I pushed hard, counting my rapid compressions under my breath and watched Sophia’s body move beneath the deliberate thrusts of my hands. Saltwater ran into my eyes, stinging and burning, but I blinked, trying to alleviate the worst of it. My hands were forcing her heart to keep pumping blood, and the oxygen it carried with it, through her body and to her brain. I wasn’t about to stop so I could wipe my eyes.
. . . twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . . thirty.
I tilted her head back to open her airway, pinched her nose, and lowered my mouth to cover hers. Her lips were cold as I forced air in. One breath—and another—and I sat back on my heels, struggling to catch my own.
“No, Sophia,” I shouted.
This time when I started the compressions, I leaned into them. I put the full force of my upper body into the sharp movements, jolting her shoulders on each stroke. I could feel a crunch beneath my palm, and the sound it made was audible, ripping through me like a gunshot.
“Don’t stop,” Hilde barked.
For once, it didn’t bother me to take an order from someone else.
I resumed what I had to do, blocking out the idea of the physical damage I was inflicting on this beautiful girl who’d said she was in love with me.
The thirtieth compression done, I pinched her nose and once again sealed my mouth over hers.
I’d been alone when I’d discovered Julia in the forest, her head bloody and awkwardly resting against a tree stump while her horse aimlessly grazed nearby. My wife had been breathing at the time, and those shallow breaths were what held back my desire to move her until the ambulance arrived. I’d worried about her spine, not knowing it was already too late. The bleed inside her skull would only build in pressure as time advanced, and three days later I was a widower and my sons were motherless.
And I’d been alone when I’d found Marist crawling up the stairs in her green dress, nearly too weak from the poison inside her to tell me she was dying.
Twice in my life, I’d been utterly powerless.
I did not have the strength to bear it a third time.
“Fucking unacceptable,” I bellowed, loud enough for the world to hear me.
Failure wasn’t a word I allowed in my vocabulary, and until this moment, neither was desperation. But I would take that word gladly now and let it have me, if I could avoid the first one. I heaved my hands against Sophia’s chest, pushing her physically and pleading mentally to not let this be the end. There were plans I’d laid and things I did not want left unspoken between us.
The exertion of it took its toll.
The cold wind swept over my soaked skin, making me shiver, and my chest burned with fatigue, forcing my eyes to water. Or perhaps those were tears trying to form in the corners of my eyes, but it’d been two decades since I’d last experienced it, and the sensation was unfamiliar.
“Wait!” Hilde threw an arm across my chest, bringing me to a halt.
Sophia’s lips parted, and her quiet, strangled attempt for breath sent a wave of emotion crashing into me that was so powerful, I let out a cry of relief.
Hilde shoved her hands under Sofia’s drenched body, trying to turn her. “Get her on her side.”
We rolled her carefully away from us into the recovery position.
“You’re okay,” Hilde said over the steady drum of the engine, rubbing her palm in soothing circles on Sophia’s back, while I simply knelt there, my hand gripping Sofia’s shoulder. I couldn’t make myself let go.
She coughed, and then retched with a pitiful sound, seawater expelling from her over the side of the boat. I’d told her I didn’t want her to throw up on my yacht, yet now I was grateful for it. It meant she was alive.
“Oh, God,” she croaked, lifting a shaky hand to wipe her mouth.
I exhaled loudly at her voice and squeezed her arm, saying it for my benefit as much as hers. “Sophia, it’s all right.”
She tried to sit up, but instead I shifted her into my arms and pressed my lips to her forehead. The whimper she gave tore me into shreds.
I went still. “Where are you hurt?”
Her throat was undoubtably raw from the ordeal, so it was hard to hear her gravelly voice. “It hurts everywhere.”
The swells were big, and we were going fast enough to put air under the bow, and as it came crashing down, the three of us jostled on the platform. We couldn’t stay here. Hilde had the same thought, and we exchanged a look.
“I can carry her,” I announced.
It was a bitter knife sliding through me as I collected Sophia in my arms and stood, making her moan with pain. Her wet, black dress was molded to her body, and damp clumps of her hair flew erratically in the wind as I mounted the steps, struggling to get us both to the lounge area just beyond the cockpit.