It was Trey’s way of saying, I’ve got you covered if anything happens, and were it anyone else Dani would have probably shot back, “You first. By all means …”
Instead she just nodded and said. “Up to you. Last one down buys the beer,” and steeling her nerves, pulled into the chute. She never felt there was a run she couldn’t make it down, even this one with more water than she’d ever handled. She knew the trick was to keep the approach steady and hit the falls head-on so that the crosscurrents wouldn’t pitch you to one side, which was what had happened to Tom. Dani felt her speed pick up and strained to hold her line, but the whooshing current was stronger than she anticipated and pitched her around. As she got within six feet of the drop, she knew she was off-line, the back of her raft knocking against a rock, spinning the bow sideways. Her heart leaped up and she tried to correct, but there was no way she was strong enough to push this powerful a current around.
Fear gripping her, she basically went over the edge sideways.
To this day, she recalled the sensation of her heart toppling even faster than the raft, before being slammed by the icy water headfirst, as hard as if she had barreled into a wall. Her helmet knocked into something hard—a rock, the bottom?—and then the desperate, helpless realization that she was out of the craft in Class Five water.
Over the years, she’d wiped out a hundred times—everyone had. Tom had just a moment before. That’s how you learned. Spread your arms and get your feet forward and try to hold onto the line to your craft, she told herself.
But the line slipped out of her grasp. She felt her kayak shoot off ahead of her and when she tried to position her legs forward, it was like they were caught up in something.
It took her a second for her to realize: She was underwater.
Her first mistake was to try to yell, which sent a rush of icy water into her lungs. She gagged. She quickly got her wits back, realizing, though the fall was disorienting, that she’d been caught in some kind of whirlpool—fierce water swirling around. And even with her senses dulled and the knifing sensation of icy water in her lungs, she knew to make herself as still as she could and not to panic nor fight what was happening. Let the vortex release her and lift her up. She’d practiced it a hundred times.
But this time it didn’t.
A frantic fear began to set in. Being thrashed around, not knowing up from down, her eyes stung by frigid water like dozens of bees attacking her, the coldness in her lungs sapping her strength.
Stay calm, she told herself, stay calm. But in her agitation, seconds seemed like minutes. She had no idea how long she was under and she feared she would lose her breath. Her mouth opened, water spilling into her lungs. Numbing her. For the first time in her life she felt fear on the river. Her instincts failed her. It took everything she had to suppress the basic urge to scream.
Please stay calm, Dani. Somehow. Don’t struggle against it. The eddy will free you. You know what to do.
She realized Chase and Tom were way too far downstream to help. No way they could make their way back up against that current.
And Trey, sooner or later, he would realize what had happened. Chase had probably already given him the sign. But how long would he wait to see if she came through? Or if, coming after her, he’d nail the run perfectly and be swept right past.
Panic started to rush into her blood like the icy water in her lungs. She began to feel the very real fear that this could be it for her.
Let me up. Let me up. Dani started to struggle against it, which she knew was the wrong thing.
Please.
On the deck with Blu, looking up at the starry sky, Dani was gripped by the same sensation as if it were yesterday. One she’d never felt until that moment.
And hadn’t since.
The overwhelming feeling she was giving up.
That she was going to die.
In the river, she felt water all over her, icy and black, the irony that something she loved so much was now about to kill her. In that moment, her mind actually began to drift, to a scene from her childhood, her mother telling her she was too young to go out on the river by herself. She’d have to wait another year. She was maybe ten then. Then—
She felt herself being lifted back up. It’s working, she remembered thinking, sure that the current was giving her up.
But it wasn’t the current. It was Trey, a hand clamped onto her wet-suit collar, the other hanging on to a rock. Pulling her out. She broke free and sucked a desperate breath into her lungs. She gasped over and over, coughing out water, throwing her eyes back at the beautiful blue sky, heaving.
Free.
“I’ve got you, Dani. I’ve got you,” she remembered Trey saying. “You were in an eddy. But you can relax. Breathe in. I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”
She clung to him like he was a buoy in the middle of the ocean, and she wanted to cry.
“Jeez, and all the really hard stuff is still a ways downstream …” He grinned at her, in that offhand way of his and with a wink that at any other time she would have wanted to throw a punch at. But this time she just smiled and hugged him, nodding, wiping away the tears. He positioned her on his chest, feet forward, between his legs, and they followed the current downstream back to her raft.
She stayed with them and finished the Kirshbaum as if it were a Three.
What’s this all about? Wade had asked, not knowing what lay at the heart.
She owed Trey. Owed him everything. He hadn’t given up on her.
No way she was about to give up on him.
Especially now.
That’s what this was about.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN