That was when we hit the strainer.
The sound was sudden and horrible—branches clawing against the hull. I felt them scrape the underside of the rubber floor, jostling the raft while I used all my strength to pull on Noah’s vest.
And then he was in the boat, on the floor beside me, the danger behind us.
I crouched beside him. “You okay?”
He nodded, but the second he sat up, he was reaching for JJ, checking him over, running practiced fingers along arms and legs.
“Did it scrape you? Does anything hurt? You aren’t bleeding, are you, kid?”
JJ shook his head, wide-eyed and silent now. Kill had curled up near the edge of the raft, face red and looking like he’d burst into tears any moment.
I moved to Kill, crouching beside him. “Hey, you okay?” I asked gently, brushing his damp hair back from his forehead. “Your brother’s fine. Look, Noah’s with him, see? He’s just fine.”
By the time Melissa finally made her way to the front of the raft, her can of beer still in hand, things were already beginning to settle. Cody, in what I could only assume was a valiant effort to return us to “normal tour experience mode,” cleared his throat.
“So, if you look just ahead to your left, you’ll see the turn that makes up the famous Horseshoe Bend. Carved over millions of years, it’s one of the most photographed spots in Arizona…”
I took my seat again, my body still buzzing, one hand locked around Noah’s.
We glanced at each other. “Are you okay, really?”
He dismissed the scrape on his leg. “Just a scratch,” he said.
I just nodded. “Need to clean it up as soon as we get back.” Yes. I knew he was the doctor, but…it was a pretty deep scrape. And this water wasn’t exactly pristine.
“Yes, Dr. Farraday.”
I let out a relieved laugh. Honestly, we’d been pretty lucky. It could have been so much worse. If JJ had still been in the water… If Noah hadn’t already been halfway back inside…
“I think,” I said softly, “those people at work, they need to give you whatever you want.”
His lips twitched. “You think so?”
I nodded. “Yeah. They’d be idiots to let you get away.”
He didn’t respond right away, but then he sighed. “Unfortunately, I think they might be idiots.”
A few minutes passed. The boat glided forward through the bend. And then, quietly, Noah nudged my leg with his knee.
“What about you?” he asked. “You gonna let a few idiots chase you away?”
I winced. “I don’t want to think about that.”
But then I laughed, because somehow, in that moment—wind in my hair, blood drying on Noah’s leg—the demise of Lunch with Leo and Luna didn’t matter nearly as much as it had a week ago.
The old Luna was gone, sure, but that didn’t have to mean that there wasn’t room for a new version of myself. A new life.
And maybe… No, I couldn’t… Just…not yet. But I could enjoy this fling for what it was.
I should be able to allow myself that much, right?
NO HERO HERE
“Shuttle just left,” one of the guides called out as we handed off our life jackets. “Should be another along in twenty minutes.”
He wasn’t one of the younger, sun-streaked twenty-somethings who’d helped steer the rafts. This guy was a little older, broad-shouldered, with a clipboard tucked under one arm and a radio clipped to his belt. Something about the way he carried himself—like he was watching everything, counting gear with his eyes—made me think he might be one of the owners.
