Page 133 of Surfer's Paradise

Isaac could barely nod.

Pain radiated from his side, sharp and unrelenting.

Dom’s eyes stayed locked on his, assessing, before he signaled up.

Time to ascend.

Isaac didn’t argue.

His body was wrecked, ribs screaming, vision still frayed at the edges.

He needed to get to the surface.

Dom didn’t let go.

Didn’t leave his side.

And Isaac knew—without him, he wouldn’t have made it.

He was alive because of him.

And that?

That was a debt he’d never be able to repay.

Chapter 25

Balboa Naval Medical Center, San Diego

Isaac came to with a start.

Not in a hospital bed.

Not in the sterile, fluorescent-lit haze of an ER.

But on a gurney, the harsh rumble of an ambulance engine vibrating beneath him, the distant wail of sirens cutting through the static in his head.

Fuck.

Pain splintered through his ribs, sharp and relentless, spreading across his torso with every shallow breath. His vision swam as he tried to move, but a firm hand on his shoulder pinned him down.

“Stay still, dumbass,” Dom’s voice cut through the haze, dry and unimpressed. “You’re fine. Just act like it for a second.”

Isaac blinked hard, trying to push through the fog in his head.

The last thing he remembered—

The crush of water, the twist of the current, the cracking pain in his ribs, the fucking suffocating burn of drowning.

And Dom.

Hauling him up.

Keeping him breathing.

Now, he was here.

The wail of sirens, the IV taped to his arm, Dom sitting in the jump seat of the ambulance, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

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