The yacht was white and enormous, docked at the edge of the Hamptons marina like something that didn't belong to the sea at all, more like a hotel that had wandered off and gotten lost near the water. I stood on the gangway and looked at the Atlantic stretching out past the breakwater, gray-blue and endless, and my knees went soft.

I pressed my palm flat against my sternum. Underneath the diamond necklace Jett had given me, underneath the cold stones, I could feel the small hard shape of the whistle. My father's whistle. I always wore it close, hidden, like a secret that kept me alive.

"There she is." Jett's arm came around my waist from behind, pulling me in like he was fitting a piece into a display case. He didn't ask if I was okay. He never asked. "Smile, baby. People are watching."

I smiled. I always smiled.

The upper deck was already loud by the time the sun started sinking gold over the water. There were champagne towers stacked in careful pyramids, a DJ spinning something with too much bass, and Jett's friends — Trevor Wade and the rest of them — laughing too hard at things that weren't funny, all of them angling for a look from Jett like sunflowers turning toward the same light.

I found a spot near the railing, as far from the open water as I could get while still looking like I belonged. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I hummed, so quiet only I could hear it, the little tune my father used to sing when he tucked me in. It was the only thing that ever slowed my heart down.

"Oh my god, hi guys!" Blair Kelley's voice cut through the music, bright and practiced. She had her phone up, filming, narrating her own life like it was a nature documentary. "We are on the most insane yacht right now, okay, look at this sunset—" She swung the camera and it landed on me. I felt it before I saw it, the little red light. "And there's Saige, looking real thrilled to be here." She laughed, light and easy, the kind of laugh designed to make cruelty sound like a joke. "Someone's not having fun."

I didn't say anything. What was there to say.

Blair drifted toward Jett like she always did, like gravity, one hand landing on his forearm, her mouth close to his ear. I watched her whisper something and watched him laugh, head tipped back, easy and warm in a way he never was with me anymore.

"She never seems fun at these things," Blair said, louder now, loud enough for the little cluster of people around them to hear. She glanced at me over the rim of her glass, smile sweet as poison. "Is she, like, ride-or-die? Or just... ride-along?"

A few people laughed. Jett laughed loudest.

I pressed my hand harder against my chest and hummed. No one noticed. No one ever noticed.

"You know what," Jett said, and I felt the shift in him, felt him puff up under the attention like a balloon filling with air, "my fiancée would do anything for me. Wouldn't you, baby?"

I looked at him. "Jett—"

"No, no, hold on." He held up a hand, silencing me the way he silenced waiters, the way he silenced everyone. He climbed up onto the low bench along the railing, swaying slightly, champagne sloshing in his glass. "Everybody. Everybody, listen. I want to talk about loyalty."

A few people whooped. Trevor lifted his phone.

"Love," Jett announced, "means sacrifice. Real love. Not the fake stuff." He unclasped his watch — the Patek Philippe, the one he'd shown off for weeks, custom-made, worth more than most people's houses — and held it up so it caught the dying orange light. "This watch cost more than some of your apartments." Laughter. "And I'm about to prove a point."

"Jett, what are you—"

He threw it. Just like that. An easy, careless arc over the railing, glinting once in the sunset, and then gone, swallowed by the black water without so much as a splash I could see from where I stood.

The deck went quiet.

He turned to me, and his smile didn't reach his eyes. It never reached his eyes. "Go get it."

The world tilted. I looked past him at the water, the churning dark water sliding against the hull, and I wasn't on a yacht anymore. I was eight years old on a muddy riverbank, watching my father's back disappear under a current that didn't care how much I loved him, feeling the whistle pressed hot into my palm, hearing his voice — *hold onto this for me, sweetheart* — and then nothing. Just water. Just silence. Just the whole rest of my life stretching out empty in front of me.

My breath wouldn't come. My legs wouldn't move. I opened my mouth and nothing came out, not a word, not a sound, nothing.

Blair raised her phone a little higher, angling for a better shot.

And I stood there, frozen, humming a tune only I could hear, waiting for the water to take something else from me.

I dropped. My knees hit the teak deck and the sound was flat and hollow, like something breaking that nobody heard. My hands went to his leg, fingers curling into the fabric of his pants, and the words came out wrong, all broken up and gasping. "Please. Please, Jett, you know I can't. You know why I can't. Please don't make me—"

He didn't move. Just stood there with his champagne glass in one hand, looking down at me like I was something he'd stepped in.

Around us, the deck got quieter. Not silent. The music still played. The water still slapped against the hull. But the voices changed, went softer, uncertain. Someone cleared their throat. I heard a shoe scrape against wood.

Trevor Wade laughed. It was a short sound, sharp and mean, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye, phone angled down at me, thumb moving across the screen. He grinned at whatever he'd just typed and slid the phone back into his pocket.

I kept my eyes on Jett. "Please."

His jaw moved. A tiny shift, the muscle jumping under his skin. He was reading the crowd. I could see it happening. The way his gaze flicked left, then right, measuring something I couldn't see but could feel pressing down on both of us like weight.

Blair's voice floated over from somewhere near the champagne tower. "Oh my god, is she serious right now?"

Someone laughed. Someone else didn't.

Jett's hand came down and caught my chin. His fingers were warm and his grip was firm and he tilted my face up until I had no choice but to look at him. He leaned in close, so close I could smell the champagne on his breath, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. Calm. Practiced.

"If you don't get in that water," he said, "the engagement is over. Tonight. Right here." His thumb pressed into my jaw. "And I will make sure every person in this city knows you were nothing before me. And will be nothing after."

He let go. Straightened. Smoothed the front of his jacket like he was brushing off dust.

I couldn't move.

My body had stopped listening. My legs were locked, knees grinding into the deck, and my lungs kept pulling in air but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. I wasn't on a yacht. I was on a muddy bank with my shoes sinking into the silt and my father's back disappearing under the current, the whistle hot in my palm, his voice still echoing — *hold onto this for me, sweetheart, Daddy's coming right back* — and then the water closing over him like a door slamming shut.

I tried to stand. I couldn't.

I tried to speak. Nothing came out but a thin, airless sound.

Jett stared at me. One second. Two. His mouth tightened into a line.

Then he grabbed my arm.

The grip was hard enough to bruise. He yanked me up off my knees and I stumbled, feet barely catching under me, and he started walking. Dragging me. My shoulder wrenched and I tried to pull back but his hand was iron and I was nothing, I weighed nothing, I was just a thing being moved from one place to another.

The guests parted.

I saw their faces slide past. Some looked away. Some watched with wide eyes and open mouths. One woman — I didn't know her name — pressed her hand to her chest like she wanted to say something but didn't. Trevor Wade raised his phone again. Blair stood near the railing with her champagne glass tilted in her hand, head cocked, watching like this was a show she'd paid to see.

No one moved.

No one said a word.

Jett pulled me across the deck and the railing got closer, the dark water beyond it spreading out like a mouth, and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. My father's tune was in my head, humming under everything, the only sound that made sense, and I clung to it because it was all I had left.

"Jett," I whispered. "Jett, please—"

He didn't look at me.

He just kept walking.

And the water waited.

He didn't let go of my arm. Not when we reached the railing. Not when I tried to twist away, my feet slipping on the wet deck. Not when I sobbed his name one last time.

He just shoved.

The world inverted. Sky became water became sky. I saw the yacht's white hull tilt sideways, saw faces lean over the railing in a slow-motion blur, and then the Atlantic hit me like a fist.

Cold. God, the cold. It punched every thought out of my head and replaced it with animal panic. My mouth opened to scream and salt water poured in, choking, burning. My dress tangled around my legs. The diamond necklace was a weight dragging me down.

I clawed at the surface. My arms thrashed. My lungs were on fire.

I wasn't in the Hamptons anymore. I was eight years old on a muddy riverbank, watching the East River swallow my father whole. I was pressing his whistle into my palm so hard it left marks. I was waiting for him to come back. Waiting. Waiting.

He never came back.

The water closed over my head and I went under. Darkness. Pressure. The muffled thud of my own heartbeat in my ears. I kicked and broke the surface again, gasping, choking, screaming words that came out as nothing but salt and terror.

"Jett!" I tried to yell. "Jett, please—"

Above me, the yacht's lights blurred into smears of gold. Faces lined the railing. I couldn't tell if they were watching or looking away. I couldn't tell if anyone was moving. The music still played. I could hear it, faint and distorted, bleeding through the water like a dream I couldn't wake up from.

Then I heard the splash.

Relief flooded through me, hot and desperate. He came. He came for me. He was going to pull me out. He was going to say he was sorry. He was going to hold me and tell me it was over and I would forgive him because I always forgave him, because that's what love was, wasn't it? Enduring. Forgiving. Waiting.

I saw his head break the surface ten feet away. Water streamed off his hair. His eyes locked onto mine.

They weren't soft.

They weren't scared.

They were furious.

He swam toward me with hard, efficient strokes, and I reached for him, my hand outstretched, fingers grasping at nothing. "Jett, I can't—I can't swim, please, I—"

He reached me.

His hand closed around the back of my head.

And he shoved me under.

The world exploded into black. Water filled my nose, my mouth, my throat. I tried to scream and choked on salt. My hands flew up and found his wrist, his forearm, clawing, pulling, trying to break free. He didn't let go. His grip was iron. His fingers tangled in my hair and held me down like I was something that needed to be drowned, something that needed to be silenced.

I thrashed. My nails dug into his skin. My legs kicked at nothing. The pressure in my chest built and built until I thought my ribs would crack.

This wasn't an accident.

This wasn't a rescue.

This was punishment.

My vision started to gray at the edges. My lungs screamed. My body begged me to open my mouth, to breathe, to take in anything even if it killed me. My hands were still on his wrist but they were weakening, the strength draining out of me like water through a sieve.

And then my fingers found the chain at my throat.

The diamond necklace. The one Jett had given me. The one I wore over the whistle because he told me to, because he said the whistle was garbage, because he said if I wanted to be a Patterson I needed to stop clinging to trash.

But the whistle was still there. Hidden. Always hidden.

My hand closed around it.

The metal was cold and small and battered, and I held it the way I'd held it fifteen years ago on a riverbank with mud sucking at my shoes and my father's voice in my ears—*hold onto this for me, sweetheart*—and I gripped it so hard the edges cut into my palm.

I held it.

I held it.

I held it.

The gray at the edges of my vision turned black. The pressure in my chest stopped hurting. My body stopped fighting. My hands went slack around the whistle but my fingers stayed closed, locked, like rigor mortis setting in early.

Somewhere far above me, Jett let go.

I felt his hand release my hair. Felt the water shift as he kicked away. Felt myself sinking, slow and heavy, the yacht's lights fading into pinpricks and then nothing.

I sank.

And the last thing I held onto in this world was my father's whistle, the one he pressed into my hand before the water took him.

The same water that was taking me now.

Daddy's coming right back, he'd said.

I waited.

I waited.

And then I stopped waiting.

I let go.