The Storm We Swallowed
The bull market had been kind to Marcus, but kindness was never his style. I watched him from the edge of the hotel pool, his silhouette cutting through the water with that same aggressive precision he'd used to dismantle our marriage twelve years ago. We were here for the same arbitration—his company against my client's—and somewhere between the deposition and the reconciliation clause, we'd ended up at the pool bar, then in the water.
"You still swim like you're trying to escape something," he said, surfacing beside me. Water slicked his silvering hair back, revealing those sharp features I'd once traced with more tenderness than anger.
"I am escaping something," I said. "This conversation."
Lightning cracked across the Caribbean sky—a sudden, violent white vein that made the pool surface shiver. The storm we'd been tracking all afternoon had finally caught up with us. Other guests were scattering, towels flapping, drinks abandoned. But we stayed, suspended in that electric moment between safety and exposure.
"Remember CancĂşn?" Marcus asked softly. "The hurricane?"
I remembered. We'd been young and foolish, trapped in our hotel room for three days while the world raged outside. We'd fought and fucked and made promises we couldn't keep, sealed by the raw terror of being young and alive while something bigger threatened to tear us apart. That was the last time I'd felt certain about anything.
"That was a lifetime ago," I said, but my body betrayed me—leaning toward his, the water suddenly charged between us like the air before lightning strikes.
His hand found my waist beneath the water. "Bullshit," he whispered against my mouth. "Some currents never really let go."
The first cold drop of rain hit the back of my neck as his lips met mine—lightning and water and stubborn, impossible recognition all at once. Some things you can swim away from. Others, you just have to let drown you.