He’s real.

He’s here.

I can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think, can’t process. I’m cold. I’m thirsty. My brain is full of cotton.

He’s in front of me, and I see his mouth moving, but I hear nothing.

His hair is long, hanging past his chin, lank and wet, sticking to his cheeks and neck. His face is obscured by a beard, wild and unkempt and thick, also wet. A long scar runs across his forehead, into his hair, a thick, ropy, pinkish line of puckered skin. He’s thinner than he’s ever been, but healthy looking despite that. His eyes search mine. His warm, familiar eyes sear into me, lush deep liquid brown, bleeding emotion.

I want to cry, but I can’t; I want to reach for him, but I can’t—I’m too weak, too tired, too cold. All I can do is stare at him, trying to process that it’s really, really him. He’s alive. He’s here. He’s real. My Christian, my husband, my best friend…I’ve finally found him.

What happened? I don’t remember.

I’m so tired.

My eyes won’t stay open. I don’t want to fall asleep, though. I fight it. If I fall asleep, he’ll be gone when I awake.

His hand is cold and clammy as he cups my cheek; I can finally hear his voice. “Sleep, Ava. Sleep, my love. I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here when you wake up. I’ll never leave your side again, I swear.”

His hand on my hand. His cheek against mine.

Never leave my side again…

I have a momentary glimpse at the maelstrom of emotions swirling inside me, all the things I’ve been repressing and suppressing and ignoring and halfheartedly sorting through, all the emotions I’ve not known how to even begin to let myself feel. There’s so much; too much. A glimpse at that storm of emotions inside me, just a glimpse, makes my heart twist and slam, and then I push it all aside. I’m too tired, too cold. I can’t stay awake. I can’t deal with any of that. Not yet.

I stare at Christian, squeeze his hand in mine, and then I feel my eyes sliding closed and I can’t fight sleep anymore.

---

I wake up briefly, but fall back asleep again. I have no idea how much time has passed.

Next time I wake, I see that I have an IV in my arm.

When I wake up yet again, Christian is nearby on another bed, also with an IV in his arm, and he’s asleep, facing me, mouth open, snoring lightly. I stare at him, taking in his features. He’s changed so much. Thinner, harder. Long hair and beard where he was once clean-shaven and kept his hair neatly cut. The scar on his forehead belies some of what has happened to him since he left Florida all those months ago.

His eyes open and meet mine.

We just stare at each other, locking gazes for I don’t know how long.

There’s so much to say, but neither of us is ready to say any of it.

I’ll never leave your side again, I swear.

My eyes struggle to stay open. I fall asleep with Christian’s eyes on me.

---

“…Storm’s finally blown itself out.” I hear the rough twang of the doctor’s voice. “Captain says the storm has put us behind schedule, and going out of our way to find you and Ava has put us even more behind, so we can’t afford the time to detour out of our way to take you anywhere.”

“So what are our options?” I hear Christian ask.

“There’s a Coast Guard cutter about a hundred miles from our position. They’re sending a helo to pick you two up, and they’ll see you home.”

“Okay. When will they be here?”

“Helo’s on its way already, so shouldn’t be too much longer.”

I finally feel as if I can function again, though I’m groggy and my stomach aches with hunger and I have to pee. I work myself to a sitting position just in time to see the doctor—a grizzled, silver-haired, silver-bearded man with a heavy paunch and broad shoulders—turning to exit the room. Christian is sitting on his cot, opposite me. His hair, dry now, shows streaks of gray, and his beard is also shot with gray. I would know him anywhere, no matter what he looked like, but he is nearly unrecognizable.

“We’re transferring to a Coast Guard cutter,” he says.

I nod. “I heard.”

Silence.

“Where will we go?” I ask.

He frowns at me, confused. “Home?”

I shake my head. “Our home is gone, Christian.”

He slides off the bed and pads barefoot across the room to sit on the edge of my cot. I shift aside and he wiggles further on, and my feet press against his thigh.

“Gone?” he asks. “What do you mean, our home is gone?”

I duck my head, sighing. “The hurricane that wrecked your ship all those months ago? It hit Florida, too. Basically leveled half of Ft. Lauderdale. The stretch of beach where our condo was located was one of the hardest hit areas.” I close my eyes, trying to shut out the memories. “I…it was bad, Chris. Really, really bad.”

“Holy shit. Are you serious?”

I nod. “The condo is…gone. The whole building is gone. The buildings next to it are too. That entire stretch of beach and everything for miles around it were all just…ruined.”

His brown eyes search me. “Were you…were you there, when it hit?”

I nod again, swallowing hard. “Yeah, I…I was.”

He takes my hand in his—the touch of his skin is electric, making me tingle all over, making my heart thrum and hammer. Just my hand in his makes it hard for me to think, and I don’t know whether to take my hand away or never let go.

“Were you hurt?”

“God, Chris—it was so terrible. I almost died. When I realized how bad the storm was I got in the tub with a bottle of water. I tried to get Darcy and Bennet in with me, but they were too scared and they wouldn’t stay. Before I could even try to get them back, the roof collapsed, trapping me in the tub. I don’t…I don’t know what happened to Darcy and Bennet. I like to think they got out, that they got away okay, but I—I don’t know.” My voice breaks. “I was in there for a long time, for days, and the only reason I survived at all was because I had that bottle of water.”

“Days?” His voice is shaky. “You were trapped for days?

I stare at the floor. “I ran out of water toward the end. I was so weak I couldn’t even shout. I heard things nearby…voices, machines, and the rubble shifting around me. I was sure the building was going to shift and I’d be crushed, or that I’d just die of dehydration. But then I heard people close, like just a few feet away, clearing rubble. I was so weak and tired, but I knew my best chance for getting rescued was making noise, so I kicked and punched and shouted until my voice was hoarse and my hands and feet were bleeding. They heard me. I heard them shouting that they had found a survivor. Then I felt things moving as they started digging to get to me.”

“Holy shit.” Christian is stunned. “I can’t believe you went through that.”

“Jonny found me.”

Christian just stares at me. “He…what? Jonny, my friend Jonny? He found you?”

I nod. “He was the one who pulled me out of the wreckage.”

“He survived the shipwreck? How? And why was he there?”

“He got rescued, and came to deliver your box, like he promised he would, and to explain what had happened to you and him out on the ocean. When he realized the storm had wrecked the building we lived in—I lived in—he stayed to help.”

Christian is floored, and I see tears in his eyes. “You almost died, and I wasn’t there.”

“You were gone—and Jonny had no idea if you were alive or dead. He assumed dead, but we…we wanted to hope you’d made it somehow.”

“Where is he?” Christian asks. “How’d you get here?”

“That’s a long story.” I swallow hard. “A really, really long story.”

At that moment, the doctor came through the door. “Your ride’s here, kids.”

“Thank you, Doc,” Christian says, standing up and reaching out to shake his hand.

“Didn’t really do much but put in an IV and make sure you got some rest. The boat captains are the real heroes.” He glanced at us in turn. “You two beat all the odds, you know. Someone up there must be looking out for you in a big way.”

Christian’s laugh is wry. “This is the second time, for me. I was shipwrecked almost a year ago under similar circumstances.”

The doctor stares at him in disbelief. “Son, if I were you, I’d get back to dry land and I’d stay there for good. A man’s only got so much luck.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Christian looks at me as he says this, and I feel a thickness in the air between us—a chasm of unexpressed, unspoken, unanswered questions.

We’re each given a hooded zip-up sweatshirt with the name of the freighter embroidered on the right breast, and a pair of flip-flops. Mine are several sizes too big, and I have to walk carefully to avoid tripping. The walk from the infirmary to the deck is a long, winding, confusing journey, and without the doctor to guide us I would have been lost immediately. We ascend several sets of stairs that are so steep they’re nearly ladders, and then the doctor—whose name I still don’t know—opens a door, revealing a flood of daylight. We step through and I smell the sea and hear the rush of the wind. A few steps out on the deck, and I’m immediately dizzied by the scope of the vessel we’re on. The sea is far, far below, and the deck extends so far in both directions it seems endless. White-capped waves are tiny ripples in the distance. I hear helicopter rotors chopping at the air somewhere behind and above us. The doctor leads us along a walkway, and a metal railing is all that separates us from a fifty or sixty-foot drop to the water. Another ladder-like set of stairs, this one outside, leads up to the helicopter landing pad, the yellow “H” unmistakable. The helicopter is an enormous red and white hulk, its rotor a spinning blur. A door in the side is open, and a Coast Guard crewmember is hunched in the opening waving to us. The pilot is visible in the cockpit, wearing a headset. The wash from the rotors is monstrously powerful, and I have to lean forward and stagger into it to make headway toward the aircraft.

The doctor shakes our hands, wishes us luck, and then the crewman, wearing a helmet and headset, shows us to our seats, and helps us fasten our five-point harnesses. Once we’re buckled in, he says something over the headset, and I hear something shift in the noise of the rotors—a thrum of power spooling up. And then I feel a lurch, and the side door is still open even as we ascend. The crewman slides the door closed, takes his seat and fastens his harness. I feel us tilt and twist, and then our nose dips and my stomach lurches as we are propelled forward.

Instinctively, I reach out and take Christian’s hand, tangling our fingers and squeezing hard at the sudden rush of speed, so different from the sensation of being on a jetliner. This is raw, visceral, and frightening. I squeeze his hand, and feel his grip on mine in return.

It shouldn’t feel awkward to hold my husband’s hand, but it is.

Instead of dwelling on that, I look out the window, watch as the massive freighter disappears behind us, and then we’re alone in the air and the ocean is a vast, flat, rippling expanse of blue, nothing but water in every direction. I begin to understand, then, what the doctor meant about the odds of being found. Even being out on the ocean on Dominic’s boat, even seeing the charts and mentally comprehending the size of the ocean, it’s not until now, until I’m several hundred feet in the air gazing out at an endless sea, that I truly begin to grasp the scope of it.

Being rescued as we were? It’s like trying to find a specific grain of sand on the beach.

The journey to the Coast Guard cutter takes a lot longer than I thought it would.

Christian and I hold hands through the entire trip, but we don’t talk. We have headsets but, with the pilot and crewman connected as well, there’s nothing we’re willing to say. Not yet.

We land on a USCG cutter, a massive, warlike ship bustling with activity. A serious young woman in a Coast Guard uniform guides us through the narrow hallways to a cabin with a single cot and a desk bolted to the wall. The room is little more than a cubicle, barely big enough for one person to stand up in.

“Short on space,” the woman says, tersely. “You’ll have to share. Tight, but it’ll do for the night.”

“It’s fine, thank you,” Christian says. “Do you know if we’re staying with you guys all the way back to the States?”

She shakes her head. “No idea. Someone will be along within the hour to take you in for a meeting with the captain.”

“Thank you again.” Christian smiles at her.

She nods curtly, and takes her leave.

And just like that, we’re alone, sitting side by side on the bed.

It hits me then, truly, that it’s been eight months since Christian went missing, and a year and a half since he left.

I haven’t seen my husband in a year and a half.

The silence between us is so thick, so tense, and so awkward that it is physically painful.

“Ava, I—”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk yet,” I cut in.

He nods. “I know what you mean.”

“There’s just…so much.”

I know we are both thinking the same thing: a lot has happened between us, and there is a lot to say.

“It’s been almost seventeen months,” Christian says. “Since I—since…”

“Since you left me?” I say, my voice tinged with bitterness.

“Yes.” He says this with a pained, resigned sigh. “Since I left you.”

I rub my face with both hands. “I’m sorry, I just—”

He interrupts me this time, which is good, because I have no idea what I was going to say. “When we do talk, it’s not going to be easy. Or short.”

“Right,” I agree. “Which is why I’m not ready. And this…this isn’t the place for it.”

“No, it’s not. So we’ll wait until we’re somewhere where we’ll have time and privacy.”

I nod. “Which raises the question…where are we going?”

Christian leans back against the wall, groaning. “Everything’s gone, you said?”

I nod. “There was pretty much nothing left of the building.” I have to stifle a sob. “Everything we owned. Our photos, our mementos, family keepsakes, everything. It’s all gone.”

It’s his turn to rub his face with both hands. “Shit. I don’t know, Ava. I don’t know where to go.”

“We don’t have many options. Your mom’s, or my parents, or we pick somewhere and start over.”

“My mom’s place is not an option,” he says.

“Mom and Dad would take us in and give us a chance to figure things out.” I hesitate. “But I just…I don’t like that idea. It doesn’t feel right. Not with everything that’s happened…not with everything we have to figure out.”

“I agree with you there.”

I glance at him. “So…where do we go?”

He shrugs. “I have no idea. Anywhere pop into your mind?”

I laugh. “Not even remotely.”

“I mean, we could look at this as an opportunity to start over, right?” He lifts a hand in a vague gesture. “A fresh start, a new page, all that. Anywhere we want, you know?”

Silence.

“You told the doctor you’d been thinking about getting to land and not going back out to sea…” I start, hesitating, and then continue. “So what if we picked somewhere not on a coast. Not by the ocean.”

“I was thinking the same thing, but part of me just…even if I never go to sea again, would I go crazy not being near the water? The ocean has been a major part of my life for so long, you know?”

“But wouldn’t that make it easier to start over? Being away from it would make it easier to let that part of your life go, I’d think.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”

More silence.

He glances at me. “Let’s start by narrowing a few things down. Are we interested in a major city, living in a suburb, or being out in the country?”

I blink at him, and then hear myself asking the question that’s been burning inside me. “You’re assuming we’re going to be together. That there’s still an us.”

I see panic blaze onto his face. “I was assuming that, yeah.” He doesn’t shy away from letting me see everything he’s feeling, the fear, the panic, the pain. “You don’t want that?”

“I didn’t say that.” I don’t hide my own welter of emotions—confusion, pain, fear, and uncertainty. “We have so much to deal with, and neither one of us knows how things are going to unfold.”

He stares at me for a long time, clearly deep in thought. And then, hesitantly, he speaks, turning his eyes away, looking down at the bed. “I…I know that we…we made a mess of things, Ava. Things are fucked up, and there’s no getting around that. But unless you don’t want me, unless you don’t want there to be an us, then I hope we can assume there’s an us, that there’s a future for us. That we’ll figure it out, somehow—together.”

“Chris, I sailed away from everything I knew—or what was left of it, at least—on a small fishing trawler with a bunch of men I didn’t know in order to look for you.” Our eyes meet again, and I see…so much, in his gaze. “I had to look for you because I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like, what it would feel like, without you. Without knowing if you were even alive. And now that we’re back together, I still don’t know what life is going to look like, or what’s going to happen, but I—you’re alive, Christian. You’re here. And I don’t think I’m even capable of walking away from you. Not after all this. So… yeah. I want to try and figure it out.”

He lets out a sob, wipes his eyes with the heels of his palms. “God…I’m such a fucking mess.” He glances at me, his eyes red. “You hate sailing.”

“I don’t mean sailing as in a sailboat like yours, like The Hemingway. I mean sailing in the more generic sense.” I laugh. “But yes, I do hate sailing, in every sense of the word. And let me tell you, this experience has only made that worse.”

“I have so many questions.”

“Me too.”

Christian laughs. “We’re still no closer to figuring out where we’re going to go or what we’re going to do.”

I sigh. “I know.” I eye him. “Do we have to figure it out now, though?”

“I guess not.”

More silence, tense and strange and strained and unfamiliar.

There’s so much to say that it’s impossible to say anything.