I wake up under a comforter that isn’t light pink and doesn’t smell like the lavender sachets I buy at the farmer’s market. This comforter is pale green. It smells like lemons and dry cedar, and it’s not something I own. Neither is the bookshelf headboard stacked with worn paperbacks or the blue reading light clipped to the side.

I grip the comforter, pulling it up to my chin. My fingers feel as thin as dried twigs—like if I ball up my hands, they might snap off. I’m cold. Not just my fingers and toes, but deep in my stomach and lungs. Why am I so cold? And where…

The water. The dog.

Oh no, he rescued us. It comes back in a flash that makes my heart pound awake.

I sit up. Half my hair is damp between my cheek and the pillow. The other half is frizz. When I snake my arm out of the comforter to smooth it down, I realize something else.

I’m practically naked. Bra and underwear. That’s it.

Suddenly my wild hair doesn’t seem so important.

“So it seems like maybe you did need a hero after all.” A male voice.

Hide, Elly.

I gasp and yank the comforter up to just under my eyes, as if that’s going to keep him from noticing me.

“Are you okay?” Dean sits in a folding chair at the end of the bed, so close in this tiny room. Light streams through the solitary window behind me and falls on his knees and a book tented there. He’s no longer dressed in a light-blue shirt. Now it’s chinos and a dark blue University of Maine t-shirt two shades darker than his eyes. Not that I can see the color of his eyes with the shadows across his face.

I remember them.

No. N-n-not good.

Wait… did I just stutter in my thoughts? He’s got me so out of sorts that I literally can’t think straight. And that kind, concerned look of his isn’t helping. Why is he looking at me like that?

He wouldn’t be if he knew what I did to his father. The handcuffs my mother used to keep him on that mattress. The thousand things I should have done besides buckling down in that closet and trying to hide away from all of it. He brings it all back—memories so present and crisp they leave a bitter, salty taste on my tongue.

I expect his hatred for me to bubble out—leaching down his legs and across the green comforter. I deserve it. Instead he rumples wet hair and tilts his head, closing the book and tossing it on the edge of the bed. Shogun. I blink at it—something about historical Japan? And boats? My mind tries to sort through the things I know instead of all the things I don’t. I want to know so much about him—everything.

My hero. I thought I didn’t need one.

“Yes, I’m fine.” I clench the comforter. I’m too conflicted, and I need to focus on getting out of here. I look around the small room. “Where’s the letter?”

He leans forward, and light cuts across his face, and it’s like he’s spotlighted. He’s cleanly shaven—perhaps just—and I can see the slight cleft in his chin. That thin black leather necklace still winds his neck. And, yes, those eyes are the exact same sharp blue as before. I wish they could change somehow. That they would fade, bleached colorless by the sun maybe, and then I wouldn’t be staring at them.

“I didn’t see a letter.” He shakes his head slightly.

“It can’t be gone.” But it’s useless. It went in the water with me. Even if I were to find it, I doubt it would be legible anymore. Which means I can’t copy it for Carly. It really did float out to sea.

His feet drop from the bed. The sound of them hitting the floor is strange—hollow.

“The rope,” he says. “Why didn’t you grab it?”

“I was busy drowning?” It’s the best thing I can come up with. Especially given the lack of clothing and the riot in my thoughts. I just wanted to make sure that he was okay. That was all I wanted—and now I’m here. I shouldn’t have gotten so close to him.

Does he remember me?

I swallow back the question and find another. “Where’s the dog?”

“Matty,” he says. “He’s cold and tired, but fine. Thank you for going in after him.” He nods toward the side of the small, wood-paneled room where the black lab’s swaddled in a second pale-green comforter. He must have a fondness for green. I clutch on to that little bit of knowledge like it means something.

The dog—Matty—looks up at me with watery brown eyes from his spot on the floor. When I smile at him, he struggles up. He must be exhausted. I reach out toward him, but cold air flicks my shoulders. I clamp the comforter over me.

“You undressed me,” I whisper. Which is obvious, but I still feel the need to say it.

“It was a medical necessity.” He tilts his head and bounces one knee, and for a second, I wonder if I can feel it—rocking across the floor to where I sit on the bed. That has to be my imagination. But that dangerous slip of a smile he gives me is 100% real. “Although if you wanted me to undress you that desperately, you didn’t have to throw yourself into freezing water to do it. You could have just asked.”

“Maybe I had a different goal in mind,” I blurt before thinking.

Oh, no. I shouldn’t have said that. I drop my gaze from those startling eyes to stare at his fingers—the same ones that grabbed that olive bread earlier. As if he’s conscious of me looking, his hand lifts and his knuckles do that thing where they smooth from ear to chin cleft and then make the return arc. Smoothing over that little white scar on his jaw. They finally stop a few inches from the thin black leather that hangs around his neck. It’s knotted, the small fist of string resting at the lip of his t-shirt.

I could tug the black leather until it cuts an impression into his skin. Or slip it around his wrist. Tether him to that folding chair. His forearm tied to the rough canvas of the chair.

I blink myself back into the room. Where the hell did that thought come from?

No, no. I can’t think like that. I’ve managed not to think like that for… I can’t remember the last time. It’s why I don’t really date. Why I can’t be trapped in a small room with a man who looks like him. Both of us should come with a warning label. But his warning label is just “an overly attractive man with a teasing sense of humor.”

My thoughts are so desperately wrong.

I need off of this boat. Now.

His smile fades. “You should rest.” The chair creaks as he shifts. “I stayed because I was worried about you. But you seem to be alive.”

“I need to go.” I tuck my legs under me and glance around the haphazard room. A few piles of books. One window and a scrap of wood with Neverland painted on it. But no clothes—anywhere.

“Where are my clothes?” I inch to the edge of the bed, leaving behind a damp spot of ocean water from my underwear. Could this get any worse?

“I don’t think you want to wear your clothes. Not unless you enjoy being cold and wet.” He stands and is next to me in half a stride.

I scramble back, and my head hits the bookshelf. A stack of paperbacks tumbles onto the bed next to me. The comforter slips down, and I clap my hands over my bra—which is white and practically see-through.

His hands whip up, his palms out. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I—” His gaze falls on my chest for a second before flicking to the wall behind me. His face flushes.

He’s actually blushing. He ducks his head and rubs his hand over his neck like he’s trying to hide it. But I saw it. It makes my breath expel—halfway. The other half of me chomps down on my bottom lip.

“There’s a closet.” He nods toward wall beside the bed. “I was going to get you some clothes.” He takes another step toward the bed, and the scent of lemon-cedar tickles my nose. The muscles in his forearm roll as he yanks open a door and reaches into a narrow space.

My breathing shallows. Before I can stop myself, I picture him kneeling in front of me. What the expanse of skin across his chest must look like under his shirt.

No. I’m wrong. And I hate how the thoughts make me more aware of my wet bra straps cutting against my skin. Is this how she thought? Did doing things to those men… did they turn her on?

My feet find the floor. But before I can stand, the world shifts. Not my world, exactly. The real world. Wait—“We’re on the boat.”

“Yep.” As he digs into the closet, his shirt rises and pulls away from his stomach. What I imagined is true—taut skin over a fit stomach.

He tosses a pile of gray and blue fabric on the corner of the bed. “I’ll be on deck. There’s a bathroom in there.” He points to a mirrored door beyond Matty. “You can shower if you want. Come up when you’re done.”

“Thank you,” I say, reaching for the clothes. “For the rescue too. I guess... I did need a hero.”

A smile ticks up the edge of his mouth. “Everyone does.” But then it falls, and just as quickly, his jaw hardens. I want so desperately to ask what his thoughts are. What his life is like. Where his brother is. But I can’t do any of that. Not without giving away who I am. And I have a feeling the answers would just tempt more questions.

He nods sharply, then ducks into the hallway and clicks the door closed behind him. I wait until his footsteps walk away, and then with deep breaths of relief, I slide off the bed toward the dog.

“I’m so sorry.” I kneel in front of him and scratch his ears. His tail thumps against the wall.

The crumpled stack of clothes on the edge of the bed is a t-shirt and track pants. The t-shirt comes to my thighs, and I have to roll up the pants, but the slick material unrolls, and I end up shuffling into the bathroom with the fabric under my heels.

Clothes hang on every possible hook and ledge in the tiny bathroom. Both mine and the rolled-up chinos and light-blue t-shirt. They drip cold water onto the floor, wetting the hem of my pants.

The mirror shows me that my hair is even more of a frizzed mess than I thought. I try to calm it while I sneak a look under the sink, hoping for something that will help carry my wet clothes. I luck out and find a white trash bag. I stuff my wet clothes inside and take a last glance in the mirror. I need everything finished. Get back to my apartment and take a blazing shower. Call Carly and see what my mother’s letter was all about. Forget I was here.

My shoes sit in the bathtub. I try to squeeze water out of them, but they are still soaking when I force my feet into them. My sweater hangs on the door, and I dig into the pockets.

No phone.

I turn all my pockets out. Empty.

I slide down to the floor, cold water soaking into the track pants.

He’s throwing everything off. Half-drowned dogs and errantly gifted olive bread. So many memories blend together—bruised wrists, a man crumpled on a mattress, a little wooden box. That thin necklace. They keep echoing—just like they did for my mother.

I close my eyes and push away the thoughts, but her voice curls around me.

If you don’t like the world, then make it different, Elly.

Too bad my mother’s version of “different” landed her in a twenty-year prison sentence because she didn’t have the strength to ignore the echo.

But I need to ignore it. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Walk out of here, thank him for the rescue, and get off this boat before anything else happens.