Page 93 of When Hearts Unravel

By the time I get to deck three, it’s chaos. Security guards wearing yellow reflective jackets scurry around the deck. Jessa and Fiona usher a shivering man on a stretcher toward the elevators.

Jessa nods when I spot her, just as I hear wet footsteps thudding toward me.

“They called you.” Rhys reaches my side, sounding out of breath. “I told them not to. We have it handled.”

“How can I help?”

I know the basics, but it’s been years since I did a rotation in the emergency room.

“So far, there were two superficial head wounds. The man they wheeled by was trying to jump into the water to rescue the idiots, but he had a heart attack. Dr. MacKintosh is meeting him in the medical bay.”

People rush around, bright spotlights sweeping up and down the deck, then over the dark ocean.

Between the roar of the winds and the rain assailing my face, I can barely hear him.

“What about the people who fell overboard?” I holler.

My pulse races when I see personnel huddled by the railing, pointing to the water.

“The two with the head wounds were lucky because we fished them out quickly. There’s still one person missing. But with the storm and the frigid temperatures, I doubt she’ll make it…if she isn’t dead already. I’m heading back to the medical bay, and you should join me—”

I don’t hear the rest of his sentence because my entire being focuses on a tall man emerging from the crowd. With his dark Henley soaked and plastered to his body, Rex Anderson is a sight to behold.

Lightning whips over us, rendering his face in stark shadows. Two guards speak to him and he throws his hands in the air, clearly agitated. Then he rakes his fingers through his dark tresses.

He looks up and our gazes lock.

For a moment, with nature inflicting violence upon us—the dark clouds festering with electricity, the deafening gusts nearly obliterating my eardrums—time stops.

Emotions flashing in those iridescent eyes—anger, worry, fear—too many for me to name. He takes a step toward me, his hands curled at his side.

“Go,”he mouths. “It’s too dangerous here.”

My feet are rooted to the ground.

How can I go when he’s here?

But suddenly, a man calls him, panic in his voice. He points to the ocean, gesturing wildly. Rex stares at the man, then the dark waters, and every hair on my body stands.

No. Don’t do it.

He whips his head toward me again, his eyes reflecting the same unhinged glint I saw that day when he threw himself over me in Pyrgos.

The madness within them. The daredevil tempting death.

Don’t do it.

I open my mouth to beg him, but it’s too late. I watch in horror as he spins toward the ocean and, in two quick strides, vaults off the railing, disappearing from sight.

A scream rips from me, and the next thing I know, I’m hurtling toward the crowd, ignoring Rhys’s hollers, ignoring the screams of passersby and cruise personnel.

Rex went after the person overboard.

Without a care for hisown life.

He’s been tempting the Grim Reaper, and now he’s calling his bluff and facing him head-on.

I plaster myself against the railing, trying to find the maddening man, but all I see is the unforgiving sea.