.”

  She’d told him not to flirt and now she was doing it, kind of, except he didn’t point out her hypocrisy, he just returned her teasing. “If you come over here I’ll make sure you get a reward usually reserved for the bedroom,” he said.

  Flirting and fighting were sort of their specialties. “Have we ever done it in water?” she asked, edging forward to let her toes get wet.

  “A bunch of times,” he said. “We have a—or maybe had, I guess, a pool on the roof of our building.”

  The roof Owen had said Shane owned. The lake water was cold, but she let it lap over her feet. No big deal, she told herself. She got wetter when she was in the bath. The bath was never this cold, but yeah, it was just water, just like the bath. Ginger inched forward and then forced herself to take a step so that the water was over her ankles.

  “You said I used to like the water,” she said because looking into his eyes and talking helped her to forget about the movement of the cold water on her calves.

  “You did,” he said, still holding her hands tight. “You took part in triathlons all the time, it was your thing. And we used to have endurance battles.”

  “We seem to battle a lot,” she said. Her teeth began to chatter, but she didn’t know if it was because of the temperature of the water or the adrenaline coursing through her.

  “In good fun,” he said. “If I let you win, I got lots of sex.”

  “And if you won?”

  He grinned. “Then you got lots of sex.” Seemed like a win-win, and she squeezed him hard when the water sloshed over her knees. “You’re doing good, baby, amazing. Just keep those eyes on me.”

  “Something’s been bugging me,” she said, letting him guide her forward again.

  “What’s that, Bit?”

  “What did we fight about?” A flash of concern crossed his features, maybe it wasn’t smart to be talking about this now, given where they were and what they were trying to accomplish, but she had to know. “The night the Gem went down… what did you say that upset me?”

  “Bit, I—”

  “I want to know,” she said. “I did this for you, and you said in the church that you’d tell me anything I wanted to know. I want to know this.”

  Shane had said that and must’ve remembered, because although his jaw ticked, he answered, “I said you were distracting me on purpose… that other men’s wives knew their place and didn’t get in the way of their men while they were doing business.”

  If they’d been anywhere else she’d have pulled away from him. Although he’d been reluctant, it actually worked out for him that he was telling her this here because she couldn’t run away from him right now. “Knew their place?”

  He nodded. “Mistresses, call girls, they can wave their tits in the guys faces and get their attention. Wives are supposed to sit down and shut up. They’re not supposed to wear skimpy little bikinis that make their husbands, and all their buddies, think about sex. They’re not supposed to smile and flirt and tease like tempting little sexpots whose joy in life is to tease cock.” Ginger’s anger burned in her chest, her mouth opened, then it closed, she glared until she was spitting fury. How dare he? Who the hell did he think he was to speak to her that way? To speak to her like that! She was his wife, she deserved respect! “I told you the other guys wives stayed the fuck out the way and let their husbands do men’s work, but with you strutting that stacked little body around the deck all day I couldn’t form a fucking sentence let alone make a deal.”

  “You bastard!” she said. “How dare you speak to me that way!”

  But just as Ginger was about to pull her hand away, he yanked her forward and pinned her body against his to steal a kiss that tipped her head back until it hurt her neck. His tongue went deep, it was warm and solid in stark contrast to the cold, fluid water lapping her chest. Her chest!
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br />   Shoving away, Ginger looked left and right. They were in the water. She was in the water!

  “Oh my god, Boo!” she screamed with overwhelming delight and leaped up onto him with such force that she knocked him backwards, but she didn’t care.

  Ginger wrapped her legs and arms around him and kissed him with everything she had. He’d brought her out here, distracted her, tormented her with the story of how he’d been so disrespectful and riled her with that despicable language and…

  Breaking the kiss, she blinked at him. “It was foreplay,” she gasped and his smile was quick. “We were fighting, but… You were talking to me like that to make me mad… it was foreplay.”

  “You always did like smacking me down in the sack,” he said and curled his hand around the back of her head. “You would’ve put me in my place damn fast if you’d had the chance to reply… If we’d really been fighting that night, like for real fighting, I don’t think I’d have gotten this far.”

  “The guilt,” she said, moving her hands to his shoulders. “Boo, it wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault. And I don’t care what happens to me in the future, or to our relationship, you should never hurt yourself, never even think about it.”

  “Would’ve been easy for a guy like me to go into the mountains and never come back… accidents happen.”

  “It wouldn’t have been an accident, though, would it?” she asked, curving one arm around his shoulder as she ran her other fingers through his hair. “Why didn’t you give up on me?”

  “It never occurred to me for a second that you weren’t out there, somewhere,” he said. “Other people thought I was nuts, law enforcement, the media, everyone. But I just… I couldn’t comprehend a world that didn’t have you in it. That would be like a world without gravity… a world without oxygen… It wouldn’t be possible to survive without those things. Just like it wouldn’t be possible for me to exist in any world without you. You are my oxygen. So I knew, as long as I was still breathing, you were still breathing.”

  Her love overflowed and as she searched inside of him she was seared by the heat of his. “I love you, Boo,” she whispered and brushed her lips over his. “I love you… Thank you for this. For sticking by me. For finding me. For giving me Cameron. For everything.”

  But, he played down the enormity of what he’d done for her. “It was an endurance battle, that was all,” he said, squeezing her. “All I had to do was keep going. Every day. I had to keep going. Just one more step, one more inch… You got me up Everest, baby. Thinking of you has kept me alive in the world’s harshest climates. You think I couldn’t handle a little game of hide and seek when you were the prize? You were the ultimate summit, Bit. The only one that ever mattered.”

  Her eyes and her heart were warm as her skin froze. Being in his arms, she got it, she understood, the love, the intimacy, it was a connection so deep that there would be no limit, no stretch too far. He would never have given up on her. Never.

  She couldn’t give up on him. “Boo, you make me strong, give me confidence, make me whole. I want to make you happy.”

  “You want to try to swim for me?” he asked. It seemed like the least she could do, but she tensed around him. “I’m not asking you to swim a length, just enough. I need to know, Bit, for my sanity… I need to know that you can do it.”

  In case anything happens again, he didn’t say it, but she saw then in his eyes. His greatest fear was anything happening to her. “I’ll try.”

  Sliding down his body, Ginger found the uneven surface of the lake bed and stood on her tiptoes in the deep water. Shane kept her hands as long as he could but eventually only their fingertips were touching and he paused, making eye contact for the longest time before letting their hands part.

  Without him there, she began to panic, and when he sank back to tread water she began to fear what might happen to him. She wouldn’t be able to save him if anything went wrong, she wouldn’t be able to pull him out, he was too heavy.

  “Come on, Bit,” Shane said, gesturing to her. “You can do it.”

  It was only a couple of meters. Two or three strokes should be enough to do it. Clenching her jaw, she thought of Cam. He needed to see his mommy do this, he needed to know he’d be safe that the water was fun and not to be feared.

  Telling herself just to go and to stop overanalyzing, Ginger lunged forward in the water, trying to stretch herself flat and kick her legs. She went under. All the way under. And the shock made her mouth open and her lungs took a shot of water before in a flash, she was out again, breaking the surface with a strong arm hooked around her waist.

  Coughing the water from her lungs, she sputtered and clung to the buoy that had pulled her free. “Breathe for me, baby,” Shane said, his voice stern. “Take a breath in, breathe in.”

  Blinking her webbed lashes, Ginger found his eyes and the fear in them made her cling tighter. “Shane,” she gasped.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” he said. “Shit, I’m sorry, shit! Fuck! I’m sorry, Bit. Please, breathe for me.”

  She was breathing, just not evenly and when he began to drag her back toward the shore something in her snapped and she pulled away. “No!” she said and dropped her feet onto the bottom.

  “We’re done, Bit. I’m taking you in,” he said. “We need to get you warm and—”

  “If I go in now I’ll never come back out here,” she said. Determination gave her limbs heat and her mind purpose.

  Shane pulled her body close to his. “I should’ve been there to pull you out that night too,” he said. “This is what should’ve happened then… I should’ve been beside you to pull you up, to keep you safe, to protect you.”

  It was what should’ve happened, but it didn’t. Her demons weren’t the only ones in the water with them. Something flashed in her mind, the blackness, the icy bite seizing her skin… “I was pulled down, into the black water,” she whispered, sensing that emotion that had plagued her. “I kept thinking of you, of love, that was what made me kick and… by the time I broke the surface… I was alone and exhausted. But I swam, Shane, I called out for you and I… I swam.”

  “You remember?” he asked and that breakthrough made him forget his guilt.

  It was like a flashback, pictures in her mind that made sense, but… didn’t. “I swam for as long as I could… I was pulled out of the water by… men… I… I don’t know when or who they were. They took me back to shore, they weren’t speaking English, I don’t know who they were… I don’t know what they were planning, but they put me in a truck, something didn’t feel right so when they stopped… I ran… I don’t know why, I just… ran. I was in a forest… I was there at night, I was cold and scared and… I kept thinking of how scared you’d be… and I…” Her eyes rose to his as she recalled the ball of grief in her gut. “I was terrified that I might have lost you. That maybe you hadn’t made it out the water.”

  “If you remembered me then… the amnesia didn’t happen in the water. It was the trauma or…”

  Calvin hitting her with his car had knocked her unconscious, that could’ve been it, or maybe it was a culmination the physical exertion and the psychological trauma. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Shane kept his arms around her even when her own hands fell to her belly. “What if something had happened to him,” she whispered because her thoughts were never far from her baby. “What if I had lost him and… lost you.”

  “You didn’t lose either of us, you have both of us,” he said. “Let’s go back inside and—”

  “No,” she said, sweeping an arm out to move him aside, she fixated on the vast expanse of water in front of her. Ginger was terrified. She hadn’t suddenly lost her fear, the memory of going under and breaking the surface remained with her. That terror followed by the relief. But she breathed in deep, ignoring her aching lungs. In a more controlled manner, she fell forward, pushing off the lake bed with grace that had to come from muscle memory.

  She had to swim. She had to prove that she could
and… she did.

  Focusing on the line where the water met the mountains, she glided through the water, kicking and moving her arms in practiced moves that felt familiar.

  The further she got the more she pushed and her motion became less clumsy and more finessed. Taking a breath before she turned her head into the water, she counted silently and turned her face to take another breath. Yes, somehow her body remembered and she was doing it.

  It wasn’t just relief that overcame her when she finally took stock of what she was doing, it was joy and pride. Everything that she’d battled dwindled to a manageable load. What couldn’t she face now? This was her greatest fear, and here she was, taking control.

  Slowing down, she eventually stopped, but had to tread water because she lake bed wasn’t under her feet anymore. When she turned, she saw that Shane was just a few meters behind her and when she stopped, so did he.

  “You can’t tell, but I have the boner of the fucking century going on over here,” he called to her.

  Somehow she doubted that in this cold water, but she laughed and thrust up to sink down onto her back, letting the water take her weight. Ginger stayed that way until Shane got to her; then she draped an arm around him and began to tread again. Their limbs collided and they sank lower in the water; but they made it work and kept each other up.

  “Mama!”

  The sound made her tense for a second because it was so loud, echoing off the mountains that it seemed close. Shane must have felt her clench because he brushed his fingers across her jaw and moved aside to point back to shore. There he was on dry land. Cam was in Owen’s arms with Murphy and Doctor Guinness at their side too.

  “I’m ready to go home,” she said, watching her son wave frantically at his parents at his uncle’s urging.

  “Home?” Shane asked. “You mean—”

  “I want Cam to meet my mom,” she said. “If you don’t want him near your parents, I’ll accept that… They hate me, don’t they?”