His arms tightened around me, anchoring me to the present while my thoughts tried to drift back into that drowning silence. I clung to him, trembling—whether from the shock of being yanked so abruptly from the water or from the shock of him being there, I wasn't sure.
The heat of the bath clung to my skin, but the chill of his sudden presence eclipsed everything. He pressed one hand to my back, the other still firm around my waist, and pulled me closer into his chest as I coughed raggedly against him. His heartbeat was wild beneath my cheek—fast, uneven, nothing like the calm and composed Zac Evans I had known.
"You weren't answering," he murmured against my wet hair. "I was calling your name… I thought…"
He didn't finish. He didn't need to. I felt it in the way his voice cracked, in th
