“Do you recover from being swept out to sea, gnawn upon by sharks, drowned again, trapped in a discarded fishing net, and prisoned at the bottom of the ocean for a hundred years? Because even if you do, I fear my heart could not.” He thrust me out to arm’s length. His pupils had expanded to their widest point, wiping away all but the thinnest sliver of green. “Do not do this to me again, October. Do not. I can lose . . . so many things. I can’t lose you. I would, unquestionably, fail to survive it.”
