“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“That doesn’t make it less stupid.”
“No.”
“And now you’re all intense about me free-diving.”
“I am intense about many things.”
“No kidding.”
The corner of his mouth moved again, more reluctant this time, but still there. It lasted perhaps two seconds, but I would remember it for far longer.
“Why alone?” he asked, and then seemed to regret the question immediately. His expression shuttered, as though he had forgotten he was angry with me and resented the lapse. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“I know.”
I looked back at the tank because looking at him too directly felt suddenly perilous. Not because he might run. Not because he might cry. But because I wanted him, and I did not yet know what form of wanting could exist in a room with captivity at one end and conversation at the other.
“I learned alone because failure is easier without an audience,” I said.
Cove went quiet, and after a moment, he murmured, “Yeah. I get that.”
Cove understood things he had no business understanding about me, often by accident. Most people mistook my control for strength, my wealth for power, my stillness for superiority. Cove, even frightened and furious, saw the cracks because he understood what it meant to be watched too closely while trying not to fail.
Perhaps that was why I had wanted him in my collection from the beginning.
Not because he was easy to keep, but because he could see the tank from both sides of the glass.
“You miss it,” I said.
“Free-diving?”
“Yes.”
He looked into the water again, and the longing on his face was so clear that it pained me.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I do.”
“I can arrange it.”
His head snapped back toward me. “No.”
“I have coastline.”
“That is not the issue.”
“I have equipment.”
“That is also not the issue.”
“I can acquire instructors.”
“I don’t need instructors.”
“Dive partners, then.”
“No,” he said, sharper now, and the softness from moments before vanished beneath the return of alarm. “Fuck… No, Tobias. You don’t get to arrange ocean outings for the person you are currently keeping locked up.”
