The lifejacket rips from my arm.
Gone in an instant.
We go under, grabbing at each other. Fabric. Flesh. Wide eyes and panicked limbs. “Oscar!”
He tries to answer, but water floods us again and a loose crate slams into us.
I’m too dazed to know where it hits me. Blood coats my tongue and my ears ring. I feel myself slipping, but Oscar hauls me in, angling us towards theSirona.
“We need to get back.”
His urgent shout breaks through.
I grip his jacket and kick for the boat, limbs heavy with cold, but it’s like swimming through clay. TheSironalooms in front of us, but we can’t reach her. And then she’s gone, eclipsed by the thickening squall, and the waves upend us so much I forget where to look.
I can’t see her.
The rain blinds me. Thunder so close it vibrates in my bones.
A wave tears us apart. I catch Oscar by sheer luck, but we’re not swimming anymore. Instead the sea carries us, deciding our fate, and I’m resigned to it until my girl reappears through a gap in the rain, swamped and listing, lights flickering.
No.
I kick again, pulling Oscar with me.
He’s dead weight and I twist around to see his eyes rolling. “Oscar?”
No answer.
I shout his name again, wrenching my body around to hold his face in my hands, the way I do when Jack has slipped away from me.
Jack.
He’s the blood in my veins. The spark that keeps my heart beating. The iron will that gives me the energy to shake Oscar back to awareness. “Stay with me. We have to keep swimming.”
Oscar fights to stay conscious. He mouths something.
I lean closer to catch it. “What?”
“High.”
My cold-shocked brain thinks he means the waves. I shake him again. “I know. But we have to swim.”
Oscar says something else, but a raging swell obliterates us and it’s all I can do to hold on. To keep him above water as his strength seems to evaporate.
Did he hit his head?
No. That was me.
And it’s starting to not matter. We’ve been in the water too long. Even if we reach the boat, if she’s not sound, we’ll be dead from hypothermia before the wind fades.
Jack.
Gods. Aras.
I wind my arm around Oscar’s chest and kick and kick and kick. By some miracle, the next few swells are kind to us. We near theSironaand I think we’re going to make it. Then a breaker hits her stern. She buckles, she rolls, and the sea closes over her like she was never there.
My mouth falls open in a silent scream.