Page 15 of Tides That Bind

“You straight?” He’s breathing heavily, his eyes squinting as they scan mine. “Riley? You good?”

I nod, because all things considered, it could be worse.

We could be dead.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see the other car stop short so I swerved, hit the median and we must’ve bounced off the bridge…Damn. Your head.” Nate lifts the flashlight, but drops his arm quickly before it can peak, almost as if the weight of it is too much.

That’s when I really start freaking out. Because nothing is too much for Nate.

I state the obvious. “We gotta get out of here.”

Water covers my knees. I’ve surfed in some seriously cold water but this deep stuff is so freezing it pierces my damn bones. I push through the throbbing in my head and try to think, to rack my brain that’s already been rattled. I turn to the door, as if it’s that easy.

“You’ll never get it open. We’ve got to wait until the pressure stabilizes.” Nate leans against the headrest and the noise makesme jump. It’s awfully quiet down here. I bet I could hear a pin drop if my heart wasn’t beating louder than a drum in a marching band.

Nate’s hand brushes my shoulder as he reaches between us, sliding the small door leading to the space Tides normally rides in. “We need to break the window. Try back there. My baton should be behind me. We’ve got a minute to get out of here, if that.”

By the time I pull my legs up, water rises to my seat. I turn, reaching the opening that is so small, Lucas might have a hard time squeezing through it.

“Alongside the wall.” Nate lets out an uncomfortable groan. “There’s a baton fastened with velcro.”

My shoulder screams from the unnatural position I rotate it into, but finally my fingertips stretch against the felted wall and graze the rounded, metal bottom of the baton. My teeth slice into the inside of my cheek because of how hard I press my face into the partition, giving it everything I have until I free the baton.

I drop it in front of Nate before collapsing into my seat. Water splashes and the flashlight floats back over to me.

“Okay. We got this.”

When Nate doesn’t give me an encouraging answer, I move the flashlight down to where he stares at his lap.

“Yeah. Yeah, we got this,” I say when the light shows me his fucking femur sticking through his skin below the surface. Past the protruding bone, I catch sight of the rest of Nate’s leg where it sits beneath the water.

What I can see is mangled. The rest of it? Hiding somewhere in the crushed metal of the front corner of the car.

And still, I tell him, “We got this. Just get your seatbelt off.”

“Riley—”

With the flashlight in one shaking hand, I take the baton in the other.

“Seatbelt,” I command again.

I’m looking around frantically, as if I expect to find help inthe darkness—a gang of firefighters with the jaws of life, Nate’s police buddies, the Avengers, the tooth fairy. I’m looking for a miracle.

But what I find, what I feel as my arm skims the rising surface of water that has no business being in a car, is a tulip bulb severed from its stem. It’s counterparts float between us.

Tomorrow is Tulip Tuesday.

I get that we’re already at the bottom of the bay, but my heart sinks to a lower level, even though I fight to keep it where it should be—just a bit higher where there’s still hope.

“Riley—”

“You have a kid.”

I point the light down, and my fingers fumble beneath the water for the button to get his seatbelt off. I can’t look at Nate. I’ll see Lucas in his eyes, in the shape of his mouth, the smallest jut outward of his ears. I’ll fucking lose it and I won’t be able to get us out. I’ll either drown by sea water or my own tears.

“Lucas just turned eight,” I tell him. “You’re supposed to teach him to surf. He wants to go to the Grand Canyon and there’s like a million things he needs a dad for.”

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