ABYSS
Nolan
I SHOVE THE BIKE OFF me and start running, my palms burning, stones embedded in the scrapes along my arms lighting a fire in my torn skin. But the pain is nothing compared to the fear that seizes my chest as I watch Harper sail off the cliff, pink and purple and gold ribbons trailing behind her in the wind. That burn is nothing compared to the sound of her screaming my name.
She disappears from view. I’m still yards away when I hear her crash into the sea.
The last thing I see as I run off the edge of the cliff is Harper thrashing in the restraints. Desperate. Panicked. The car is already submerged, the fuselage flooded. A wave laps at her neck.
I fold my hands above my head to dive. Take a deep breath. Close my eyes. She’s still crying out my name as I hit the water.
The cold shocks every muscle. It fills my ears. Floods my clothes, weighing me down. I fight the pull of deep currents and swim. When I rise above the waves, I’m met with the sound of lapping water. Distant gulls.
Nearby boats. Laughter from the festivities that carries on the wind. But there’s no Harper. No echo of my name. Only her silence. Impossibly, it’s even worse than the sound of her desperate scream.
A wave lifts me enough to catch a glimpse of shattered pieces of wood and her goggles floating on the surface. And then, the end of a gold ribbon
before it sinks into the black water.
“Harper.”
I dive after it and open my eyes, following its trail.
Shafts of sunlight fracture in the waves. They illuminate threads of color and rising bubbles. Harper’s hands as she reaches for the surface. She twists and turns but can’t escape the car that’s dragging her into the depths. Her shoulders are free of the harness but the belt must still be stuck across her legs. The light behind me penetrates into the darkness, but I can’t see the bottom. There’s only a black void pulling her away from me.
The weight of my clothes and my frantic kicking push me after her. But I already know I won’t reach her in time.
I’ve seen fear in faces before. I’ve seen death. I’ve delivered it with my own two hands. But I’ve never felt someone’s terror cut through my muscle and bone to lash at my heart. Her eyes are so wide. Her mouth is open in a scream, the last of her air rushing from her lungs in a flurry of bubbles. I want to scream back at her. Hold on. I’m coming. She thrashes at the belt before stretching for me once more. Her tears are lost to the ocean, but I
know they’re there.
I can’t lose her. Not like this.
Her movement changes. A spasm starts in her chest. Spreads into her shoulders. She folds at the waist only to straighten again. It’s uncontrolled reflexes, the final fire of electricity in cells. The magic of life ebbing away.
The tension dissolves from her fingers as they graze mine. Her arms go slack, following the current as the car drags her deeper. The fear spirits away from her face. It leaves a momentary sorrow behind. The imprint of a final thought. And then, just as I grab her hand, the light in her eyes goes out.
I use her arm to pull myself closer until I’m at her limp body. My ears pop with the mounting pressure. My lungs burn as I draw the switchblade from my pocket and start cutting the belt from across her legs. I accidentally slice her side in my desperation. She doesn’t react to any pain.
Blood plumes through the water around us. But I don’t stop, not even for a heartbeat. I keep sawing through the thick weave of fabric until the last thread finally gives way and Harper’s body floats free of the seat and into my arms.
I let go of the knife. It sinks, following the car into the darkness as I wrap Harper in my arms and kick toward the light.
She doesn’t kick with me. She doesn’t grip me back.
Panic chokes up my throat. Every muscle is filled with fire. My lungs have nothing left. I keep struggling for the light wavering at a surface that seems too far for me to reach.
I break through with a gasp, coughing, my heart surging a deafening hum in my head. I flip Harper’s head skyward, pushing the hair from her face. Her beautiful features are motionless. Serene. Her eyes are half open, glazed with a vacant stare. Her damp lashes don’t flutter with the warm caress of the sun. Water trickles from her parted blue lips, dripping from her nose.
“Wake up. Come on.” I kick harder so I can pull my free hand from treading water long enough to slap her cheek. She doesn’t react. “No, Harper. No.” I slap her again, but the impact doesn’t even color her skin.
There’s no blood beating through her heart to rise to the strike. A chasm deep in my chest splits open and a sound escapes. An anguished cry. One I’ve only heard myself make once before, when my brother died at my side, and all I could do was lie there and watch it happen. “Someone, help!”
“Here, son,” a voice calls from behind me. I turn to see a sailboat coasting toward us. A man stands behind the wheel, his teenage boy at the bow with a life ring clutched in his hands. He tosses it to me and I grab it on the first throw. He pulls us in with surprising strength, his father joining by his side to grab Harper beneath her arms. I lift her as much as I can in the turbulent water, but the weight of her motionless body threatens to drag us both down, as though the sea isn’t ready to let her go.
But there’s no way I’m letting it take her. Not without a fight.
I haul myself onto the deck with the boy’s help, and the moment I’m onboard, I scramble to Harper’s side.
“Do you have a defibrillator on board?” I ask as I tear her shirt open, buttons pinging across the deck, her suspenders slipping from her shoulders.
The man shakes his head. Dismay is a heavy weight in his weathered features when I look his way. “No, just a standard first aid kit.”
“Bring it.”
As the man takes off below deck, I return my attention to Harper, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused. Years of training are there, ingrained in my actions. But it’s as though the motions happen on the other side of a veil. I check for a pulse. I tell the man to send out a distress call. I ask the boy to bring blankets. I start chest compressions, counting each rhythmic press of my hands to Harper’s chest, each thrust pushing water from her mouth and nose. But on the other side of it all is the riot of desperate panic.
I’m watching her die. The thing I once thought I wanted. It’s what I came all this way and waited all this time for, and now I would give anything to stop it from happening.
“Not like this, Harper,” I whisper as I push down on her chest.
“Anything?” the man asks when I pause just long enough to check her for a pulse. I shake my head as I resume chest compressions, and he lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Don’t give up, son.”
Tears glaze my eyes. Though my hope is fading with every moment that passes, I won’t give up. I won’t stop until someone pulls me off of her, and even then I know I’ll fight them to get back to her side. To keep trying.
I stare down at her beautiful face, begging the universe for a sign. A beacon. A candle in the fog.
Images of Harper scatter through my thoughts. The way she smiled at me the first time we met. The ferocity of her glare as we faced off in her garden. But now, it feels like the abyss is still stealing my thoughts of her.
When I push my weight into my palms, I’m haunted by the way her chest spasmed as it filled with water. When I press my lips to hers to force air into her lungs, I catch her taste and her scent, but they’re marred by salt and the fragrance of the sea.
“You can’t leave like this,” I grit out as I pump her chest with a metronomic pulse. “We have unfinished business, Harper Starling. You don’t get to tap out. Come on. Come on.”
I pinch her nose and tilt her head back and deliver a breath. Then another.
And as I’m pulling away, I feel it. A convulsion in her chest. A spasm that becomes a cough. White foam bubbles from her lips and nose, and I
turn her to the side, each cough growing more violent. I lodge my fingers beneath her jaw and feel the faint thrum of her heart. It grows steadier with every passing beat.
I hold her head, keeping it steady as she vomits and coughs, frothy liquid spilling from her mouth. Every blink feels like a fucking miracle when just a moment ago she was unseeing.
“Can you hear me?” I ask, and her eyes squeeze shut in pain before focusing on me. She’s disoriented, in shock, floating on the edge of consciousness. “Squeeze my hand.”
Her eyes flutter open and she looks down at her hand engulfed in mine, and though it’s weak, she squeezes back. I hear a boat racing toward us, hitting the waves with force as it turns. The captain of the sailboat pats my shoulder. “Good job, son,” he says, then heads for the bow to exchange information with the Coast Guard crew as they cut the engine and pull alongside our boat.
When I look back down at Harper, her steady, exhausted gaze follows me, a thread whose pull I feel deep in a dormant place in my chest.
“I thought …” My words drift away, carried from my lips on the breeze that rustles the slack sails above us. I thought I’d lost you. I thought I couldn’t get you back. Those words all float away. “I thought you were calling it quits on our deal there for a minute, Meatball.”
A weak smile fleets across her lips. My own chest aches when I see it, as though someone has just beaten me up to keep me alive. “Couldn’t go …” she whispers through lips that tremble with shock. I tuck the blankets around her and rub her arm as she shakes, in part to keep her conscious and warm, but in part because I feel suddenly unsure of what to say or do or how to act. “Unfinished business. Need to stab you for that nickname.”
When I meet her eyes, they solder to mine. The gray seems brighter, the gleam that was missing only moments ago now shining in the sun. “Thank you.”
I give her a single nod and break my focus away, but still I feel her watching.
Two crew members from the Coast Guard ship board our boat with a portable defibrillator, and I talk them through what happened and Harper’s
condition in a way that feels oddly reassuring in its familiarity. When they’ve had a chance to assess her, they organize with the sailor and his son to keep her aboard so they can escort us to the marina where an ambulance will be waiting. And though they keep an eye on Harper’s vitals and ensure she remains stable, a residual panic still ebbs and flows through my veins.
Relief that I can feel her pulse beneath my fingertips as I keep hold of her wrist. Distress and desperation every time her eyes drift closed with fatigue.
Intense, all-consuming fears chew through my thoughts with every moment that passes. What about secondary drowning? Aspiration pneumonia? What about infection? Fuck knows what bacteria is already climbing around in her lungs. What if I broke her ribs during CPR? Her sternum? Will she have chronic lung damage? What about PTSD? What if— “Son,” the sailor says, shaking my shoulder. I blink, a haze dispelling from my mind as I look up at him and realize he’s been talking to me for I don’t even know how long. He gives me a gentle smile as he extends some folded clothes balanced on his other palm. “I brought you a change of clothes. Might be a little small for you but they’ll fit close enough. Do you want to go below deck and get yourself settled for a minute?”
Cold. Stress. It’s the first time I become aware that I’m still soaking wet, shaking beneath a towel that’s appeared on my shoulders without me even realizing it. I look down at Harper, her eyes barely open, her breathing still erratic, a cough racking her body every few minutes.
I shake my head and squeeze her wrist, her pulse still a steady thrum that answers back. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
The man nods, giving my shoulder a sympathetic pat. “I’ll put them in a bag. You can take them with you to the hospital and change there. We’re nearly at the marina,” he says, nodding toward the shore. I follow his gesture to where an ambulance waits by the docks, its lights flashing. “How does that sound?”
“That sounds great, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”
The man leaves to pack up his gift, and my gaze lingers on the door he disappears through until Harper coughs, drawing my attention back to her.
“I’ll be fine,” she whispers. “You can go get changed. I’ll survive a few minutes on my own, don’t worry.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t have to come with me to the hospital.”
I glare down at her. The spark brightens just a little in her eyes when I
do. “Like hell I’m not.”
“But you’ll smell like the sea.”
“That’s supposed to be calming.”
“On the beach, sure.” She coughs, squeezing my hand as she does. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or just a reflexive tightening of her muscles, but it makes my heart jump all the same. “You’re going to smell like you rolled around naked in a fish market. They’ll kick you out for disturbing the other patients.”
I roll my eyes, and this time she gifts me a weak smile. “I see a near- death experience hasn’t dampened your humor. Pun intended.”
“That was awful. I don’t think they can let you in. You smell like fish
and make terrible, ill-timed puns.”
“Do you not want me to come?”
Harper pauses. My heart sinks as though she’s just tossed it right back into the deep water I just pulled her from. “I don’t want you there if it brings back bad memories,” she finally says. “Don’t put yourself through that for me.”
I stare at her, that image of her unseeing eyes still lingering like a nightmare that clings to consciousness long after waking. And I realize I hadn’t even thought about the hospital and the painful past it could evoke.
But she did. Only moments ago, she died in my arms. Beneath my hands.
And she’d rather face the chaos and stress of a hospital alone than put me through memories that are difficult to bear.
The woman who put me there. The one who left me to die alone in the dark.
I cup her cheek. Her eyes drift closed. She leans into my touch. Squeezes my hand, and this time I know it was on purpose. Her warmth still feels like magic. I brought her back, and nothing I’ve done in my life feels like as much of an accomplishment as that.
“I’m coming with you,” I say, leaning down to place a lingering kiss on her forehead.
When I pull away and look down at her face, it’s as though everything I thought I’d come here for has been stripped away, leaving only one truth behind. One I’m not ready to put into the world. But one that consumes me nonetheless.
I’m in love with the woman I came here to kill.
