Page 32 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle
Cal.
He’s running. I feel it. Not just the fear—him. The whole of him, everything inside of him and around him, wild and desperate and reaching. It roars inside me like a siren, and for a second, Iamhim, his panic mirrored in my own ribs, a reflection bouncing betweenus, over and over again, like an SOS message.
My fingers twitch in the water. My chest spasms. I can almost feel him reaching for me through the dark. I don’t know if I’m dead. I don’t know if he’s real or here at all, but I feel him. I think he’s coming for me.
I really fucking hope he is.
Something shifts in the current. A rush, a tremor, a pressure wave parting the water like a curtain. I feel him slam into the ocean like a force of nature, a riptide given form.
Then—arms. Strong and wrapping like the first time, but now there are tentacles too. Everywhere. Heat and motion andCal.
I’m jolted into something like lucidity when his body wraps around mine, one arm under my knees, the other across my back, his chest a furnace against my frozen skin. His tentacles cradle and coil, anchoring us together so I don’t float away.
I think I try to say something. It comes out as a wheeze and a mouthful of seawater.
“Oh fuck, no,no—Neviah.” His voice is broken open, raw and furious andscared. I can barely see, but his eyes are glowing, cut glass under the surface, and they are locked on me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
I think I am, to him, and it’s quite a sobering thought.
A tentacle braces my neck, his hand pressing down on my sternum. He’s counting the beats of my heart. Willing it to keep going. His thumb strokes my cheek like I might shatter under his touch as he breaches the surface of the water with me cradled to his chest.
“Breathe,” he begs. “Please, love, please—breathe for me.”
I cough. It’s ugly. Salt burns my throat and my ribs seize. I gag into his shoulder, and he laughs—this choked, frantic sound that’s too close to a sob.
“There you are,” he whispers. “There you are. Fuck, little trespasser, you’ll age me.”
I want to say something casual, something irreverent like,wow, that sucked, but all I can do is sag against him, trembling, and then I think I begin to cry. His body rocks with mine, still in the water, the storm roaring above us—but it’s like he’s wrapped around meso tightly the sea can’t reach me anymore. Tentacles snake around my thighs, my waist, my shoulders. Gentle, insistent, every part of me shielded by him.
“Youidiot,” I rasp, the words so bleak and shaking they’re barely intelligible.
He clips an incredulous laugh, throwing his head back to whip wet hair out of his face as he swims. “I’mthe idiot?”
My teeth chatter as I mumble against his collarbone, “You better not let go of me.”
“I won’t,” he says. “I won’t ever.”
The ocean shrieks, but it’s background now as he hauls us toward the shore. His lips press to my forehead again and again, like he has to keep checking I’m actually here.
His breathing’s still a wreck.
“You scared me,” he says hoarsely. “I thought—I felt you—fuck—” His voice cracks. “I thought I felt you die.”
I can’t speak, but I touch his face, and he turns into the touch like he’s starved for it. He’s still whispering as he swims, dragging me through the water like I weigh nothing. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m light as driftwood now, or a ghost, but he won’t let me go.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs over and over. “I’ve got you, love. My love. Mine.”
The sand shifts under his feet when he reaches the shore, slick and sodden, sucking at every step. He doesn’t stop to catch his breath or look around and check if anybody might see us, he just carries me, held tight to his chest, as if releasing me for even a second might undo his dramatic rescue entirely.
My hair sticks to his arms, wet and dripping. My dress clings limply to my skin and my lips feel bruised from the salt and wind. He touches his mouth to my temple, whispering soft words I can’t quite hear over the ringing in my ears.
The door to his shop bangs open with a wild crack of wind, and slaps shut just as fast. The moment we’re inside, the storm becomes a dull roar, distant behind thick stone walls.
Cal hesitates, barely—then pivots, carrying me straight through the door to the hall, into his apartment, and through to the bathroom. He yanks on the cord so hard it pingsagainst the ceiling, and the light flickers to life. Warm yellow spills over clean tiles. There’s a small shower with an inbuilt seat, and maroon towels hanging on a shiny chrome radiator. The mirror is large and round, with a band of diffused white light around the border.
He sets me down on the closed toilet seat, kneeling in front of me with shaking hands. I try to speak, but I haven’t found my words yet, and then he’s undressing me. Cold, wet fabric is peeled from my skin by large, rough hands that are somehow just as gentle as they are frantic. When I reach for him, he doesn’t swat me away, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing either.
“I need to see you’re okay,” he says hoarsely. “I need to make sure you’re warm.”
