Chapter 2: Breathe
The voice came from far away, muffled, like it was underwater. “Conrad.”
He didn’t hear it. The world had narrowed to the vise around his ribs, the sand gritty and cold against his shins, the roaring in his ears that was either the ocean or his own blood failing to move.
“Conrad!”
A hand landed on his bare shoulder.
He flinched so violently he almost toppled sideways. The touch burned. He jerked away, a ragged gasp tearing from his throat.
“Hey. Hey, look at me.”
Isabel. She was kneeling in front of him in the sand, her face pale in the moonlight. She was wearing one of his old sweatshirts, the navy one from lacrosse camp, the sleeves swallowing her hands. It was so familiar it made the pain spike again.
“Don’t, I’m fine” he managed, the words a scraped-out whisper. He tried to stand, to get away, but his legs were useless. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Her hands came up, cold from the night air, and framed his face. She forced his head up. “Open your eyes, Conrad. Look at me.”
He did. Her green eyes were wide, scared, reflecting the sliver of moon. “Breathe,” she said, her voice low and steady, a direct order. “Breathe with me. Out.”
He shook his head, a frantic little motion. “I can’t.” The air hitched, stuck. He bent forward again, forehead nearly touching the sand. Useless.
“Yes, you can.” She kept one hand on his cheek, the other moving to the center of his chest, over his pounding heart. Her palm was warm through the chill. “Follow me. In.” She took an exaggerated, slow breath.
He tried. It was a thin, whistling thing.
“Out.” She breathed out, her own breath a cloud between them.
They stayed like that for what felt like an hour. Knee to knee in the sand. Her guiding, him failing, then trying again. The crushing pressure began to ease, millimetre by millimetre. The ringing faded, replaced by the real sound of waves collapsing and sliding back. His lungs unlocked. A deep, shuddering inhale finally reached the bottom of his chest. It hurt, but it was air.
He became acutely aware of her touch. Her thumb was moving in a tiny, unconscious arc on his cheekbone. Her other hand still splayed over his heart, feeling its slowing rhythm. The old sweatshirt she wore smelled like him, like the pine soap from the house, and underneath, like her.
He pulled back.
She let her hands drop, wiping them on the thighs of her pajama pants. They sat in silence for a long moment, just breathing the same salt-heavy air.
“Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” she said quietly. Her voice was careful.
He couldn’t look at her. He stared at the dark water. “Yeah.”
“Since your dad…” she trailed off.
“Yeah.”
Another pause. The wind picked up, lifting her hair. She tugged the sweatshirt sleeves over her fists. “What brought that on?”
A bitter, choked sound escaped him. Almost a laugh. He finally turned his head, met her gaze. The question in her eyes was genuine, and that was the worst part. She really didn’t know.
He said nothing. His silence was the answer.
Her expression shifted. The concern flickered, then fractured into understanding, then into a kind of horrified guilt. She looked away, toward the house. The nightlight in her window was still a tiny, accusing eye. “Oh,” she breathed. The word was barely audible.
“Yeah,” he repeated, the word hollow.
“Conrad, I…”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, his voice stronger now, roughened by salt and strain. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Just… don’t.”
She nodded, pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She looked small inside his sweatshirt. “I couldn’t sleep,” she offered, a brittle piece of normalcy. “Saw you from the window. You were just… standing there. Then you went down.”
“You shouldn’t have come out.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Go back to sleep. Marry my brother tomorrow.” The words were stones. He threw them, wanting to see them land.
She flinched. “That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” He pushed himself to his feet, his body feeling old and battered. The sand fell from his knees in clumps. “You should go in. It’s late.”
She stood too, facing him. The few inches of height he had on her felt like a canyon. “Are you going to be okay?”
The question was so vast it was meaningless. He gave the only answer he could. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I learned from the best.”
It was a low blow. He saw it hit home. Her eyes glistened in the dark. She blinked rapidly, looking down. “I’m getting married tomorrow,” she said, as if reminding herself.
“I know what tomorrow is, Isabel.”
“Then you know why I can’t…” she gestured helplessly between them. “This. Any of this.”
He wanted to ask. He wanted to ask if she loved Jeremiah, really loved him, or if she just loved the idea of being safe, of being part of a family that hadn’t shattered. He wanted to ask if she ever lay awake next to Jeremiah and thought about the photo frame turned down on a nightstand. He wanted to ask if the nightlight was for the dark, or for the ghosts.
He asked none of it.
Instead, he lit a cigarette. The flame of the lighter was a tiny, stable sun in his hands. He inhaled, the smoke cutting through the taste of panic. “You should go.”
She didn’t move. She watched the ember glow. “You still smoke.”
“Old habits.”
“You said you’d quit.”
“I said a lot of things.” He exhaled, watching the smoke drift toward the water. “People change. Or they don’t. I haven’t figured out which is worse.”
She took a step closer. The wind carried his smoke toward her, and she didn’t wave it away. “I don’t want you to hate me,” she whispered.
He looked at her then, really looked. At the girl he’d taught to swim past the breakers, the woman who’d held his head while he threw up after his father’s funeral, the ghost who haunted every room of his life. The pain in his chest was a dull, familiar ache now. A companion.
“I could never hate you,” he said, and it was the truest thing he’d said in two years. “That’s the problem.”
A tear escaped, tracking a silver line down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her sweatshirt sleeve, a childish, vulnerable gesture that undid him.
The space between them hummed with everything unsaid. The waves kept their indifferent rhythm. Conrad dropped the cigarette, crushing it into the wet sand with his heel. The action felt final.
“You can’t say that.” She said, looking at him, taking a step closer. Her voice was a frayed thread.
“It’s true.” The admission flooded out, a dam breaking. “I could never hate you, I still love you.” He said, regretting that he let it slip out the moment the words left the safety of his bones.
They hung there in the salt air, impossible to take back.
Isabel made a small, broken sound. She covered her mouth with her hand. She was shaking. He could see it in the tremor of her shoulders under the borrowed fabric.
“Belly,” he started, taking a step forward, instinct overriding sense.
“Don’t,” she choked out, stepping back. “Don’t say my name like that. Not now.” She wrapped her arms tight around herself. “God, Conrad. Tomorrow.”
He heard the word echo, a death knell in the quiet dark. Tomorrow. It wasn’t a day anymore. It was a wall.
The confession he’d let slip hung between them, monstrous and real. He watched it register in the widening of her eyes, the parting of her lips. The fragile composure he’d scraped together after the first attack shattered all over again.
“Just forget I said anything,” he rasped, the words tumbling out too fast. He took a stumbling step backward, the sand sliding beneath his heel. “I’m sorry, Belly, I’m…”
His lungs seized. The air turned to glass.
He bent double, a sharp, wounded sound escaping him as his hands flew to his chest. This one was worse. It wasn’t a slow squeeze but a violent snap, a constriction so complete his vision spotted at the edges. He couldn’t see the water or the house—only the dark, grainy texture of the sand rushing up to meet him.
Isabel’s voice was a distant buzz. “Conrad.”
He tried to straighten, to walk, to escape the wreckage of his own making. He managed three jerking steps away from her, each one a monumental effort. The cold night air scraped uselessly at his throat.
His hand clutched at the center of his chest, fingernails digging deep, as if he could physically tear the panic out. A fierce, burning heat flooded behind his eyes, not tears but a pure, chemical sting of utter helplessness. A high, metallic ringing swallowed all other sound, her voice, the waves, everything, until there was only the silent scream of his own body betraying him.
Then her hands were on him again. Not tentative. Not careful. Urgent.
She walked over to him, her movements sure in the sand, and cupped his cheeks, forcing his head up. “Connie, look at me please.” The old nickname, unused for years, tore a ragged gasp from him. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and terrified, one hand still clutching his chest like it might burst.
“It’s okay. Breathe.” She said, her voice a low, steady chant against the ringing.
He tried. It was harder this time, a vicious, humiliating clampdown. “I can’t,” he choked out, the words sandpaper on his throat. He was folding, kneeling into the sand as his legs gave way.
She knelt down with him, their knees touching. “Hey, hey it’s okay.” She said, cupping his cheeks again, her thumbs on the sharp bones. She made him look at her. The world was a blur of dark water and her pale, determined face.
She rested her forehead against his.
The contact was an electric shock. A circuit completed. The cool skin of her brow against his, the shared breath, the terrifying intimacy of it anchored him. His own harsh panting filled the space between their mouths. He could smell the sleep on her skin, the faint coconut of her shampoo, the salt.
“With me,” she whispered, her eyes closed. “In.”
He dragged a thread of air in.
“Out.”
He released it, a shudder that moved through both of them.
He released it, a shudder that moved through both of them.
Their foreheads stayed pressed together. His breathing was still a thin, reedy whistle, each inhale a desperate scrape. Her thumbs kept moving on his cheeks, a rhythmic anchor. “Again,” she whispered, her own breath warm on his mouth.
But his lungs wouldn’t obey. The burning in his chest was a wildfire now, consuming the air before it could reach him. A sharp, visceral fear gripped him—that this time, it wouldn’t stop. That he would just crumple here at her feet, on the eve of her wedding, a final pathetic scene.
“I can’t…” he wheezed, the words breaking apart. His vision swam, her face doubling.
“You need to breathe, Connie.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes held a new, frantic determination. She was looking at his lips, at the struggle there, the painful gasp for a life he couldn’t seem to keep hold of.
She leaned in and kissed him.
His breath stopped entirely. His heart hammered a violent, single thud against his ribs, a stunned protest. Then nothing. For one eternal second, the world was silent.
Her lips were on his. Soft, familiar, and tasting of salt and the spearmint gum she always chewed. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a firm, deliberate pressure, a mute command against his panic.
His hands, which had been clawing at the sand, found the small of her back. He pulled her closer, a reflexive, drowning man’s grip. Her hands remained on his cheeks, holding him steady, her fingers sliding into the hair at his nape.
It was her helping him breathe. The kiss was oxygen and poison. Stopping him from breathing to make him breathe.
It worked. It didn’t. A harsh, ragged inhale ripped through his nose, and he kissed her back. The wildfire in his chest didn’t extinguish; it changed, melting into a different, deeper ache. It was worse. It was better. They kissed each other, a collision of memory and present desperation, her fingers tightening in his hair, his going to her waist, pulling her fully into the space between his knees.
The world narrowed to sensation: the chill of the night, the heat of her mouth, the coarse fabric of his own sweatshirt under his palms, the solid reality of her body against his. He forgot about the sand, the house, the tomorrow hanging over them. There was only the taste of her and the shocking, life-giving rhythm of his own heart restarting.
The kiss deepened, a natural, desperate progression. Her lips parted under his, and he felt the slight catch in her breath, a silent surrender.
Their tongues found each other. It wasn’t tentative. It was a hungry, familiar exploration, a language their bodies remembered verbatim. The salt, the spearmint, the unique warmth of her was a devastating homecoming.
Her hands slid from his cheeks into his hair, her fingers tangling in the dark strands. She tugged gently, pulling him closer, a soft noise escaping her throat. It unraveled him. His hands at her waist moved to her back, sliding under the bulk of the sweatshirt to find the thin cotton of her tank top.
He pulled her impossibly closer, until there was no space, no night air, no tomorrow between them. Her body arched into his, fitting against him with a rightness that made his head spin. Every point of contact was a static shock, a nerve ending screaming to life after years of dormancy.
This was nothing like the memory of two years ago in the ballroom. That had been hope and moonlight. This was sand and salt and a frantic, drowning kind of hope. It was an answer to a question he’d been too scared to ask. His lungs burned, but for a new reason now. He couldn’t get enough air because he couldn’t get enough of her.
She broke the kiss first, gasping. She didn’t pull away. She rested her forehead back against his, their breaths mingling in ragged, shared puffs of cloud. Her eyes were closed tight.
“Conrad,” she said, her voice fractured.
She kissed her again, softer this time, a slow, searing punctuation. He felt her resolve liquefy. He kissed her back, her hands slid down to clutch at his shoulders, her nails biting faintly through his skin.