Page 26 of Under Water

Oh. Right.

“Sorry,” I say with a small grimace.

He inhales sharply—the thing he usually does before he’s about to tell me what a dumbass himbo I am. Then he deflates and shrugs. “I’m not exactly a champion swimmer, and I think I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t want to fail at one more thing when it comes to my kid.”

I hear the pain in his voice. “I don’t know if swimming would have helped him at the park. The pond is shallow. He told me that he couldn’t lift his head up.”

Rune closes his eyes, and he takes several long breaths. “Fuck.”

I laugh, and when his gaze snaps over to me, I shrug. “I mean, fuck is right. Usually, when I go out on calls like that, I can think of a thousand ways that the whole thing could have been prevented. The kid I lost—” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. “That kid—if he had emergency water training, he would have survived. If the parents had taken any kind of first aid class, or if someone—and I mean literally one person in that crowd—had managed to be calm, they could have started CPR before we got there. But the other day—” I stop and shrug. “—it was a series of misfortunes, and there were enough people around that Elio survived.”

“He was being given incorrect CPR,” Rune says with a rumble in his voice.

“He was. But we got there in time.”

“You did.” He bows his head, and his shoulder knocks against mine. I wait for him to pull back, but he doesn’t. “You gonna come see him?”

I stopped by once, but Elio was sleeping. His pneumonia was a little worse than they’d predicted, and he was fighting off a fever. I figured my presence wasn’t wanted, so I didn’t go back, though I left a note.

I hadn’t heard from Rune or Elio after that though.

“Is he feeling better?”

At that, Rune smiles. “Yeah. Bringing him home today.”

Something in me unknots, and then I blink at him. “Wait. But then he’ll be at your house.”

“My parents’, but yeah,” Rune says slowly.

“So…you’d want me there?”

He considers the question, which does hurt my feelings a little, but it’s only fair. “I think he’d like that. And, ah—I mean, as long as you keep your fucking lattes away from my laptop⁠—”

“Oh my god, it was one time⁠—”

“—then it won’t bother me much.”

With the way Rune has hated my guts for years, that’s damn near a marriage proposal. I smile, then slap my hands on my thighs and climb to my feet. “Come on. I’ll make you a sandwich before you go.”

He follows me up, shaking his head. “I’m not hungry.”

“Ask me if I give a fuck,” I tell him, and his brows fly up. “I know stress can kill an appetite, but you won’t be good for anyone you love if you collapse. You were in emergency medical services too long to not know that.”

“Easton,” he sighs out.

Fuck, why do I like the way he says my name so much? I swallow, then smile. “North made homemade sub rolls.”

“Fuck,” he whispers, then rolls his head back and looks up at the sky before throwing his hands up. “Fine, fine. Make me a fuckin’ sandwich.”

It feels like I’ve won a war. And the triumphant feeling only gets hotter, and deeper, when he lets me thread my arm through his and drag him back inside.

SIX

EASTON

Normally, I use the gym at the station, because why bother paying membership fees when we have almost everything I need. Only North rightfully pointed out that sometimes we need some space, and several months ago, Ozzie looked like he was on the verge of having a breakdown, so I dragged him to the nicer gym across town with the pool no one used, and now it’s become kind of our thing.

Three months ago, North’s sister started going, and Kaleo, the owner of the Iron Anvil, started calling us Oz and the Wicked Witches.