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I go over to where he stands. “Do you feel ready?”
He turns toward me, the moonlight golden on his dark head, his perfect nose. “As ready as I’m gonna be.”
“That isn’t really what I asked,” I whisper. I don’t want to shake his confidence, but I also want him to know he can still back out. “You don’t have to do this. Not one guy here would set foot in that water, so they’re not going to say a word if you decide this isn’t the time.”
He regards me for a long moment. “Do you want me not to do it?”
No. Of course I don’t fucking want you to do it.
But the question feels like more. It feels like he’s saying, “Declare yourself, Juliet. Admit you care about me in a way you shouldn’t.”
And that’s something I can’t do, even if it’s true. Even if I meant to end things with Danny months ago because of it.
“I just want you to know you don’t have to. Only you can decide whether or not you’re ready.”
He turns away to stare at the ocean again. “Then it looks like I’ve decided. Go back to your boyfriend.”
I hesitate before I give up and return to the tent, wondering if I might spend the rest of my life regretting not telling him the truth.
* * *
The sun is barely out when we arrive at the cliffs overlooking Mavericks. We’ll be watching from here since the tide has swept the beach away.
The guys argue about which board Luke should use. He’s got a big wave gun now, ideal for the conditions. He doesn’t want to use it because he’s worried it will break and his logic sickens me. If you’re that worried your board will break, you shouldn’t be out there in the first place.
All the guys clap Luke on the back as he zips up his wetsuit. The girls hug him. I stand frozen, doing neither, and I’m the last one he looks at as he turns to start climbing over the rocks to reach the water.
He waits at the lowest rock until the tide rushes in before he jumps, and then he’s paddling furiously, a tiny figure on a blue and green board, fighting his way through violent surf to reach the break. Soon he’s inside what’s probably a sixty-foot wave, working his way to the top, and my heart is in my throat. Am I the only one who understands how wrong this can all go? He’s scaling something that could crush him in seconds.
“You want the binoculars?” asks Summer, and I take them with shaking hands, zeroing in on him. He looks like an ant in that wave even now, impossibly fragile.
I think of my brother, of how invulnerable he seemed when he left to talk to the police. They said he never even saw the shooter. That he walked out of the station and was on the ground seconds later.
Humans are so much more fragile than they seem, and you don’t know it until it’s too late. If Luke fails today—assuming he manages to survive the wave itself and isn’t shattered in a thousand ways from that alone—he could still be held under for ten minutes if luck isn’t on his side.
I hand her the binoculars. If these are his last moments, I don’t want to see him up close. I don’t think I want to see them at all.
Danny, beside me, is tense. “This was a bad idea.” At last, there’s concern for Luke instead of bitterness. “I should have stopped him.”
I press my face to my hands, thinking of this morning. I should have told him not to do it. I should have begged him. I should have told him how I feel, either way.
“He’s up next,” someone says.
I peel my hands from my face just as he takes the next wave, paddling hard to get ahead of it, popping up at the top of the crest before gliding down.
It’s a mountain of water, and he’s flying over the surface as if it’s something solid and unmoving, as if the energy beneath his board isn’t rumbling like a freight train.
“He’s got it!” someone shouts. “He’s fucking got it!”
“Wow,” Danny whispers. “He’s really doing it.”
But just as Luke enters the barrel, there’s a bump and he’s just…gone.
As if he was never out there at all.
Every exultant shout stops entirely, and everyone—even the strangers scattered across the viewing area—are staring at that one spot in the water where he disappeared.
“Fuck,” Beck hisses. He looks to Caleb, then Danny.
