Page 14 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle

The Deep

T he pull is much, much stronger now. I told him I felt like I needed to be near the water, and that was true—but it never felt like this. Now it feels like there isn’t anywhere else I could possibly be.

I haven’t seen Cal in three days. I haven’t left the attic room in three days. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t showered, I haven’t even really existed in three days. Now I’m here. And not. I’m Schrodinger’s cat, both living and dead, but I don’t give a shit who’s observing me if it isn’t him.

The storm lashes the coast like it’s angry at the land for existing. Wind howls through the dunes, and salt stings my cheeks, whipped up by rain that pelts everything like it can’t decide if it wants to be water or glass. My clothes cling to my skin, soaked through and heavy, and still I walk.

I know better. I know how dangerous this is. I know the tide here, the currents, the riptides. I know the sea is not merciful, not for anyone, and least of all for those who want to be swallowed.

But I miss him. I miss him so much it’s a physical wound, carved deep beneath my sternum, widening with every breath. I can’t feel anything else. I don’t want to.

I know how stupid it is, and it still doesn’t matter.

The water rushes up to my calves. My shoes are discarded somewhere behind me on the beach. I go further.

Thunder cracks across the sky like bones splintering, and the horizon is swallowed in charcoal gray.

The sea is the same color as I feel. It moves how I feel too, thrashing and desperate as it claws at the shoreline.

It matches the scream echoing in my chest so perfectly I wonder if maybe it came from me.

Up to my thighs now, though I hardly remember moving. My skirt wraps around my legs like it’s trying to hold me back. I keep walking. It doesn’t scare me anymore. If anything, it feels… right. Like slipping back into a dream. Like returning to something I never wanted to leave .

The waves crash against my waist, and the cold is breath-stealing. Lightning forks above me, and I let my head fall back, rain needling down my face, my lashes, the corners of my mouth.

I close my eyes.

Come find me.

If he doesn’t—if I sink below the surface and the ocean takes me—I won’t fight it, because then at least I won’t have to live without him. I know how reckless this is, but I can’t stop it. I can’t fight the tide in my chest. The tide he put there.

I want to hate him for it, but I can’t even do that.

A wave takes me off my feet out of nowhere.

It slams into me like hitting concrete, and I tumble, weightless and directionless, limbs pinwheeling as I’m dragged down. The world becomes foam and violence and black. Something cracks behind my sternum as the air whooshes out of me—a noise or a feeling or a memory, I can’t tell.

My mouth opens. Saltwater floods in. I let go.

The current spins me like seaweed, and somewhere in the churn, time slips sideways, and so does gravity. I think I’m sinking. Or maybe I’m floating. There’s no up or down in this void.

But something burns. Not water in my lungs, not cold against my skin. There’s a flare behind my eyes, sharp and bright and impossible down here in the blackness. I feel it sharp and stinging like pain that doesn’t belong to me.

It belongs to him.

The realization spears through me like lightning.

I gasp—my lungs fill. A pulse echoes in my skull, rapid and panicked, like a heartbeat that’s not my own.

I see flashes of light again, and memories exploding in real-time.

A hand shoving at the door of the shop. Bare feet slamming wet earth.

The blur of trees and wind. Sand flying. A scream that doesn’t reach the air.

His name in my mouth that I can’t say.

Cal.

He’s running. I feel it. Not just the fear—him.

The whole of him, everything inside of him and around him, wild and desperate and reaching.

It roars inside me like a siren, and for a second, I am him, his panic mirrored in my own ribs, a reflection bouncing between us, over and over again, like an SOS message.

My fingers twitch in the water. My chest spasms. I can almost feel him reaching for me through the dark. I don’t know if I’m dead. I don’t know if he’s real or here at all, but I feel him. I think he’s coming for me.

I really fucking hope he is.

Something shifts in the current. A rush, a tremor, a pressure wave parting the water like a curtain. I feel him slam into the ocean like a force of nature, a riptide given form.

Then—arms. Strong and wrapping like the first time, but now there are tentacles too. Everywhere. Heat and motion and Cal .

I’m jolted into something like lucidity when his body wraps around mine, one arm under my knees, the other across my back, his chest a furnace against my frozen skin. His tentacles cradle and coil, anchoring us together so I don’t float away.

I think I try to say something. It comes out as a wheeze and a mouthful of seawater.

“Oh fuck, no, no —Neviah.” His voice is broken open, raw and furious and scared . I can barely see, but his eyes are glowing, cut glass under the surface, and they are locked on me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.

I think I am, to him, and it’s quite a sobering thought.

A tentacle braces my neck, his hand pressing down on my sternum. He’s counting the beats of my heart. Willing it to keep going. His thumb strokes my cheek like I might shatter under his touch as he breaches the surface of the water with me cradled to his chest.

“Breathe,” he begs. “ Please , love, please—breathe for me.”

I cough. It’s ugly. Salt burns my throat and my ribs seize. I gag into his shoulder, and he laughs—this choked, frantic sound that’s too close to a sob.

“There you are,” he whispers. “There you are. Fuck, little trespasser, you’ll age me.”

I want to say something casual, something irreverent like, wow, that sucked , but all I can do is sag against him, trembling, and then I think I begin to cry.

His body rocks with mine, still in the water, the storm roaring above us—but it’s like he’s wrapped around me so tightly the sea can’t reach me anymore.

Tentacles snake around my thighs, my waist, my shoulders.

Gentle, insistent, every part of me shielded by him.

“You idiot ,” I rasp, the words so bleak and shaking they’re barely intelligible.

He clips an incredulous laugh, throwing his head back to whip wet hair out of his face as he swims. “ I’m the idiot?”

My teeth chatter as I mumble against his collarbone, “You better not let go of me.”

“I won’t,” he says. “I won’t ever.”

The ocean shrieks, but it’s background now as he hauls us toward the shore. His lips press to my forehead again and again, like he has to keep checking I’m actually here.

His breathing’s still a wreck.

“You scared me,” he says hoarsely. “I thought—I felt you—fuck—” His voice cracks. “I thought I felt you die.”

I can’t speak, but I touch his face, and he turns into the touch like he’s starved for it. He’s still whispering as he swims, dragging me through the water like I weigh nothing. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m light as driftwood now, or a ghost, but he won’t let me go.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs over and over. “I’ve got you, love. My love. Mine.”

The sand shifts under his feet when he reaches the shore, slick and sodden, sucking at every step.

He doesn’t stop to catch his breath or look around and check if anybody might see us, he just carries me, held tight to his chest, as if releasing me for even a second might undo his dramatic rescue entirely.

My hair sticks to his arms, wet and dripping. My dress clings limply to my skin and my lips feel bruised from the salt and wind. He touches his mouth to my temple, whispering soft words I can’t quite hear over the ringing in my ears.

The door to his shop bangs open with a wild crack of wind, and slaps shut just as fast. The moment we’re inside, the storm becomes a dull roar, distant behind thick stone walls.

Cal hesitates, barely—then pivots, carrying me straight through the door to the hall, into his apartment, and through to the bathroom.

He yanks on the cord so hard it pings against the ceiling, and the light flickers to life.

Warm yellow spills over clean tiles. There’s a small shower with an inbuilt seat, and maroon towels hanging on a shiny chrome radiator.

The mirror is large and round, with a band of diffused white light around the border.

He sets me down on the closed toilet seat, kneeling in front of me with shaking hands.

I try to speak, but I haven’t found my words yet, and then he’s undressing me.

Cold, wet fabric is peeled from my skin by large, rough hands that are somehow just as gentle as they are frantic.

When I reach for him, he doesn’t swat me away, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing either.

“I need to see you’re okay,” he says hoarsely. “I need to make sure you’re warm.”

Once all my clothes are gone, he lifts me again, opens the shower door, and steps inside with me.

He’s still fully clothed. There’s a tentacle draped over my shoulder, curving against the line of my jaw, and I tilt my head down, leaning into the touch.

The shower water hits like a whisper at first. It’s below room temperature, and although I’m still shaking from the chill of the ocean, it makes me gasp.

“Cal.” I shiver, curling my head against his chest. “Please, that’s cold.”

“I know,” he whispers, pressing his lips to my temple. “I know, love. But I can’t risk shocking your system. We have to warm you up slowly, okay? Please. Let me.”

He lowers me gently to the shower tray and holds me upright on unsteady legs. I’m sure if he let go, I’d drop like a puppet with its strings cut.

The glass cubicle walls fog around us as he ticks the temperature up, one slow degree at a time. Steam curls into the air. His hoodie clings to his chest, plastered with rain and seawater.