Lily gripped her oar for dear life as Ethan shoved their raft away from the rocky shore. Her butt squeaked on the rubber seat as she turned to eye the shuttle that had dropped them off at the launch point upriver.
Maybe it’s not too late to hop on it and catch a ride back to town.
It gave a friendly honk and drove away.
She’d lost some of that initial moxie that had come over her after Tom’s call. Right about the time she’d spotted the rapids from the shuttle window as they drove alongside the river.
As the raft drifted farther out, she considered jumping overboard and swimming back to dry land—she was wearing a full-body wetsuit and life jacket. Or she could hitchhike. There were a few vehicles parked in the small pullout along the road. Someone was bound to come back and give her a lift. Surely, that was safer than white water rafting.
“Are you sure Molly is going to be okay at the rental shop?” she asked, one step away from offering to go back and keep her company.
“Matt will take good care of her. Just as we left, I saw her cuddle up with Sully in his dog bed.”
He dipped his oar in and out of the water, steering them to the deepest part of the river. She peeked over the side but could no longer see the rocks settled at the bottom.
She tightened the strap on her helmet. You can do this, Lil.
It was going to be fine. She was seeking adventure, after all. Step Nineteen: Do Something That Scares You. And she was scared out of her wits, so job well done. But she didn’t want to admit that out loud because that wasn’t exactly living boldly, was it?
“How are you doing?” Ethan asked.
Dragging her gaze away from the dark depths, she spun to face him. “I’m okay. But I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Not a problem. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know before the first set of real rapids.” He set his oar down. “For your first lesson, I need you to jump into the water.”
“What?” She gripped the handle on the side of the raft. “No way.”
“What if you end up falling out? Getting back in takes a little practice. You need to know how to do it on your own.”
“I’ll just make sure to stay inside the raft.”
He gripped Lily by the shoulders and stared her straight in the eye. “Do you trust me?”
She threw him a dubious look.
“Let me rephrase that. Do you believe I know what I’m doing and that I wouldn’t put you in danger? That everything I’m about to show you is to keep you safe?”
“Well, when you put it like that. Yes.”
“Also, keep in mind that I’m your ride, so you can’t be too mad at me.”
“Mad at you for what?”
His grip on her shoulders tightened. And because she did trust him, she wasn’t even prepared to fight back as he launched her over the side of the raft.
She plunged beneath the icy surface. A second later, the life vest popped her back up. She gasped and sputtered. Her eyes were too wide to even glare at Ethan.
“Wh–what the bloody hell?” Her voice shook, along with her body.
He laughed. “Sorry. It’s part of learning. You’ll get used to the temperature.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re still in the raft.” Fuming at his smug face, she vowed to rectify that the first chance she got.
But he let out a “whoop” and cannonballed into the water. A moment later, he surfaced next to her with a five-year-old-boy grin on his face.
“It’s not so bad,” he said. “The wetsuit really takes the edge off.”
She gave him a splash of frigid water. As he floated in a circle around her, a cheeky look on his face, she realized he was right. The only chilly ache was in her hands and her face, and the longer he looked at her like that, the warmer she got. She mirrored his smile.
He swam toward the raft that was slowly drifting away and caught hold of it. “Now pull yourself back inside.”
Reaching up, she gripped one of the handles and kicked her legs as hard as she could. He talked her through it, giving her tips as she struggled up the side of the raft until she finally flopped onto the bottom like a fish.
“Now you have to learn how to pull me in,” he called. “If I fall out and get injured, it’s up to you to save me.”
As she followed his instructions and pulled his bulk into the little raft, she hoped she wouldn’t have to do it for real. But there was something about it being just the two of them that gave her a surge of confidence. By doing this with her, he was putting his life in her hands. He trusted her.
Guilt suddenly washed that feeling away, and it sank to the invisible river bottom. Was that because he thought she was some great adventurer? If he knew the truth, would he still believe in her?
By the time he finished reviewing techniques and terminology, the water swirled around the raft, surging them on. A rushing sound slowly filled the peaceful silence. They floated around a bend, and the view opened up to rougher waters.
If she was going to confess, she supposed it was too late now.
Ethan shifted to the right side of the raft. He sat on the outer tube, wedging his foot inside the boat to brace himself. “You ready?”
“No.” But she sat on the opposite side, copying his position.
“Don’t worry. These are baby rapids. Follow my instructions, and I’ll teach you how to paddle so you’re ready for the big ones.”
She hugged her oar. “They get bigger?”
“Not too big. The worst we’ll see is a class three. Give me some credit. I don’t want to scare you away.” He winked before facing forward.
Her heart skipped a beat, and it had nothing to do with the oncoming rapids. Did he mean scare her away from outdoor sports or from him?
“Okay, start paddling,” he said.
Lily jammed her oar into the water and pulled as hard as she could.
“Whoa,” he called out after a moment. “You’re stronger than I thought. Don’t waste all your energy. The river is going to do ninety percent of the work. Our job is to use that to our advantage.”
His voice was calm and strong as he instructed her around each rock and through walls of spray and foam. He knew what he was doing, and he believed her capable of getting through this. She let the thought fill her with courage.
Ahead, she could see the river flatten out again. They were nearly through the worst of it when the raft’s nose dipped down sharply. Lily squealed, but not from fear. As a wall of water splashed over her, she giggled from the exhilaration.
Ethan joined her, his laughter booming over the hiss of water. She watched his eyes light up, his joy childlike. He truly became someone else out there.
“See?” he said. “Not so bad.”
“Not so bad? That was bloody brilliant.” She beamed across the raft at him.
“If you think that was fun. You’re about to have a riot.” He nodded downriver.
She turned to face the path ahead. The smooth river churned and frothed white like when her mother made piña coladas in the blender. It sent a cloud of mist into the air like a great beast exhaling, preparing to swallow them whole.
She recoiled, but there was nowhere to go. She tugged at her wetsuit, wondering if it was shrinking since she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Spots appeared in her vision. Without meaning to, she instinctively paddled backward.
“Nope. I was wrong.” Her voice wobbled. “I can’t do this. Let me out of this rubber coffin right now.”
Ethan’s face fell. “You said you trusted me.”
“I do. But I don’t trust those rapids, and I don’t trust my swimming skills.”
“So, stay in the raft, and you won’t have to swim. Besides, you have a life jacket, remember? What happened to the adventurous Lily who was up for anything?”
“That Lily is full of crap. I’m not that girl.” Woman, she reminded herself. “I’m not some intrepid traveler. This is my first time out of England. Out of Worcestershire. I don’t hike or white water raft or go on road trips with strange men. The most adventure I ever see is taco Tuesdays! And I really had to fight for that one.” She clenched her fists. “Now I’m sick of tacos, but I won’t say as much because it’s my win, my only sense of something mine.”
She gasped for air. The confession had practically flown out of her mouth in one breath. And she regretted it. She wanted to reach into the space between them and take the words back, shove them into her mouth, and swallow them.
He said nothing as he stared at her for several what-could-be-their-last seconds. Then his eyes narrowed. She wished she could read his expression. Was he disappointed? Did he think she was completely pathetic?
“Why did you pretend?” he finally asked. “Why would you lie to me?”
Her head jerked back at his sharp tone. It’s not like she’d done it to hurt him. “I thought you were a good lie detector. You know how to read people, remember?”
“I guess I didn’t think I had to be a lie detector with you.” He slapped the water with his oar. “You know what? I’m tired of people lying to me. I’m tired of always being on edge with everybody.”
The words stung her, but “always” stuck out to her. Was the heat behind his words and the iciness in his eyes truly meant for her? Or was part of it meant for someone else?
He scoffed. “I thought I might’ve actually found somebody who could be real.”
Disappointment tore through her. She’d flown halfway around the world to become someone else, to put Old Lily behind her, but she couldn’t hide who she was, not even from a man she’d just met.
She scowled. What did she care about what he thought, anyway? He wasn’t what he pretended to be, either.
“You’re one to talk. You haven’t been entirely honest with me. Family is supposedly important to you, and you talk about moving down to San Francisco to be closer to them, but it sounds like you’re just running away from something in Seattle.”
He winced, his features twisting before he rearranged them into a glare. “Oh, and I suppose you would know all about being there for family, wouldn’t you? Don’t think I haven’t seen the calls you’ve dodged from your mother. Who’s running from something now?”
“Been snooping?” She crossed her arms, but it made her feel like a pouting three-year-old, so she held her oar again.
“I may have glimpsed the call display a time or two. It’s hard not to notice when you ignore a half-dozen calls a day.”
“At least I’m close with my family. At least I didn’t ignore them for a job.”
He straightened, understanding passing over his face. She suddenly regretted lashing out. Who was she to judge him? She barely knew him. And he was right: things weren’t perfect between her and her family.
“Oh, I see,” he said finally. “You’ve been chatting with my sister. Then I guess you know all about me then, don’t you? How I sank my family’s farm for the sake of my college education. How I wasn’t there for my family when my father died. How I was too busy with my fancy new life in Seattle to come home and help with the farm, so we lost it.”
For a moment she’d been thinking she might have had it all wrong, that it couldn’t be as bad as his sister said. But she hadn’t known about all that.
“Well, I didn’t know the specifics,” she mumbled.
He laughed bitterly. “You must think I’m a real piece of work. How can you stand to be in the same car as me? Why would you even try to kiss me?”
“I didn’t try to kiss you. I wouldn’t. I’m returning home to my life, to a date with a nice guy, the boy next door.” Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but she was going to pretend for now.
“I guess that means you don’t see me as the good guy anymore.”
Lily held his hardened gaze, wondering if the bad guy routine was really real. However, as the silence settled over them and her words replayed back to her, she wasn’t so sure she was the good girl.
Unable to look at him any longer, she lowered her eyes to the bottom of the boat, where several inches of water had collected as they fought.
She gasped. “Oh, my God. We’re going down.”
He huffed. “Is that a British saying or something?”
“No. I mean we’re sinking.”
He glanced down, and his eyes widened. Twisting in his seat, he ran his hands along the inside of the raft, down the walls, across the bottom. He dropped to his knees and searched the hull.
He froze. “It’s a hole.”
She gasped. “What?”
“It must have been so small I didn’t notice when I inspected it, but it’s getting worse.”
She frantically searched their surroundings for solid ground. “We’re close to shore. Why don’t we just start paddling our butts off?”
“Even if we make it before the rapids, the rocks along the shore will tear us to shreds. And the walls are too high. They’ll trap us.”
He was right. The earth rose in slippery rock faces on either side. Even if they didn’t get sucked under the overhang, she could never hope to scramble up them.
Panic seized her until it was all she could focus on. Her breaths came faster and faster until she looked at Ethan. His face was blank. Not a muscle twitch. Not even the little line between his eyebrows made an appearance. He was deadly calm.
She realized the worst thing she could do was freak out. She took a deep breath and tried to mirror his composure. “What are we going to do?”
He resumed his position on the side of the boat. His body settled into a rowing position like a fighter preparing for battle. “Our best bet is to maintain control of the raft through this next section and get to shore the moment the river calms long enough.”
“And if the raft doesn’t last that long?”
“Then get away from it so it doesn’t trap you under it. Don’t fight the current. Just ride it on your back with your feet up and pointing downstream. Keep yourself away from the rocks.”
She nodded, taking it all in. “Easy peasy.” However, she couldn’t help but hear that little doubting voice inside her that sounded too much like her mother. “I suppose I should’ve listened to my mum. She was right; I’m not cut out for this.”
“Lily, look at me.” Ethan shouted over the rushing water that was growing louder by the second. “You’re braver than you or your mom think or else I wouldn’t have done this with you.”
“But I lied about being braver than I am.”
“Actions speak louder than words. And you’re here, aren’t you?” His stare bored into her. “I believe in you.”
Whatever had just transpired between them was suddenly meaningless. She nodded and faced the oncoming rapids, gripping the oar like her life depended on it.
Well, actually, it did.