She shivered when his hot, full lips found her neck, covering her skin with openmouthed kisses that burned like a brand.
Then she heard it: the piercing beep of a truck backing up. As Eve awoke slowly in the dark V-berth, she realized two strange things.
First, she hadn’t had any nightmares. Second, her hand was between her legs.
The first discovery delighted her. The second mortified her.
The white robe that Dr. Randall had given her was wide open. Her clit was hard as a pearl and slick as the fingers of her right hand.
She never touched herself. Ever. “Oh, my God.”
Eve tied the robe shut. When she opened the door of the cabin, the marina was dark. Sam stood on the dock chatting with a driver from the processing plant. He looked at her and waved.
“Hey,” he called. “Feeling better?”
She nodded, paranoid he knew what she’d been up to. “Um. Yeah. Much better.”
Eve took a shower while Sam made tuna melts with pickles, one of the few things he could cook. They ate on the deck, looking out at the distant, twinkling oil platforms that dotted the horizon.
He told Eve that the oil platforms all had names: Gilda, Grace, Hidalgo, Holly, Harvest, and the less- flamboyant A, B, and C. Hundreds of people worked on those rigs.
“When I was still Charlie’s tender, I used to daydream about getting work on a platform. What would it be like?
Surrounded by water, day and night?” He took a sip of beer. Sometimes, when Sam thought about all the ways he wished his life had gone, he still wondered what it would feel like to live out there, never coming to dry land unless he had to. Whenever he was on the water, surrounded by deep blue, Sam felt, if not completely at peace with himself, then at least strong enough to keep his mind from wandering where it shouldn’t.
“So, how do you know Dr. Randall?” Eve asked.
Sam tried not to feel jealous. “Back before I bought the Bravado from Charlie, I picked up work wherever I could. I helped out on sport fishing boats in Goleta. Jesse was a regular on those. Chartered them before he bought his own yacht. He loves fishing. We used to surf together, too.”
“He’s young for a doctor. And rich.” “I guess so,” said Sam with a shrug.
Eve snorted. “And that girlfriend. Oxana. She was absolutely beautiful.”
“Nah. You’re much more beautiful than her,” Sam said without thinking. Eve said nothing. At once, he wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth, even though they were true.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked quietly. “Sure.”
“Your nightmares. Your anxiety. What happened to you? What caused all of this?”
Eve’s silence was deeper than any she had ever given him. As the seconds passed, he regretted asking her the question more and more. Jesus Christ, what’s with you today? Batting a thousand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business.” She leaned forward into the light from window.
“No, it is your business.” She set her empty plate on the patio table. “If you’re relying on me on the water, you need to know what kind of a nut job you’ve hired.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Here’s the short version. I lived in a coastal town called Ishihara. Near Sendai.”
The name of the place rippled in Sam’s memory like a skipped pebble. “Was that the town destroyed in the tsunami?” he asked. “I saw the footage on CNN.” An entire town swept away, thousands dead—a tragedy of epic proportions.
She nodded. “Since the tsunami, I’ve had nightmares, anxiety, and something called thalassophobia.”
“What that?”
“Fear of the ocean.”
Sam was thunderstruck. “And you agreed to work with me? On a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean?”
“I needed money.” She smiled sadly. “Dr. Randall helped me understand how to behave during an anxiety attack. And because we take the boat out so much, my fear of the ocean is not so intense. Something scary has just become part of my daily routine.”
“As far as therapy goes, that sounds pretty brutal.”
“What can I say?” she said with a shrug. “I like to dive in.”
That night, Sam awoke to the sounds of Eve crying downstairs. In the darkness, he went down to where she lay by herself, twisted in her blankets, her cheeks soaked again with tears. It was freezing cold inside the shop.
His heart ached for her. Gently, he gathered her trembling body in his arms and carried her up the stairs.
He lay her down in his warm bed and settled down behind her, pulling the covers up over them.
“Sam?” she murmured.
He took her hand. She curled against him. “Sleep. Just sleep. You’re safe here.
Sam stared at the digital clock on his nightstand as its red numbers changed, minute to minute.
He was driven by a heart like an octopus, sneaking around from cave to cave, afraid to show itself. As soon as something pretty or sweet came along, he had to fight the urge to wrap his tentacles around it, dragging it close.
Tonight, he kept his hands at two and ten, wrapped around Eve’s waist as she slept silently against his chest.