“Yeah.You just dove in not ten minutes ago.”
Desi froze.The voice was not Ethan’s.A man lounged in the wheelhouse, sunlight flashing across a silver peace sign hanging from his neck.Shoulder-length brown hair hung in sunbaked waves to a tanned, tattooed body, his arms a mural of ink and motion.He grinned, a diamond stud winking from his ear.
Desi blinked hard.“And just who are you?”
His brows shot up.
“Very funny, Des,” Camila said, hoisting Desi’s tank with a smirk.
“I mean it,” Desi snapped.“Where’s Ethan?”
Worry feathered her first mate’s brow.“Ethan?”
“Yes, Ethan Turner, you know, our captain.”
“You feeling okay?”Camila took a step toward her, genuine concern appearing in her eyes.“Something happen down there?”She glanced at the glittering sea.“You weren’t down long enough to bump your head.”
Her voice sounded far away, distorted, as if spoken underwater.Desi’s knees buckled, and she sank to the bench, her pulse roaring in her ears.
The strange man approached, his flip-flops slapping softly on the deck.“Get her some water, Cami,” he said, crouching beside her.
Desi flinched and scooted away.“Who are you?”
Camila pressed a bottle into her shaking hands.“That’s Chad, Desi.You know that.”
Chad gave her a slow, easy smile.
Her throat closed.The world tilted.No…no, no, this isn’t right.She raised her hands to her face.And froze.A flash of red shimmered against her palms.
Sunlight caught it.Not rust.Not coral.
Blood… Alden’s blood.
Desi knew something was wrong—terribly wrong—before she reached the door ofOcean’s Echo.
The moment she stepped off the dock, dread twisted through her chest like seaweed tightening around an ankle.The familiar tang of salt and oil in the air should’ve comforted her, but it felt off, like she’d returned to a dream not her own.
The sign above the shop confirmed it.Instead of the carved mahogany one she’d commissioned, a crest of curling waves and the wordsOcean’s Echoin gilded paint, there hung a board with the name scrawled in black marker, the wood warped and crooked.
A sick pulse thudded at her temples.
Then Chad—whoever he was—had refused to help her and Camila secure the boat, muttering something about a girlfriend waiting for him before leaping onto the dock and vanishing into the sunbaked crowd.
When Desi had asked Camila about him, her friend had only shrugged.
“He’s not the most reliable, but he’s cute and a good captain.”
Desi swallowed the ache rising in her throat.Ethan would never have left her to clean the deck alone.
Ethan would have—
Ethan doesn’t exist anymore.
The thought slapped her.Something she’d done—some decision, some moment in the past—had erased him.Or perhaps rewritten his path entirely.The realization made her stomach pitch.
Inside the shop, the air smelled of mildew, salt, and neglect.A teenage girl sat behind the counter, her hair dyed neon orange, her lips and eyes rimmed in black like a Halloween caricature.She didn’t look up from her phone.
Desi’s gaze swept the room.Sand coated the once-polished wooden floors, crunching beneath her sandals.Torn maps curled on the walls.A glass display case—cracked diagonally—held a chaotic jumble of tangled cords, cracked dive masks, and rusted regulators.The hum of the ceiling fan wobbled overhead like a lazy insect.
