Page 85 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

She stripped off the vest and windbreaker, sweater and jeans. Taking off her underwear with an audience turned out to be harder than she’d expected. Jack watched appreciatively, and Eva with mild unconcern.

“Okay,” Casey said. The chilly ocean breeze brought the hairs standing up on her arms, and she couldn’t help a nervous little flinch at the idea of someone seeing her out here. Could you get arrested for indecent exposure on a boat? But there was no one nearby. A small flotilla of bright orange and red kayaks, too far off to make out anything except their vivid colors, were the closest signs of human observers. Here and there, a distant house could be glimpsed onshore, but they were too far away to even tell if there were people in the yards.

“Now what? Do I just jump in?”

“Not quite,” Eva said. “What I want you to do is fall over the side—backward, if you can bring yourself to do it—and shift as you go down. You’ll be better insulated against the cold and better able to swim as a lynx. Being able to shift in mid-fall is an excellent skill to develop.”

It was still very strange being able to shift in front of people at all. “What if someone sees me?”

“There’s no one around to see.”

Jack gave her a supportive nod. “Go ahead. You can do it.”

Casey sat on the boat’s gunwale. It was sharply cold under her bare buttocks. She looked down at the water, which suddenly seemed both too close and much too far away. Both her hands clamped onto the side, holding herself in place.

The orcas had moved back so none of them were directly under her, but most of them had jostled over to this side of the boat, watching curiously.

Jack kissed her bare shoulder and then stepped back.

What if I hit my head?she thought.What if I drown?But the orcas were there, waiting to make sure nothing happened to her. And Jack and Eva were on the boat to pull her out, just in case.

It was a very simple leap of faith compared to all the others she’d been making lately. But somehow it seemed like a metaphor for all the recent changes in her life, and the ones she was poised on the verge of making soon.

Close your eyes, fall backward, and trust others to catch you if you don’t stick the landing.

It was never going to be easy. She would always want to do things on her own. But, sometimes, it was okay to lean on others. To let someone else share the burden; to trust Jack’s strong arms to carry her when she couldn’t carry herself.

Slowly Casey peeled first one hand off the gunwale, then the other. Balanced on the edge, she tilted her head back, looking up at the blue, blue sky. She spread out her arms and lifted her feet, and for a moment she balanced there, poised on the edge between sea and sky.

“Look at me, Wendy!” she cried aloud, and she flung herself off the edge.

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