Page 162 of The Love Haters

Was it reasonable in any way to ask an entire Coast Guard flight crew to endanger their lives for a woman who should never have even come to Florida in the first place?

Seriously. What was I even doing here—clinging to a half-sunk boat in the ocean?

Hum something, Hutch had said.

Fine. But the only song I could think of was the one Hutch always hummed. “Heart and Soul.” Good thing he hadn’t ordered me to sing—because I didn’t know the words.

Remember when I said it was only a matter of time before the water-filled boat sank, dragging its one last working pontoon with it?

Next, theRue the Dayhissed like theTitanic—and then groaned loud enough to startle me into letting go.

This baby was sinking for real.

On instinct, I started swimming away.

And then, from a few feet away, I turned back to watch in horror as theRue the Daysighed… and then sank away under the waves.

Like,sanksank.

Like,disappeared under the surfacesank.

And then I really was alone.

I thought about Lucky—our valiant little nonpoisonous friend, gone down with the ship. I watched bubbles churn the surface for a few minutes, hoping he might pop up, sputtering, and I could swim over to rescue him.

But there was no toad in sight.

Poor little guy. He’d survived all that just to drown in the end.

I said a little prayer for him before what happened next: the undamaged pontoon broke away from the boat’s body down below—and shotinto the air nearby, like a whale breaching, before slapping back down onto the ocean’s surface in the distance.

Then all I could do was wait, treading water in my life jacket.

There are no words for the stark loneliness of being left alone in a vast ocean that way. I might as well have been on Mars. It was bad before, but at least, then, I’d had a boat—and a dog—to hold on to. Now there was no one and nothing.

Nothing but the memory of Hutch’s “chumming the water” comment.

Also his comment about thumping soundssummoning predators.

Was that really my next worry?Being eaten by sharks?Hutch had said that sharks didn’t see us as prey—but that was before there was literal blood in the water. Then I remembered hypothermia, and how you could get it even in warm climates. How long would that take, exactly? I spent some time considering which was worse:eaten by sharksorparadoxical undressing.You’d die either way, of course. But was the agony of being torn limb from limb better than the humiliation of being discovered naked?

Tough call.

I’d always thought there was some upper limit to how many bad things the universe was legally allowed to send your way… but maybe not.

I looked up at the helicopter. They hadn’t flown away yet—but they hadn’t come back, either.

Was George Bailey okay? WasHutchokay?

The Coast Guard wouldn’t really leave me here, would they?

Then, like an answer, the helicopter started moving back in—lower and closer.

The ocean spray whipped up again.

I saw the legs dangling again, knowing now for sure they were Hutch’s, unless I had truly lost all grasp on reality, and the flippers—dammit, thefins—and the free fall.

I started swimming toward Hutch as he sprinted toward me.

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