I screamed for my dad, but he was fighting with the flooded engine. I threw out the life buoy. It danced around in the wild waves, like a bright kite that I had to maneuver.

Rhys couldn’t catch it. He kept reaching, but then his hand didn’t come back up. Or his head. The waves tossed him again, and I could barely see his shadow in the storm.

I jumped in after him. Darkness and chaos. Water in my lungs.

I woke up six weeks later in the hospital. It became a local legend, the way I snapped my brother out of the jaws of death. I didn’t even get hurt, aside from the pneumonia that I caught after. Plenty of girls in high school were ready to visit the back of my truck based on my reputation. Rhys never forgave me for being the hero of that story.

The feeling in the water, of knowing that I’m being tossed and turned by a force much more powerful than myself, being unable to see, to breathe, to think—that’s what it felt like to get custody of Paige. Darkness and chaos. Water in my lungs.

Somewhere in hell Rhys probably doesn’t forgive me for being here, either.

Here in my study—his study—with a beautiful woman.

“Harder,” I tell her, and she listens to me like a good girl, biting at my lips, pounding at my chest with her tiny fists. It’s like being attacked by a hummingbird.

“Why am I doing this?” she asks, breathless.

“Because you’re angry, and I’m the one close to you.”

“I’m not—I can’t be angry.”

She can’t be angry because there’s not enough space in her life for that.

There’s only survival.

The world has a lot to answer for. Reading her file made me angry. Looking at the hospital records made me nauseous. Actually talking to her social worker on the phone made me want to burn everything down. She was raised like a feral cat behind the barn.

I should leave her alone. Send her back to that boy in Houston. Let them get married and have babies. They would live near the poverty line, the two of them, but they’d love their kids. They would be the kind of parents Paige never had.

I should leave her alone, but I won’t. I want her too bad.

“I can’t stop thinking about your pussy,” I murmur.

Her eyes go wide. “I thought we could pretend that didn’t happen.”

What did she think was going to happen? That I was going to feel her swollen, slick pussy and not come back for more? “You can pretend. Pretend to be surprised when I touch you, pretend to be shocked when you come.”