Page 84 of Love Bound

This is worse than Ketamine. There's no struggle. All I can do is stare at him, my mouth slack.

He sits me down in the belly of the boat and tilts my head toward the sky. I cannot move or blink or swallow, and slowly my tongue slides to the back of my throat. I can’t even close my eyes. But I’m wide awake.

"Oh, look," he says, and lightly touches my neck. "Your pulse is so fast right now."

My chest burns harder, my heart thrums for another second or two and then skips, trembles, searching frantically for oxygen.

Miller presses down on my carotid. "Good, it's slowing down. We're just about done here." He rises again, the smell of burning wood fading as that part of my brain shuts down.

My vision grows tunneled, warping.

Leaning over, he pushes on my chest twice, hard. A phst erupts as air escapes with each pump. He’s creating a vacuum, so the second the paralysis wears off, my diaphragm will work again, and I'll suck in water. And drown.

He scoops me up and now, my vision comes in flashes. Blue fingertips. Black smoke, billowing in the sky. A seagull floating by.

I can hear people shouting.

Miller cradles me above the water and then lowers me in and releases me to the sea.

I slip in and immediately sink.

I can’t move, even with the shock of freezing water. My hair fans out, the icy cold fingers of seawater curling around my scalp. I feel water fill my nose, my mouth. My eyes are still open.

Tide's in, so it's shallow water. Maybe just four feet. The bottom is sandy. It would be so easy to just stand up, but that's impossible.

My body starts to turn and then I'm looking up at the belly of the boat. My heart is starving—I feel it tug in my chest once more. My ears ring. And I feel a flutter against my sternum like a hurt bird's wing.

Then, in a dream, the surface breaks in a thousand tiny white bubbles.

Miller crashes into the water, a vein of red behind him trailing to the surface like a dark ribbon.

He's coming right for me.

Sparks fill my vision. Something grips me, hard, but it doesn’t matter. My mind slips away even as the drug wears off. I can’t hear my heart anymore. Breathing was something I used to do, in another lifetime.

Then, my index finger twitches. My eyes blink. The seal on the vacuum in my chest opens.

Poor Finn.

Finn.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Finn

My phone rings twice before the call from Nic. Each ring sends up a flare, so by the time his comes through, I am already doing seventy-five down Route 1. First, it was Laurel who wanted to talk birthday strategy and then she closed with something about Cory and a cherry Danish.

My heart skipped a beat. "What did you say?"

"I said Cory did great walking over by himself and now he'll always want to do it 'cause some lady gave him a cherry Danish."

Everything in that store is blueberry or black raspberry, and I said so. "Aren’t blueberries practically the state fruit?"

"They are the state fruit," she corrected me. "Cherries belong to Michigan."

Jesus. Of course. Miller and his twin brother were from Michigan. A warning bell went off. Loudly. Just then, another call had come in from Devon. She was up in Camden, trying to find seashell candles for the table.

"Hey. I just got a weird text from my sister."