I oriented myself with the horizon and started swimming towards land. The water was much colder than I anticipated, but it was calm and the adrenaline was pumping through my veins with each breath I took. I had gone a good distance before I looked back.
The boat was in the same spot and Damian was nowhere in sight. Maybe he’d figured it best to let me go. Maybe it was enough that my father had really experienced my death, felt it, suffered. Whatever his reason, Damian chose not to follow me.
I resumed my strokes. 1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe. I paused after what felt like an eternity, and looked up. I didn’t seem to be any closer to the shoreline. Distances are tricky in the water—what seems like a short distance can take hours. I kicked off my pants, and kept swimming and breathing and swimming and breathing. When the pain in my finger started to subside, I realized my extremities were going numb. I stopped to catch my breath.
The boat was still visible and Damian had now resumed fishing.
Un-fucking-believable. Shouldn’t he be bleeding out from a concussion or fleeing for safety? My father was going to unleash the hounds of hell on him.
I had gone a few more paces when I froze. There was something in the water, a few feet away. It broke through the surface and I caught sight of a black fin. It disappeared, but I could feel its dark form circling around me.
Fuck.
No wonder Damian hadn’t bothered coming after me. We were in shark-infested waters, and I had jumped in with a bandage soaked with blood.
I had single-handedly solved his dilemma of what to do with me.
An hour ago, I’d wanted to drown myself, but I really, really didn’t want to go this way, ripped to pieces by a sea monster with conveyor-belt rows of sharp, pointy teeth.
“Damian!” I started waving my arms. “Damian!”
I didn’t know why I was calling for him. Maybe it’s just basic human instinct to turn to the only person around. Maybe a part of me sensed that somewhere, deep inside, he still held a shred of humanity.
I felt something brush against my feet, something cold and hard. I probably shouldn’t be moving or making so much noise, but I didn’t know how else to get his attention. I removed my waterlogged, bloody bandage and tossed it as far away from me as possible.
“Damian. Help!” I screamed.
I saw him get up and peer into the water. Then he went to the deckhouse and brought out binoculars. I waved frantically while he looked through the lens. The damn thing was circling me openly now, preparing for the kill.
Damian looked a little longer. Then he dropped the binoculars and sat back down. I could see him reach into his tackle box and pull out something.
Yes. A gun. A sniper rifle. A mother-fucking harpoon.
He retrieved something I couldn’t make out, put his feet up and popped something in his mouth.
I choked on a lungful of seawater.
He was eating peanuts while he watched, as if it was time for popcorn and a matinee.
I coughed and flailed around. How could I have even entertained the notion that he would jump to my aid? So he hadn’t killed me. And he’d stopped me from killing myself. But he wasn’t opposed to letting me go this way. The hot blond in shark movies always gets ripped to shreds.
I could feel the water churn around me as the shark got closer. A dark face broke through the surface and I screamed. It disappeared and came forward again. I braced myself, expecting the sharp slice of teeth, but what I got was a beak. I was nose to nose with a smiley-faced dolphin. My heart was still racing a mile a minute when it nudged me, as if to say, “Hey, lighten up.”
I let my breath out in a big splutter that must have startled it, because it drew away. It had a prominent back fin and its flippers were long and slender with pointed tips.
Not a shark, Skye. A dolphin.
And judging by the size of it, a curious baby.
It zoomed around me, showing off its pink underbelly, before turning sharply and swimming away. I made out another form—this one bigger, most likely the mother. The two dolphins exchanged high-pitched squeaks before the little one came back to me. It swam beside me for a while, mimicking my motions, floating when I floated, flipping when I flipped. Then it whistled three times—little dolphin chirps—before taking off.
I watched the mother and calf disappear. I could see the flash of binoculars from the boat. Damian was watching too. He knew the sea, he knew the difference between a shark’s fin and a dolphin’s, and he’d chosen to let me be.
I floated on my back, exhausted, elated, horrified, glorified. I thought I was going to die and yet I’d never felt more alive. I heard the engine rev up and I knew Damian was coming for me. He cut the engine a few feet away from me. I looked longingly at the outline of the land mass on the horizon, but I knew I’d been foolish to think I’d get there. Damian had known that too. He’d just hung back, waiting for me to wear myself out. And it had worked. I couldn’t go any further, float any longer.
I would have to plan things more carefully next time.
I climbed up the ladder at the back of the boat and flopped, belly down, on the deck.
Damian continued fishing.