WITH THE RAGING FLOOD and the immediate fight for survival, I’d somehow managed to completely forget Luca had been with me as it started. But with his motionless form directly in my line of sight—yet still so far beyond my reach—he shot straight up to the top of my list of priorities. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of him until this moment (and decided to blame it on the oxygen deprivation, for my own peace of mind), but what really surprised me was that I caught sight of him at all.
I didn’t know how he was here and not further downstream—maybe he’d fought against the current more successfully than I did. Maybe he’d actually managed to catch himself on something until he couldn’t hold on anymore.
No matter how it happened, he was here. Now. But not for much longer.
I froze in inde
