Page 31 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle
“I have to,” he says again, firmer this time. He won’t even look at me. He’s already halfway turned, like he can’t bear to be here another second, like being near me is agony now.
But being apart from him is agony for me.
“Cal!” I try again, my voice cracking, but he doesn’t stop, even as I watch the sound of his name inside of my sob lash him like a whip. I slap a hand over my mouth, breath catching in my throat as I watch him. His shoulders are hunched like he’s trying to curl in on himself, to shrink down and disappear, but part of him lingers as he steps out the door.
A tentacle trailing behind him. It doesn’t reach for me exactly, but it hovers. Hesitates. Like it’s waiting, aching for me still, the same way I ache for him. Like it doesn’t understand why I’m not still wrapped up in him. The soft curl of it seems confused, pulled toward me by some invisible tether that hasn’t been severed yet.
Then it folds in on itself, slow and reluctant, disappearing along with him.
He’s gone, and I’m alone.
Chapter 6
The Deep
The pull is much, much stronger now. I told him I felt like I needed to be near the water, and that was true—but it never felt like this. Now it feels like there isn’t anywhere else I could possibly be.
I haven’t seen Cal in three days. I haven’t left the attic room in three days. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t showered, I haven’t even really existed in three days. Now I’m here. And not. I’m Schrödinger’s cat, both living and dead, but I don’t give a shit who’s observing me if it isn’t him.
The storm lashes the coast like it’s angry at the land for existing. Wind howls through the dunes, and salt stings my cheeks, whipped up by rain that pelts everything like it can’t decide if it wants to be water or glass. My clothes cling to my skin, soaked through and heavy, and still I walk.
I know better. I know how dangerous this is. I know the tide here, the currents, the riptides. I know the sea is not merciful, not for anyone, and least of all for those who want to be swallowed.
But I miss him. I miss him so much it’s a physical wound, carved deep beneath my sternum, widening with every breath. I can’t feel anything else. I don’t want to.
I know how stupid it is, and it still doesn’t matter.
The water rushes up to my calves. My shoes are discarded somewhere behind me on the beach. I go further.
Thunder cracks across the sky like bones splintering, and the horizon is swallowed in charcoal gray. The sea is the same color as I feel. It moves how I feel too, thrashing and desperate as it claws at the shoreline. It matches the scream echoing in my chest so perfectly I wonder if maybe it came from me.
Up to my thighs now, though I hardly remember moving. My skirt wraps around my legs like it’s trying to hold me back. I keep walking. It doesn’t scare me anymore. If anything, it feels… right. Like slipping back into a dream. Like returning to something I never wanted to leave.
The waves crash against my waist, and the cold is breath-stealing. Lightning forks above me, and I let my head fall back, rain needling down my face, my lashes, the corners of my mouth.
I close my eyes.
Come find me.
If he doesn’t—if I sink below the surface and the ocean takes me—I won’t fight it, because then at least I won’t have to live without him. Iknowhow reckless this is, but I can’t stop it. Ican’tfight the tide in my chest. The tideheput there.
I want to hate him for it, but I can’t even do that.
A wave takes me off my feet out of nowhere.
It slams into me like hitting concrete, and I tumble, weightless and directionless, limbs pinwheeling as I’m dragged down. The world becomes foam and violence and black. Something cracks behind my sternum as the air whooshes out of me—a noise or a feeling or a memory, I can’t tell.
My mouth opens. Saltwater floods in. I let go.
The current spins me like seaweed, and somewhere in the churn, time slips sideways, and so does gravity. I think I’m sinking. Or maybe I’m floating. There’s no up or down in this void.
But something burns. Not water in my lungs, not cold against my skin. There’s a flare behind my eyes, sharp and bright and impossible down here in the blackness. I feel it sharp and stinging like pain that doesn’t belong to me.
It belongs to him.
The realization spears through me like lightning. I gasp—my lungs fill. A pulse echoes in my skull, rapid and panicked, like a heartbeat that’s not my own. I see flashes of light again, and memories exploding in real-time. A hand shoving at the door of the shop. Bare feet slamming wet earth. The blur of trees and wind. Sand flying. A scream that doesn’t reach the air.
His name in my mouth that I can’t say.
