In His Sails (6 page)

Authors: Tabitha Levin

Chapter 15

I didn’t leave Nambucca that day. Nor the next day, or the next.

David and I had been together for nearly a year when he proposed.
It’s our wedding next month. A winter wedding, held eighteen months after we first met.

Or
it would have been.

David is still lost at sea.
Gone. Ripped from my heart.

It seems to be a curse - dead
fiancés the norm here. Drowned. Not allowed to be happy.

I turned my back on the cold wind, and walked toward the rock that held our names. Pete and Caitlin’s na
mes had long gone, replaced by
David and Mia Forever
. I ran my hand over the word
forever
, and then began to punch and hit it. I thumped my fists down onto the rock, over and over. My palms were grazed and began to bleed, yet I continued my assault.

It
wasn’t fair.

I had promised myself that I
wouldn’t cry. Promised that I wouldn’t let myself believe he was gone. But I was crumbling, losing faith.

“Mia.”

My mind felt like razor blades had shredded reality. I looked up to see my friend Lucy standing in front of me.

“They found his sailing boat.”

“They found him?”

She frowned and looked down at the ground.
“Just the boat.”

“Where is it? We have to
go, we have to see if he’s there.”

She took a deep breath. “He’s not there, Mia. They looked, they’ve searched.” She held her hand out for me. “Come with me. You can’t stay here.”

“I have to wait for him.” I sat back on the rock and looked at my hands, bloody and scratched.

She sat down next to me. “It’s cold. Let’s get a warm drink,
and then we can come back and wait.”

I nodded reluctantly. Coffee would be good now.

She placed her arm around my shoulders, and led me toward the group of shops at the end of the beach. I sat down in the far corner of the coffee shop while she went and ordered at the counter. It was empty inside, apart from us. I looked at the clock on the wall. Six a.m. Still early. I wondered when they found the boat. Last night, this morning? How long have they had it? Why didn’t they tell me immediately? Perhaps they were keeping something from me. Oh god, why wasn’t anyone telling me anything?

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. It was dead.
I’d forgotten to charge it.

“This will help you feel better,” said Lucy, as she placed a coffee in front of me.

I picked up a sachet of sugar and stirred it through the dark brown liquid, staring at the way the spoon made a small whirlpool in the middle. She was wrong. It wouldn’t make me feel better. Nothing would make me feel better.

I took a sip anyway. The warmth glided down my throat, but it
wasn’t comforting. It was … nothing. I couldn’t feel anymore. What was the point?

Chapter 16

Lucy heard the shouting outside before I did. I know that because she stood up, a worried expression on her face as she looked between
the door and me, as if deciding whether to leave me to investigate or stay here instead.

It
wasn’t until she went over to the doorway that I heard it too. Someone was shouting my name.

I stood up and walked to the door to see Ben, David’s friend, on the beach. His hand
was cupped around his mouth and he was calling for me.

We
didn’t move from the coffee shop doorway, or wave to him. We just stared at him.

He saw us when he turned.
Relief washing over his face as he ran toward us.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” he said. He was panting once he reached us.

“Her phone’s dead,” said Lucy. “I’ve already told her about the boat.”

He shook his head and grabbed my shoulders so roughly, his fingers dug into my arm and I wondered if
he’d bruised them. “He’s alive. They found him. They found him.”

David’s eyes were closed. A tube led from his mouth to a bright shiny box that wheezed as he breathed into it. Another was around his chest to a monitor that showed his heart rate. It beeped a steady rhythm.

I curled my fingers in his hand, my eyes red and raw. I had allowed myself to cry
finally. But they were tears of relief and hope, not of sadness.

A nurse came in and checked the chart at the end of his bed. She smiled at me. “He’s a fighter that one.
Strong swimmer.”

I nodded. “A lifeguard,” I said quietly.

“Good thing, too. Considering how far he swam. Not many others would have made it.”

I swallowed and nodded again, trying to give her a smile back. “How long will he be like this?” I asked.

“Few days, I’d reckon. There’s not much we can find wrong. He was quite dehydrated and his lungs did take a bit of water. Exhaustion too, of course. So we want to keep an eye on him.”

I felt him squeeze my hand, and I gasped.

The nurse smiled again. “He’s waking. Probably should take the ventilator out now. So he can talk.”

She walked over to his head, and carefully removed the tube from his mouth, checked his breathing and tapped on his lungs. She seemed satisfied, wrote something on the chart, nodded to me, and walked out.

David coughed. His eyes still closed.

“David?”

He opened his eyes. Slowly, groggily. His voice was rough, raspy. “Hey babe,” he said as he squeezed my hand.

Chapter 17

True to the
nurse’s words, David only stayed in the hospital for two days. By the last, he was itching to leave, ordering everyone around and telling them to let him go. His parents had arrived the first evening, and were still in town.

My mother had also arrived in
Nambucca with Britney and Paul. It had been over six months since I last saw them, and they all looked happy and relaxed. Aberdeen obviously agreed with them.

We cancelled our wedding plans for the following month. Why wait? After nearly losing each other, all David and I wanted to do was to get married immediately.

So the day after he left the hospital we invited everyone to the lagoon at Nambucca Heads. It was a sunny winter’s day with a strong wind, but the wind wasn’t cold, merely fresh. My hair blew around my face and I turned to David. “Are you still sure you want to go through with this?”

He cupped my face in his hands and kissed my lips. “Are you kidding?” He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Besides, the sooner we do this, the sooner we can start the honeymoon.
And I need you in my arms. Immediately after this.”

Our family and friends were waiting for us, oblivious to our plans. They simply thought they
were here to celebrate David’s rescue. Amongst them was a wedding official, the only other person who knew our secret. Even Lucy, who I usually told everything to, was unaware.

We waved to the wedding celebrant from the top of the pier, indicating that he should start the music.

A sea of confused faces, looking between each other for a clue of what was going on made me giggle. It was then, that Lucy saw us. She squealed and pointed, and everyone turned to face us as we walked toward them arm in arm.

David looked hot in his dark grey suit, and I wore
a ivory silk dress. I also went barefoot, since high heels and sand would make me wobble, and I wanted to stand straight and tall.

We stopped just ne
ar our rock. The one that said
David and Mia Forever
and turned to face the crowd. They had all clued in to what was happening now, and my mother was crying.

The ceremony was short, but wonderful.

Everyone clapped and cheered when the celebrant said man and wife. They hooted when he said that David could now kiss his wife.

He bent me back, and kissed me passionately. I wrapped my arms tight around his neck. I
didn’t care that everyone was watching, in fact I enjoyed that they saw how happy we were.

I threw the bouquet into the crowd and Lucy made a not so graceful dive for it. I laughed. She came over and hit me with it. “You should have told me.” I winked at her.

As the day turned to dusk, we all watched the sunset over the beach and then said our goodbyes.

We had made plans to go to the Maldives for our honeymoon.
Flying of course. I didn’t want to risk sailing there. The plane left in the morning.

We walked, almost ran, back to my
houseboat. David’s tongue was in my mouth and his hands over my body before I even closed the door.

He peeled my clothes from my skin until I was naked. He whistled. “Looking good,
Mrs. Carlton, good enough to eat,” he said as he pressed me back against the door. I grinned and pulled him toward the bedroom. “Why Mr. Carlton, you better show me exactly what you mean.”

~~ the end ~~

Thanks for reading

Thank you for taking the time to read
In His Sails
. I hope you enjoyed reading it, as much as I did writing it. Consider leaving a review if you like.

Visit my website for the latest upcoming release info, and other books I have written:
http://tabithalevin.com

Happy Reading,

Tabitha :)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HOT ROMANCE

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In His Sails

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