Page 69 of Pull Me Under

On three, we both heave. The dummy comes up and over the lip of the platform, and my hands slide forward to guide it onto the deck, and that’s when it happens.

His fingers close over mine.

Not a brush. Not an accident. His hand lands directly on top of mine on the dummy’s harness, his palm flat against my knuckles, and the contact is – it’s nothing. It’s a fraction of a second. It’s two people in neoprene gloves hauling a weighted mannequin onto a concrete platform in the rain.

It’s everything.

His fingers are cold and wet and I can feel the pressure of each one individually, like they’re being mapped onto my skin. My pulse slams into my throat. Every nerve ending in my hand fires simultaneously and sends a signal straight to the base of my spine and I cannot – I absolutely cannot – react.

Cal is six feet away with a clipboard.

Bill is watching from the equipment bay.

I do not look at Jude.

If I look at him, he’ll see it. The wanting. The stupid, inconvenient, catastrophic wanting that has nothing to do with the shed and everything to do with the way he said, ‘You’re good,’ on the harbour wall like he meant it. Like my competence was worth admiring, not fearing. Like I was a person he respected, not a problem he was managing.

Nobody has ever made my competence feel like a gift. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know where to put it.

His hand is still on mine.

One second. Two.

He pulls back. I pull back. We both return to the dummy, positioning it for the mock assessment, and neither of us acknowledges what just happened because nothing happened. Nothing at all. Just a hand on a hand during a routine drill.

‘Airway,’ Jude says, voice slightly rough. He clears his throat. ‘Check the airway.’

‘I know how to check an airway.’

‘Then check it.’

I tilt the dummy’s head back. My hands are steady. I’m a professional. I am completely, absolutely fine.

Except I can still feel the exact weight of his fingers on mine. Can still feel the heat of his palm through the neoprene. Can map the precise location of each point of contact like a diagnostic – index finger across my second knuckle, thumb against the base of my wrist, the heel of his hand pressing into the back of mine.

I have a mechanic’s hands. I notice pressure, grip, torque. I can’t stop noticing.

‘Airway clear,’ I say. ‘Breathing absent. Commencing CPR.’

I press my palms to the dummy’s chest and count. One and two and three and four. Mechanical. Rhythmic. Focusing on the count because the count is safe and the count doesn’t make my skin burn and the count doesn’t have dark eyes and a jaw that tightens when he’s concentrating on not looking at me.

‘Good,’ Cal says from somewhere behind me. ‘That’s clean. Nice work, both of you.’

I sit back on my heels. Jude’s already standing, already stepping away, already putting distance between us with the practised efficiency of a man who knows exactly how close is too close.

He doesn’t look at me.

I don’t look at him.

We’re fine. This is fine. We’re colleagues.

‘Good work,’ Cal says at the end, rain dripping off his jacket. ‘Trelawney, you’re solid. Keep showing up like this and you’ll do fine.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Harding, a word?’

They move off towards the station, heads bent together. I wring the rain out of my ponytail and try to slow my heartbeat down to a rhythm that won’t show on a cardiac monitor.