Breaking Through (13 page)

I follow behind Nautia
as she crawls over the railing and back onto the deck. Kray stands there, offering his hand, but she sweeps by him and the crew. No one goes after her. Not even me.

“Officer Smith,” I call out, even though Haskal is only a few paces in front of me. “I suspect this won’t take long to repair?” I nod toward the railing he leveled.

“No, sir.”

“Good. The rest of you, pair up. One Special with one crew member. I want a detailed damage report for each section of this ship by sunup. The storm took out three of our satellites, and I need to know what else she took with her. Dismissed.”

It doesn’t surprise me when, instead of grabbing a partner and following orders, Kray jogs up beside me.

“What about Nautia?” he asks. It’s not a question on whether or not she should be helping out; he’s asking if I’ll go after her.

“Your concern, Officer, should be on the assignment I gave you.”

Kray gives an incredulous shake of his head. “You’re just going to let her run off and hide and feel like shit? You want another storm?”

“Officer Shields, I am aware of the situation, and I have it under control.”

“Do you? So how do you know she’s not passed out somewhere? Trapped inside another bubble? Her powers are unstable.
She’s
unstable!”

This is not the time or place for this discussion. “I have it under control,” I repeat. “Your partner is waiting.”

“Look, I don’t know what made her lose it in the first place tonight, man, but we all just caught a glimpse out here of what she’s capable of, and it’s scary shit. For the safety of all of us on board, I suggest not pissing her off.”

Yes. We did just catch a glimpse of what Nautia is capable of, but there’s nothing scary about it. It’s downright astonishing.

She tamed the ocean.

After the pairs go their separate ways, I make my way down to Nautia’s cabin. I knock on her door, but she doesn’t answer.

“Nautia?” I say, tapping my knuckles on the wood again.

She doesn’t respond.

“I’ll pick the lock, Nautia. Might as well open up.”

I give her a few moments before I pull out my pocket knife. Ten seconds later, I turn the knob and let myself in. Nautia is lying on her bed, curled up in a ball with a pillow squeezed to her chest. Chocolate hair splays out over her face, concealing it from me.

I’ve never been good at shit like this. I’m a doer. I
do
stuff, and right now I’m helpless. The perfect how-to guide for dealing with women has yet to be written, which means I’ll have to wing it.

I sit on the edge of the bed and brush her hair away from her eyes. She stares straight ahead at the wall.

“Nautia,” I start again. “What you did out there? That was amazing. You let out your fears, and the wave no longer held any power. You stopped it. You controlled it.”

She purses her lips together and swallows. Moisture gathers in the corners of her eyes.

“Tell me what happened with the wave. You said it was thinking. How did you know that?”

She gives a noncommittal shrug.

“Come on, Nautia, give me something here. It reached out to you, touched you, and you brought it down. It was incredible.”

Still nothing.

Women.

“You’re not passed out. You’re not inside a bubble. That’s good, right? I mean, the water didn’t overpower you.”

Her body tightens as she squeezes her knees in closer to her chest. She has no intention of responding to me. I didn’t come here to play games, though.

“I understand that you think you’re not a hero. That fixing what you broke doesn’t count as saving anyone’s life. But you’re wrong. I’m in the military, for God’s sake; I’ve seen the fuck-ups soldiers make. Hell, I’ve been on the fuck-up end myself. You don’t make it through training, through life, without failure. The difference is you were willing to risk your own life to make things right. What you did up there was nothing short of heroic.”

A soft sob escapes her, and she shakes her head in small, fast movements. Her shoulders rise and fall, and she hugs the pillow tighter to her chest. Hurriedly, she wipes away a tear.

For the first time since I trespassed into her bedroom, I touch her. The white tank top she wears is still soaked with water, and I wonder why she didn’t evaporate it or change clothes. I glide two fingers down the side of her face. My gaze follows the movement to her neck and across her collarbone. When I reach her chin, I tip her face up to me. Those ocean-colored eyes I adore peer into mine.

“Talk to me. I’m not leaving until you do,” I say.

She turns enough to hold my stare, nostrils flaring like she’s trying to hold back more tears. I don’t understand why she’s fighting it. If they fall, I’ll be here to wipe them away.

I glance down to her lips. They’re slightly parted, quiet breaths exiting in small spurts, and suddenly all I can think about is how damn sexy they are. How less than twelve hours ago, I had her panting differently. I lean over her to suck on her mouth. She opens for me, and I massage her tongue with mine.

I don’t want to end the kiss, but I didn’t come here for this. No matter how much I want to change my mission and finish what we started back in my bunk.

Nautia frowns. “I told you not to kiss me.”

“That’s all you want to say?”

“Riley, you don’t understand. I’m dangerous. To you. To myself. To everyone here. Sure, by some miracle I got us out of the disaster, but what about the next time? And the next? And the next? At some point, the miracles are going to run out and someone is going to die.” She reaches up and places her palm against my cheek. “I…I can’t…”

I pull her hand away from me and press each finger to my lips. “I won’t let you take all the blame. You weren’t ready. That’s okay. We’ll train more. We’ll take whatever this is between us slower. We’ll figure it out.”

“What happens in the meantime, Riley? Everyone walks on eggshells around me? Keep Nautia happy, but not
too
happy?”

“That’s not how it will be. I’ll make sure of it.”

“You can’t change that. They have a right to be scared of me.”

“No one is scared of you, Nautia.” I cup her hand between both of mine. “They’re impressed. You have all this power inside you, all this potential—”

“What good is it when I can’t control it? You never should have brought me along. You should have left me at Brighton Academy where you found me.”

“So that’s it? You want to give up? Stop trying because you’re too afraid to fail?”

“My failures put lives in dang—”

“And so do mine! Every goddamn day, Nautia, I make decisions that could end the lives of thousands of people. Including those on board this ship. Is it fair? No, of course not. But it’s reality. Running away from your responsibility won’t change that.”

“My responsibility?” She shakes her head. “I didn’t choose this life, yet I’m expected to live it. How is that my responsibility?”

“How is it not? You have the power to save lives here. To protect people. But you’re right. We didn’t choose it. Can you really tell me, though, that you could just walk away, knowing what you could prevent?” I let the question hang in the air as my eyes search hers. Her blue-green irises ripple like the tide while she thinks.

“What if I can’t prevent anything? What if all I can do is destroy?” Nautia’s voice cracks, and she averts her gaze to her mattress, squeezing her eyelids closed. When they open again, waves swell around her pupils. “Then maybe it would be better if I just walked away.”

“From the mission, or from me?”

She tucks her lower lip between her teeth. “Both.”

I study her. The waves in her eyes have calmed now, her decision made. I drop my hand from hers, the absence of her skin leaving me cold. The contract she signed explicitly states that a recruit can be excused if his or her abilities do not meet mission standards, and Nautia’s easily fall under that clause. Sure, Melene said she was crucial to the mission, but even without her, I have a strong team. In fact, plan B included a chemist instead of an aquator, and before I assembled the recruits from Brighton, I located a US military weapons chemist in Japan. And if for some reason that falls through, it wouldn’t take me long to do the research and the work myself. I can’t hold her choice against her.

Suddenly I realize I’m deflecting. Popular psychology calls it intellectualizing—focusing on another aspect of the situation, rather than the one that just stabbed me in the gut. Because discharging her isn’t what bothers me.

“Do you want out, Nautia? Yes or no.”

She blinks, but her eyes remain calm. “Yes.”

Every ounce of my being tells me to convince her to change her mind. That I can help her, protect her. That I’m not ready for this to end yet. Not when it just started.

I ignore the burn in my chest and stand up. Back away from her bed, toward the door. I twist the knob. “The superheroes of this world aren’t the ones wearing masks and capes. They’re the ones who stand when everything and everyone around them falls. They’re the ones who keep going, even when the world tells them to quit.

“Think about it. ’Cause I’m not ready to give up on you yet.”

The day after
the storm is our one day off this week. Actually, every day is my day off from now on, and I thought I’d be happier about my decision. Instead, I spent the night staring at the ceiling and wishing things were different.

Today, my plan is to avoid everyone, especially Riley, which won’t be difficult. He’s busy doing captain duties—repairing the ship I destroyed. The essentials were finished last night, but he recruited Haskal early this morning for more metal repairs. I heard them through the walls and practically felt Riley’s gaze burn into my door as they passed. But he didn’t knock or break in, and despite myself, I hated that he didn’t.

Now, I lie in bed, forming water droplets with the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the air. A dozen of them float above my head. Each hand controls six individual drops. I twirl them in two separate circles, then I combine them into one larger circle. With each hand controlling every other drop, I have to focus harder, which keeps my thoughts occupied. This way, I don’t have to think about my failures. Or the disappointment in Riley’s eyes. He believed in me, and I quit on him. Yeah, I’m disappointed in me too.

I have the drops doing zigzag patterns when I hear the door handle jingle. A frustrated grunt accompanies a kick at the bottom of the door. He’s later than I expected.

“Open up, Nautia,” Kray demands.

I don’t answer. He’s blocked out of my head on the other side of that door, which is where I plan on keeping him.

“Oh you think so?” He laughs. “What’s the distance between us right now? Ten feet? Princess, I can hear you from a lot farther away than this. Might as well let me in.”

For real?

“Yes, for real,” he answers.

I break focus on my droplets, and they fall against my cheeks and forehead. Great.

“Be right there,” I say. There’s no point in keeping him out, I guess.

I grab a towel from beside the sink and dry my face. Then I take my time meandering to the door. Kray may not understand boundaries, but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn some patience. I unlock the door and walk away without opening it.

“Oh I understand boundaries, princess. I just don’t care.” He sweeps inside and tosses me a stick of beef jerky. “You missed breakfast.”

I hold up the too-spicy piece of dried meat. “This is what they served?”

“Unfortunately, no. I grabbed this out of my private stash. Good thinking, huh?” He shoots me a half-grin. “Decent food is difficult to come by around here.”

“Apparently ‘decent’ is a relative term.”

“Speaking of which,” he says, ripping the end off his own piece of jerky with his teeth. “What the hell did you do to Riley? And even more importantly, what the fuck? You quit the mission without consulting me first?”

I quirk an eyebrow. “I don’t see the connection between decent food, Riley, and the mission.”

“There wasn’t one. Don’t change the subject.” Kray sits beside me on the bed, his face turning serious. “So what’s going on?”

“I can’t do this, Kray. I thought I could. Hell, I even thought I could learn control, but I’ve almost killed everyone on this ship three times. Three times, Kray! Enough is enough.”

“And your sessions with Riley? Those are done too?”

“I guess. I mean, why would I keep doing them if I’m no longer a part of the mission?”

“I don’t know, maybe because he was helping you? Because regardless of the mission, you still have to learn to control your power? That part doesn’t end just because you quit.”

“Sure it can. I’ll move to the Sahara, hitch myself a little tent, and—”

“Change the weather patterns there? Fuck up the ecosystem when you get frustrated, or lonely, or sad? You can’t run away from yourself, Nautia. You’re stuck with you.”

I fall backwards on my bed, my arms flopping above my head. “I’ve thought a lot about it, all right? This is best for everyone.” I bite my lip, the hurt in Riley’s eyes resurfacing into my mind. Again, I remind myself it’s better this way—get out before things between us get too serious. Before we go too far.

“No matter how many times I’ve heard your thoughts, I’ll never understand female reasoning,” my best friend mutters.

The mattress bounces as he flings back beside me. He folds his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. I don’t typically feel him weaving through my head, but I do right now. I don’t tell him to back off, because this way is easier than me fumbling around with words, fighting the lies that he’ll see through anyway sitting on the tip of my tongue. I close my eyes and unleash my thoughts.

When he’s done, he heaves a sigh.

“My thoughts exactly,” I answer.

“I’ll be honest: that giant-ass wave was as scary as fuck. What you did with it, though? That was cool, Nautia.”

“When it reached out and touched me…I don’t know, Kray. It was like the water was filling me with power. Giving me permission to command it. But that’s crazy, isn’t it? The ocean answers to no one.”

His head swivels to me. “Except you, apparently.”

“It was a fluke. As soon as I dismantled that wave, all the power flowed out of me and followed its master under the surface. It’s gone.”

Kray readjusts, flipping onto his side and propping his head onto his fist. “You say that, but you know what’s funny? You don’t believe it.”

“Of course I believe it. Why wouldn’t I?”

He chuckles. “Because you don’t. What you felt from that wave—the power?—it was familiar to you. You’ve felt it before.”

I shift my gaze back up to the ceiling. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t have to recall the exact situation to recognize it. Something inside you remembered, Nautia, and it acted on your behalf.”

“Something behind the wall in my head?”

“Probably.”

“Even more reason to stick with the decision I made.”

“God, you’re stubborn. Have you ever considered
not
being stubborn?”

I feel the corners of my mouth tip upward. “Once, but it didn’t work out.”

“Hmm. Might want to consider trying again. I’m sure Riley would appreciate it.”

“Riley is next on your list of topics, huh? I thought you didn’t like the idea of the two of us together.”

“I never said that.”

“Uh, yes you did. It was one of your rules. The one I never agreed to.”

“Only while we were on this mission, for reasons you displayed last night. Though, I gotta say, I kinda wish you wouldn’t have interrupted yourself. If anyone needs to get laid, it’s you.”

“To help with the stubbornness, I presume?”

“To help with everything, princess.”

“Yep. Because me getting laid is
so
much more important than everyone on this ship still breathing.” I roll my eyes. Fidget with the hem of my tank top as I force out my question. “So have you seen Riley today?”

Kray nods. “He’s got his hands full with ship repairs, which means he’s not guarding his thoughts as well as he ought to. Dude’s pretty bummed out, and not just because you led him on and left him high and dry. Pun totally intended, by the way.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” I pause for a second, considering Kray’s analysis of Riley. “We had an under-the-table relationship for a week. It’s not like we were serious or anything. He’ll be fine,” I say. Honestly, other than Haskal the Asskal, Riley is the only man since Jax who’s given me a second glance. And the only one other than Kray who has showed any belief in me. Not to mention how, when he holds me, I’ve never felt safer, more protected. More cared for. Even with Jax, it was never like that.

“Sure he will, Nautia,” Kray murmurs, his gaze slicing into me because he heard every single thought I just had.

“Let’s skip the Riley conversation, okay? I’m not in the mood.”

Kray stares at me, and when he speaks, his voice is quiet. “The mission needs you, Nautia. Riley needs you.” He pauses, inhaling. “I need you.”

I don’t answer. I’ve already resigned my position. Riley gave me two days to think about my decision, but I won’t change my mind. Tomorrow he’ll make the necessary calls, and a helicopter will come and take me back to Brighton. There’s nothing left to say.

Kray sits up and snatches up my uneaten breakfast from the duvet. He sticks it in his mouth, gnawing on the end. “So what now? You just going to hide in your cabin for the rest of the day?”

“That’s the plan.”

“What about food? ’Cause there’s no way I’m wasting another beef jerky stick on you,” he says, removing mine from between his teeth and sticking it under my nose. The impish grin is back in his voice, making me smile too.

I shove it away. “I’m resourceful. I’ll figure something out.”

“Like what? Summoning a wave to bring you some fresh-from-the-sea caviar?”

“I’ve never had caviar. Might be worth a shot. It’s gotta be better than that garbage,” I say, nodding toward the processed meat stick.

Kray chuckles. He brushes the back of his hand down my cheek. “I’m not afraid of you, Nautia. If anything, I’m honored to work beside you. We started this mission together, and I’d like to complete it together.”

“Kray, I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

When I don’t answer, he walks to the door. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

I’m breathing mostly carbon dioxide now, and light-headedness is an understatement for what the lack of oxygen is doing to me. I can’t see straight, think straight, feel straight. The poison infiltrating my lungs is like morphine to my brain, except the pain pressing against my ribs makes me want to scream.

I’ve resigned myself to impending death at this point. They say you live your life again through flashbacks just before you die, but I don’t see anything. I have no real memories, save for the ones of this tube, and I’d love to not relive this last hour. If it has even been an hour.

Water seeps into my ears. The click of the surface as it hits my eardrums sounds more like thunder, igniting the headache at my temples. Every one of my body parts is screaming out in pain, and I’m ready for it all to end. To fall into a blissful sleep as I sink to the ocean floor.

I close my eyes, waiting for the carbon dioxide or the rising water to finish the job. I fill my lungs to the max, to the point where they burn, then let all of the air out. I’m relaxed. I inhale again, emptying my mind. Colorful blobs fade in and out of the blackness behind my eyelids. Wavy lines begin to emerge. They break through the blobs and move closer to me, and I recognize them as the surface of the ocean on a breezy day.

I smile, taking in the serene scene. I even hear seagulls inside my head, feel the light breeze whip through my hair. Even though my nerves are numb to the ice-cold of the water covering my body, I still sense the coolness of the air tickle my skin as if I were topside. I don’t know if what I’m seeing is a real memory or just my imagination, but whatever it is, I want to be there. I want to melt into this moment in my mind and never leave.

I inhale again, hoping to breathe in the fresh scent of open air and sea. Instead, saltwater leaks into my mouth and nostrils, yanking me back inside the tube. Now, I hear nothing. Feel nothing. Smell nothing.

Hope is a shitty thing to lose. Everything becomes bleak with dull colors framing your life. And when what little color remains vanishes, it leaves your soul void of that precious bit of something that gave it meaning. That’s where I am right now.

Hopeless.

And then, fear kicks in—

Because all of a sudden, the tube encapsulating me bolts upward.