Page 104 of Sexy as Sin
Brett didn’t remember getting in the water. He was just there, swimming to her, amazed in one part of his brain that he still knew how. The life vest held him up, and then he had her.
She jerked against him in protest, then opened her eyes and her mouth like she was going to scream. She said, “Brett. You came,” heaved in a breath, then cried out. “Hurts. Something’s wrong. Inside.Hurts.”
The boat turned a tight circle, and the kid tossed Brett a line. Three people in a too-small boat. He wrapped it twice around his hand, got Willow more firmly under the arms, hauled her back against him, and yelled to the kid, “Pull us in.”
“You got her, mate?” the kid asked.
“I’ve got her,” Brett said. “And I’m not going to let go.”
The dolphins followed them almost all the way.
Willow woke up slowly. She didn’t want to. She hurt.
She could hear Brett talking from the other room, and she could see light seeping in around the drawn blinds, so it was daytime, and she was at his house. Butwhichday? She’d woken and slept, woken and slept, so many times, she had no idea. She got herself off the bed, which made her gasp some, and hobbled into the living room, where Brett was sitting at the table, making notes on a yellow legal pad while he talked.
When he saw her, he said, “I’ll call you back,” and rang off. That was nice.
She said, “I’m going to... brush my teeth. In a... minute. But I wanted to see you first. What day is it?”
“Wednesday morning. One day later. And you’re breathing too shallowly. Take those deep breaths.”
She wanted to say,It hurts,but he knew it hurt. She tried, and it hurt. Heaps.
“Did you take a pill?” he asked.
“No. I was a bit... confused.”
“Sit down. I’ll get one. Actually, two.”
She thought,Crikey, you’re bossy,but she sat down, and he came back with the bottle and a glass of water. He even took the tablets out and handed them to her. “No pneumonia,” he said. “That’s an order.”
“On the plus side,” she said, trying to breathe through the words, and the fire in her chest, the pain everywhere, “cracking a couple of ribs makes me think you were even tougher, with that leg. On the minus side... ouch.”Everythinghurt, like her entire body was one big bruise, because it was. Her ankles weren’t broken, but they felt like it.
“Not to mention,” Brett said, “that you were saved by dolphins. I’m beginning to think you reallyarea mermaid.”
“Saved by you, too, mate. I didn’t say enough yesterday. I didn’t...” She was tearing up. Again. It had to stop, but she couldn’t make it happen. “That was too hard. I know what that took.”
“It wasn’t, though.” He sat down beside her and took her hand like he could see straight into her heart. “It was an easy choice all the way. Doesn’t mean I didn’t wake up sweating about five times last night imagining it turning out differently. I’m taking swimming lessons. Time to face this thing down and get over it. I don’t want to be wondering, next time, if I can hold you up.”
“There’s not going to be a next time. How many times in your life are you in a hot-air balloon accident?”
He tightened his hold on her hand and said, “I don’t think it was an accident.”
Something clicked into place in her mind, like a key opening a lock, even through the pain and the fuzziness. She could almost hear it happen. “You don’t?”
“No.”
The lock was open, so was the door, and she could see inside to the thing that had nagged at her through the ride in Brett’s car to the same hospital where he’d been taken. She’d lain on the back seat with her head in his lap, and he’d kept his arms around her and had talked to her the whole way, keeping her there with him. She’d thought,Thanks, mate,and still, that memory had nagged.
Later, too, on the bed in A&E. Thinking about the moment when the dolphins had appeared, like a sign and a talisman, telling her not to give up, to have faith, because there was protection in the world. And then thinking about the moment when she’d opened her eyes and Brett had somehow been in the water with her, holding her up, and she’d known she could let go of the effort and the fear and let him do it. And all the while, there’d been that connection knocking at the door, trying to get itself made.
She said, “That balloon accident,” and Brett said, “Yeah,” like he knew. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe, for that matter. But she had to tell him this. “It was onNeighbours,a couple seasons back. I watched it, even though I don’t watch often, because it was so hyped up. Season finale.”
“What was? And what’s Neighbors?”
“TV soap, a big thing in Oz, been on for longer than I’ve been alive. They had a cliffhanger season finale that was a...” She had to stop and take some breaths again. “A hot-air balloon crash.”
