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Beau hadn’t returned from outside. As the rain pounded heavier, a stone of dread settled in the pit of my stomach.
I opened the patio doors that one of the waiters had just closed to stop the spray of rain from coming inside. All the outside tables had been abandoned due to the downpour. I leaned over the railing, searching the now darkened beach for a sign of Beau or Calliope.
My eyes squinted as lightning flashed, illuminating the rough seas for nothing more than a second. A second was all I needed for my heart to stop and for my body to launch forward, clearing the railing and landing in the sand below. I barely felt the impact as I pushed my body to sprint toward the dock. The rain pelted against my skin, the ground uneven beneath my feet. I growled in my frustration that my legs weren’t moving fast enough.
I kept my eyes plastered to the same spot in the water as lightning flashed again. My blood was nothing but ice.
I could see them better now. My brother’s unmistakably large form, battling against the waves, arm around a lifeless form I knew was Calliope.
For as long as I lived, I would never, ever forget my brother fighting against the surf, holding my unconscious woman in the middle of a lightning storm.
I skidded on my knees, my stomach flattening against the dock to reach out to Beau as he approached with Calliope’s limp body in his arms.
I thanked God one thousand times that Beau had previously been a championship swimmer. Not many people would’ve been able to survive against the huge swells while holding 110 pounds of dead weight.
My hands slipped against her drenched blouse, as I hoisted her up onto the dock. My shoulders burned at the weight. Not because Calliope was heavy—it was one of my goals to put more weight on her —but because she didn’t move. I’d never forget the emotionally heavy toll of dragging my unconscious woman from the ocean.
I pulled her into my chest, she was sodden and limp. “Calliope.” I held her face. “Calliope!” I yelled then.
Nothing.
My brother hauled himself up onto the dock as I laid her down, realizing that she wasn’t breathing.
She wasn’t fucking breathing.
My entire world tilted sideways. Ten minutes ago, she’d whispered in my ear about blow jobs and photos. Three hours ago, I’d mounted a picture of me and her on the wall, the first of many to come. It wasn’t going to be the last.
“Call 911, now!” Beau roared through the rain. “I’ve got her.”
He quickly dropped down to put his ear to Calliope’s chest, placing his hands where they needed to be to start CPR.
I fought the urge to push his hands away, to do it myself. My brother was trained in lifesaving measures just as well as I was. Yet I had lost valuable seconds to my panic. Seconds Calliope might not have.
My hand trembled as I dialed in the pouring rain, willing my phone to work then shouting at the operator to get an ambulance to the dock, their replies lost against the rain.
Though I knew it wouldn’t arrive in time. Between the storm, the scant amount of resources our town had, the location of the restaurant… We couldn’t rely on anyone else to save Calliope. It was just us.
“Beau, I can’t lose her,” I told him in between compressions. “I can’t fucking lose her.”
Beau didn’t stop. “You won’t lose her, little brother. I promise.”
But my brother didn’t have the power to make promises like that. My lips fastened against Calliope’s in time with Beau’s compressions.
“Live,” I commanded as I breathed air into her lungs. “Do not give up. You are not that weak.”
Her body shuddered. Not with life but from the force of my brother’s compressions.
Lights flashed from the parking lot. They were not red and blue. Headlights from some car illuminated us on the dock, and they stayed on.
Whether the person in the vehicle saw us or not, I didn’t care. I was both grateful and horrified at the illumination of Calliope’s lifeless body. Her form jerked with each compression, her lips blue, eyes closed, face utterly pale.
“Elliot!” Beau barked.
I jumped, realizing I’d been frozen in the moment, the crucial time when Calliope needed me the most.
I laid my lips against hers again, willing her to breathe on her own. To splutter. To fight.
She was still.