Troubled Waters

by Susan May Warren

  Except he couldn’t swim.

  “Get on the life raft,” she said, yanking his hand.

  “We have to turn it over.” He hooked his feet through the dangling boarding ladder and hoisted himself onto the raft. “Here,” he said and started to shuck off his vest.

  “No, you can't swim. I can!”

  “Not in these waters. Just put it on, Sierra.” He handed her the vest, and his tone made her slip it on.

  “Get behind me. We’re going to turn this thing over.” He stood up, grabbed the righting rope, and anchored his feet along the edge. “Hang onto me,” he said.

  She got behind him and hooked her hands around his waist. The sea had settled, but they rode the waves a moment. She guessed he was waiting for a swell to help them flip the massive, eight-person raft.

  Indeed, they fell into the trough of the wave, and then, with a grunt, Ian leaned back, hoisting the righting rope, leveraging it with his weight and the movement of the waves.

  “Hold onto me! Don’t let go!”

  Never. She had her arms latched around his lean waist, felt his body strain, then the weight of the raft shifted as their combined strength broke the surface tension and lifted the raft from the water.

  “C’mon.” Ian grunted. The raft angled up, hit the halfway mark, and still Ian held on.

  Then they were falling back, the raft coming at them, hard.

  Ian’s legs tensed, and in a moment, he’d sprung them away from the raft, out of the pull of it as it splashed down, upright in the water.

  She hadn’t let go. Now she wrapped her legs around him, holding him up in the water. “I got you!”

  He was trying to kick them toward the mooring line, and she clamped her arm around his chest with one hand, the other helping him.

  They reached the line together, and he held on as she disentangled herself.

  Reluctantly. Because the sea was starting to pitch again. “We need to get aboard.”

  He didn’t stop to agree, just hooked his arm around her and pulled her to himself. Then, switched his hold and pushed her toward the raft.

  “Put your feet into the ladder!”

  She found the webbing below the side of the raft and felt Ian’s hand on her back as she pulled herself up.

  She tumbled inside, hitting the bottom hard, and for a second just lay there.

  The base of the raft undulated with the sea. The inflated tubes on the sides were higher than she'd expected, and she had to scramble to her knees, practically stand to lean over the side to reach for Ian.

  But he was working his way back to the boat. “Ian! What are you doing? Get in the raft!”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I have to find Dex!”

  Dex. Of course. She scanned the water for him, saw nothing in the debris of the yacht—deck chairs, the Jet Skis, various gas containers, a cooler.

  Ian reached the boat.

  To her horror, he sank beneath the water, vanishing under the hull.

  She held her breath, her heartbeat ticking away the seconds.

  Her pitching stomach nearly let go when he reappeared, a life jacket in his hand. He pulled it on, not tying it, again.

  And that was when she felt it—the trough that signaled the third sister, the biggest of the monster waves, given the momentum of the first two.

  “Cut the raft away!” Ian was shouting.

  She stared at him, frozen.

  He started moving toward her, hand over hand in the water, a crazy expression in his eyes.

  “The wave will sink the boat and pull you down!”

  Pull us down. Because he wasn’t leaving her here, right?

  The raft dropped into the trough and began to rise with the swell of the wave.

  Ian reached the raft and unsheathed a knife located next to the mooring line attachment.

  “No, Ian!”

  But he was sawing at the mooring line, the line fraying with each draw.

  The raft lifted higher, rising toward the crest.

  “Ian, get in the raft!”

  He ignored her, sawing. With a snap, the mooring line released. At once, the raft spun in the water, taken by the wave.

  She fell to the floor, curled her hand onto an internal strap, and fought her way back to her knees. “Ian! Get in this raft!”

  The roar of the wave ate her words as it crested, crashed down on the raft, a swell of seawater and power that filled her mouth and her eyes and nearly swamped the raft. She clung to the webbing and felt the power of the wave press her away from the yacht and push her out to sea. Seawater filled the vessel to her knees, nearly upended her, and when she thought she might go fully over, the wave released her.

  The raft settled back, hard, into the sea. She lay on the floor, puddled in seawater, her limbs rubber as the ocean settled around her.

  Ian!

  She climbed to her knees, clamboring to the edge of the raft.

  Stilled, horrified.

  The wave had pushed her nearly a hundred yards from the yacht. The hull was now just a dim outline as the lights began to wink out.

  “Ian!” she screamed.

  He had vanished.

  She scoured the sea for hope, screaming his name until finally the waves took her away. The night deepened around her as she watched the lights from the Montana Rose sink into the sea.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  Jess stood at the window, her arms folded, holding the remotes as the most recent news channel droned on about something she couldn't care less about.

  Taxes. A protest somewhere. The closing of a school.

  Nothing about the medical status of Damien Taggert.

  “You need to make a decision, Jess.”

  Pete’s voice emerged from the kitchen, and she closed her eyes, hating his words.

  “Couldn’t I just . . .” Wait. Hope. She glanced at the television, then at the cell phone silent on her coffee table.

  She heard Pete’s feet against the floor and turned as he came toward her. He raised an eyebrow.

  “I was talking about the pizza, babe.”

  Oh. She offered a tight smile, and he wore an expression on his face not unlike the one he’d worn when she’d opened her door yesterday to find him standing there.

  Such sweet compassion it could undo her. Now he lifted his hand and tucked a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear.

  “And the next decision after that would be—it’s time to take a shower.”

  “What?”

  “You’re starting to smell.”

  “And this is what you call wooing?”

  “No, it’s an intervention.” But he ran a thumb down her cheek. “The wooing comes after the shower.” He winked.

  Oh boy. This was better than wooing. This was Pete Brooks, giving it his all to keep her from losing her mind as she waited for news on her father. She didn’t know what to name his attention over the past twenty-four hours. Wooing? Maybe. Or perhaps simply being her friend.

  A very good friend who had arrived on her doorstep with the most terrible news of her life, ready to catch her, to hold her up.

  “I’m so sorry,” he’d said as he pulled her to himself. “We have to call the hospital.”

  She’d hung on to his amazing shoulders, sinking into the fact that he’d raced over to step into her messy world.

  “No.” She’d pulled away from him, ignored the confusion in his eyes, and walked back into the house. “I’d have to tell the hospital who I am, and word will get out. The next thing I know, press will be on my doorstep, demanding my side of the story. A side I’m not allowed to tell.”

  He’d come in, closed the door, and followed her into the family room, where she’d turned on the television. Stood in silence as the news played out the entire story.

  A heart attack, a triple bypass surgery scheduled. She glimpsed her mother, distraught, as she waded through the press to the hospital.

  “I should be there.”

  Pete’s a
rms found her again and he pulled her back to himself.

  “Call your mother,” he said, his lips moving against her hair.

  Jess said nothing, just shook her head.

  But his words dug a hole through her until she finally fell asleep on the sofa, her head on Pete’s shoulder.

  She’d woken to the smell of bacon. To Pete, freshly showered, wearing an apron, a spatula in hand. And his proposal lingering in the back of her mind.

  “Do you love me?”

  Yes, she needed to make a decision.

  He’d spent the day with her, swinging into remodel mode as the news droned in the background. They’d hung pictures and given a second coat of paint to a dresser. She wasn’t sure if he planned on spending another night here, but she wasn’t going to kick him off her sofa.

  “Just make the call,” he said now, again, softly.

  She shook her head, looked away. “Pepperoni.”

  He said nothing for a moment. Then he kissed her forehead. “Okay, pepperoni.” He dialed his cell phone as she sat on the sofa and channel-surfed through the news programs. “Any updates?”

  She shook her head. “Stupid news channels. Who cares about some stupid baseball tournament or a new bridge in Minneapolis? I need an update.”

  “Maybe it’s not news unless something bad happens.”

  She glanced at him.

  He held up his hands. “Which means, in this case, no news is good news, right?”

  She pinched her lips together, then leaned back, scrubbed her hands down her face. “If he dies, I can’t even go to the funeral.” The words emerged in a whisper. “I always thought . . . maybe there would be a way for me to go back . . .”

  Pete got up and sat across from her on her chipped coffee table. Took her hands away from her face. “Why isn’t there?”

  “My mother hates me, Pete. She’ll never forgive me for testifying against my father. Even if I had no choice.”

  He held her hands in his, his beautiful eyes searching hers. “No choice?”

  She looked away. “He told me to.”

  “Your father told you to testify against him?”

  “Yes! My brother was going to be indicted, so my father told me key information that I traded to keep my brother, and me, out of jail. My father just wanted to be done with the entire thing. In fact, he told me it was a relief when he was arrested. He’d been waiting for years for the Feds to find out.”

  Pete just stared at her as she got up, picked up the remote, and muted the television.

  He might as well know it all. “This isn’t his first heart attack. When I was seventeen, he had a mild attack and fell down the stairs and broke his hip. I was the one who found him. I called 911, but he was really groggy and kept apologizing. I think he thought he was going to die.” She sighed. “I knew something was wrong, starting then. It was after that he started to get sloppy with his accounting. As if he wanted to be caught.”

  “I’m sorry, are you saying you knew about the scam?”

  “Not the details. But I knew he’d done something illegal. Something . . . awful. But I was too afraid to find out. So I just . . . I went away to college and focused on getting my medical degree.”

  “That’s why your father told you. Because he knew you would do what you had to do to save your brother. Because you’d kept your mouth shut about his crimes.”

  She nodded.

  “Wow. That’s tough, Jess.”

  “Now you know why I just wanted to leave it behind. Start over. Pretend it never happened.” She gave a wry smile, touched his chest. “It was never about not trusting you, Pete.”

  He caught her hand. “I know that now. But . . . that’s part of your life, Jess. Selene Jessica Taggert. She was you, and I want to know that person too.”

  Oh Pete. See, this was why she should say yes to his proposal. Why it didn’t matter that, technically, they had never dated. Why she loved him.

  The thought swept through her, shook her. She’d loved him probably since the day she met him, and seeing him standing here, no judgment in his eyes when she confessed the truth . . .

  “You wouldn’t have liked Selene, Pete.”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  “She was a little spoiled.” She walked away from him. “She took vacations in Europe, had a personal assistant even as a teenager, and rarely left the house without some kind of bodyguard.”

  “You had a bodyguard?”

  “It all made sense when we started getting death threats after my father was arrested. But if you look at why he defrauded people, you see a deep fear there of losing everything. That included my brother and me. We were pretty sheltered.”

  “Yeah, okay, I get the urge to protect you,” Pete said as he followed her.

  “I can take care of myself, thanks,” she said but let him put his arm around her.

  But then he kissed the back of her neck and she couldn’t help herself. She turned, put her hands on his face. “I don’t deserve you,” she said, then kissed him. She’d meant it as something sweet and short, but he was just so . . . so safe. And warm. And he tasted of coffee, smelled of the soap he’d used in the shower, and the kiss turned languid.

  She could just curl into him, hold on. He had a strong, amazing body, and when he wrapped his arms around her and made a tiny noise in the back of his throat, she just wanted to sink onto the sofa, pull him back into her arms, and let him take them someplace safe, protected.

  Lost.

  And in that place maybe forget the fear that her father would slip away without her being able to say good-bye.

  That thought snuffed out all her ardor. She pressed her hand to his chest. “I can’t.”

  He leaned back, then reached up, thumbed a tear that had gathered by her eye. “Speedy, you’re killing me.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to start something—”

  “Jess. Please.” He shook his head. “That’s not it. I hate seeing you cry.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s torture for you to simply sit here and wait.” He took a breath, then let her go and swiped up her phone from the table. “If you’re not going to call your mother, then I will.”

  “Pete!”

  He turned his back to her, scrolling down her list of contacts.

  “Pete, please—she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “It’s your right to find out about your father.”

  “No, it’s not! I walked out of his life—their lives. I can’t expect them to welcome me back like I might be the prodigal son.”

  “And yet, you are the prodigal son, Jess. You long for that life back—I see it in your eyes.”

  His words stopped her cold, and she drew in a breath.

  He gave her a wry, sad smile. “Sorry. But . . . that’s why you can’t say yes to marrying me, isn’t it?”

  She swallowed. But his words thundered inside her.

  “I . . .”

  “Jess.” He slipped the phone into his back pocket and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I know about trying to walk away from your regrets. I did that, remember? It doesn’t work. It follows you in a thousand tiny ways. The smell of coffee, and that time your father took you out for breakfast. A song on the radio, and the sound of his voice. A random someone who has the same haircut, or build, or even says something just a certain way and suddenly you’re stuck, all the shards of your regret cutting through you.”

  She couldn’t move. “We used to come here, you know. To Montana. Sometimes I think that I came back here because there was a part of him here.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “I miss him so much, Pete. I thought I was okay, that I could just say good-bye, but—” Her eyes filled. “I just want to see him before . . . just to say I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes. Felt Pete’s arms go around her. She sank into his chest.

  “I know my dad did a terrible thing, but he’s my dad. He was good to me. He loved me. And . . . we had a good family.”r />
  Pete ran his hand down her head.

  “We never had a nanny like other kids. My mom took us skating in Central Park, and I remember once my toes turned numb. She brought me home, filled a warm bath for my feet, and made me hot cocoa.”

  Pete was nodding.

  “If I came back, her life would be chaos, again. The media would be back to camping on our doorstep, all the old accusations and op-eds fresh and brutal. Sometimes, before the trial, she’d lock herself in the bathroom. I could hear her crying . . .”

  “But she’d have you.”

  “No. She’d have the daughter who she thinks betrayed her.”

  Pete sighed. “But you saved your brother.”

  “And they gave my father 150 years because of my testimony. Without it, who knows but his sentence would have been lighter. There’s a thousand what-ifs that I stole when I testified against him.”

  She leaned back, met Pete’s eyes. “I can’t be Selene Jessica Taggert again. This is my life now—and . . . it’s the life I want, Pete.”

  The words thrummed inside her. The life I want.

  The man she wanted.

  “I choose you, Pete,” she said softly.

  He blinked, frowned.

  “I don’t want my regrets to hold us captive like they have Sierra and Ian. Yes, I miss my family—but I don’t miss that life. I don’t miss the money. And I don’t miss the fame. I choose you. You, and this life.” She touched his face, met his eyes, now unblinking in hers. “I love you.”

  She saw her words resonate on his face. Watched as a frown, then a hint of smile, tugged at his mouth. “Are you saying—”

  Yes. I will marry you.

  But the words didn’t make it past the chime of the doorbell.

  “Pizza man,” Pete said. “Terrible timing.”

  No, probably perfect timing because here she was, jumping ahead of Pete again. Assuming. Hadn’t he said he wanted to wait and ask her again, when he knew she loved him?

  She wouldn’t steal that moment from him.

  But she refused to let the past invade her future one more second. Refused to let it appear like a phantom to destroy everything she’d built.

  Refused to give in to the desire to run back home, pretend she’d never left.