Last chance.
Finally, the lifeboat broke free from the roof, and the men who had been circling below it leapt back. But then, to everyone’s shock and horror, the boat flipped and crashed onto the boat deck upside down.
“No,” James whispered, his eyebrows pinching as his eyes widened. “Oh, God, no.”
After what must have only been one or two stunned seconds, several men rushed over to the overturned lifeboat to flip it while others began to cut the ropes that were tethering it to the ship. Cassian rushed forward to try to flip it with them.
“James! Jacob!” he called out, bending low to clutch the boat’s edge. “Come help!”
Yes. Help. James needed to help.
Determined to live, to make it to New York with the man he loved, James lifted his foot with the intention of hurrying over tothe still-overturned lifeboat when the ship’s deck seemed to fall away beneath him. All of a sudden, an enormouswhooshof water burst forth from the bow, crashing into him from behind.
It knocked James off his feet.
And pulled him out to sea.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cassian
April 15, 1912
2:14 a.m.
“James!” Cassian screamed in horror as he watched an enormous swell of water slam into the man he loved, but before he could even begin to think about how to help, the water reached him, too.
Cassian only had a fraction of a second to brace himself for the impact. Even though he was in a relatively stable position—his knees bent, his muscles tense—nothing could have prepared him for either the force of the sea or the frigid cold.
Water slammed into him like a battering ram, the power of the ocean so magnificent that even though Cassian had seen it coming, he hadn’t a chance to remain on his feet. Then, once he fell, he was pierced by the sharp cold of the ocean. Every inch of him was on fire but frozen at the same time. For a moment, the pain was so strong that Cassian couldn’t even think. His mind was blank, empty even of half-formed thoughts and images. All that existed was a bright, white, blinding light.
And then, just as suddenly as Cassian had been pulled under, he resurfaced.
Bursting out of the water, Cassian gasped for air. At once, his senses were assaulted with another horrible facet of his new reality: the thunderous roar of other people’s screams. All around him, passengers and crew members were thrashing in the water, crying out in fear or agony or both. Their voices filled Cassian’s head, the sounds a crescendo that rang in his ears and made it impossible to think logically. Instead, Cassian only kept afloat by instinct—sweeping his limbs back and forth somewhat haphazardly—as his mind worked to adapt to the terrifying situation he’d found himself in.
Finally, when both the pain and the noise became slightly less all-consuming, a terrifying realization hit him, and his head whipped back and forth as he began scanning the water for his perfect steward. He silently thanked God that he’d given James his lifebelt. Yet even after several frantic moments searching, Cassian couldn’t find him. The very real possibility that James might not have made it or that they might never find each other in the cloak of night—the only light a sickly reddish orange glow from the nearby sinking ship—caused Cassian’s heart to crack, and the resultant pain was worse even than being immersed in the frigid Atlantic waters.
He kept his arms moving, kept looking around, kept searching, still on the very edge of panic. Butnothing. James was nowhere to be found. Desolation hit him like a fierce wave, and Cassian had the fleeting thought that maybe he ought to let himself slip beneath the surface. Then, just as he closed his eyes and let his arms slow their desperate paddling, he heard James’s voice calling for him, echoing with clarity above the others like a beacon of hope.
Whirling toward the sound, Cassian spotted James immediately mere feet from where he was.
“James!” Cassian called back.
He swam over, somehow forcing his limbs to move even though they still burned from the chill of the icy seawater.
“James!” Cassian cried out a second time.
James was still calling out Cassian’s name, too, though the man seemed not to be able to hear Cassian in return. When Cassian reached him, he placed a hand on James’s shoulder. James’s entire body spasmed, and he whipped around to face Cassian, but before Cassian had a chance to speak, James practically leapt on him and pushed him beneath the ocean’s surface.
Cassian’s blood spiked with fear, and he thought that he might meet his end right then and there. Somehow, however, he managed to reflexively shove James off of him. Quickly, Cassian bobbed to the surface, and the first thing he heard when he reemerged, spluttering out a mouthful of seawater, was James calling out for him again.
“Cassian!”
Cassian took hold of both of James’s shoulders this time and then, with every bit of strength he had, he shook the man once, hoping that he could break through the blinding white light of panic and pain that had obviously been clouding both the steward’s vision and his mind.
“James!” he shouted. “Dammit, James, I’m right here!”
James blinked a few times.
