But I felt suddenly . . . bereft. That was it? After two hours together?

It wasn’t. In a glorious whoosh of water that pulled around my legs, Honey and her mama circled us, once, then twice, and for one beautiful second, we could hear their clicking and squeaking.

Then they were ten feet away, surfacing for air side by side, then twenty, and then they disappeared, indiscernible from the choppy waves in the darkening sea.

“They thanked you,” Noah said, wonder in his voice. “Now that doesn’t happen every day.”

I was crying with the beauty of it. Wrapped my arms around Noah and sobbed, then kissed him full on the mouth, tasting the salt of my tears and the ocean.

“Okay, dolphin girl,” he said, pushing my wet hair off my face. “Let’s get you home.”

— —

Because God obviously approved of my efforts, the power came on five minutes after we got back to the house. Pepper greeted us ecstatically, and I bent down to kiss her. “We did it! She’s back with her mommy! All because you saw her, Pepper!” I swear she knew what I meant, because she did a victory lap around the downstairs, found her squeaky possum toy and started the musical portion of our evening.

“Go take a hot shower before you get hypothermia,” Noah said, scrubbing a hand through his wet hair. “Your lips are blue.”

“You go take a hot shower before you get hypothermia,” I said. “You were just a Good Samaritan, whereas Pepper and I have trained for this all our lives.”

He rolled his eyes (fondly, I thought). “Don’t be dumb, Sadie. You were out there a lot longer than I was.”

“Warmed by my love of marine mammals, though.”

“Get in the shower.”

“I have to see if my phone will dry out.”

“Forget your phone.”

“I have to post something on social media so the world knows of my greatness.”

“Damn you, Sadie,” he growled, and then—finally—he was on me, mouth on mine, arms around me, tongue against mine. He lifted me up on the butcher block, muttering, “I could’ve made something a lot better than this piece of crap,” before yanking open my jacket, pushing it down my arms so I was pinned. He kissed me like he was drowning, dying, and I was the only one who could save him.

And you know, saving was kind of my thing that day, so I wrapped my legs around him and kissed him back, freeing one arm so I could grip his wet hair.

“I have eight minutes of hot water in that tank,” I said, gasping a little. “Let’s make them count.”