Page 99 of Kill Your Darlings

“There’s a lot of rage behind the calculation,” Finn agreed.“The cruelty is the point, as we so often hear these days.”

I sat up, pushed the covers back.“Do I have time for a swim?Or did you want to have breakfast and get going?”

“What time is it?”Finn peered at his watch.“My eyes won’t focus.How much did I drink last night?”

I reached for my glasses, checked the clock.“Six thirty.”

Finn groaned.“Go swim.We can have breakfast when you get back.Then we’ll drive up to Steeple Hill.”

I threw back the covers, glancing back as Finn’s outstretched fingertips brushed my ass.

“Or—?”he suggested.

I chuckled, shook my head.“If I’m going to spend another three hours in a car, I’ve got to work some of these kinks out of my back.”

“I’d be more than happy to help you work out your kinks.”

“Hold that thought.”

“I’d be more than happy to hold your d—”

I tossed the blankets over him.

Too early for tourists.Too cold for conference-goers nursing their second-degree hangovers.The Horizon Deck was quiet and deserted.

Just the way I liked it.

There were a couple of empty glasses on the deck by the hot tub.I raised my brows at a pair of plaid swim trunks discarded next to one of the mesh lounge chairs.

It was still damp and cool and gray this early in the morning.Mist curled over the glass safety barriers; the sky was a dull purple, as if bruised by the previous night.The only sound was the soft lapping of water against blue tile and the more distant thunder of the surf.

I dropped my towel over the back of the lounge chair nearest to the pool, left my glasses on the little table, and walked to the pool’s edge.The surface was smooth, faintly steaming in the morning chill, light from the submerged lamps casting a soft green glow through the murkiness.The pool was empty, as expected.

I stepped out of my deck shoes, adjusted my goggles, and dove.

The lightly heated water embraced me in profound silence.I let myself sink, easily slipping into an almost meditative state.I kicked off the wall and swam two laps with long, clean strokes, my thoughts blessedly blank for the first time in days.

My awareness narrowed; I was solely focused on my breathing, my strokes, my kicks.

Reach, pull, breathe.Long and clean.Don’t rush the turn.

On the third lap, I rolled into a breath, opening my eyes mid-stroke—and something shifted in my periphery.

A strange shape seemed to drift below me, hovering over the bottom of the pool.

I instinctively kicked closer, expecting pool equipment, a towel, light bouncing off the tiles, a hallucination—

Time stopped.

The blurred outline sharpened just enough: pale limbs drifting without purpose, silver hair fanning out like seaweed, a gray T-shirt ballooning spinnaker-like over a waxen torso.

My underwater yell was distorted, muffled.

His eyes.His eyes were wide open, unfocused, milky from hours in the water.The slow sway of hair and fabric and those terrible blank eyes.Like a ghost.

I froze mid-descent, lungs burning, still rejecting what I was seeing even as realization crashed in with all the force of hydrostatic pressure

I instantly understood two things: it was already far too late for Colby, and my touching the body would make everything worse.