Deep Waters

self-control and common sense. He whirled around and trained the flashlight on her.
    "Has it occurred to you that the reason you're so damned worried about me is because you're wildly, madly, passionately in love with me?" he asked with a fierceness that startled him.
    "That, too," she agreed.

17

    Water never disappears forever. It flows back into the sea, becomes rain, forms a river, fills a pond, or cascades down a mountain. In one way or another, it always returns.

    - "On the Way of Water," from the journal of Hayden Stone

    Big mistake, Charity thought. She had not meant to say the words aloud. Not after last night's debacle. They had just sort of slipped out. An accident waiting to happen. Now here she was standing at the scene of the train wreck.
    "Elias?"
    He did not respond. He loomed in the deep shadow behind the glare of his flashlight, his face unreadable. But she did not need to see his expression. She could feel the impact her words had made. Elias was stunned. Shaken to the core, no doubt.
    She felt a little sorry for him. His fancy philosophy was good at developing inner strength and self-control, but it did not handle deep emotions well. Charity knew of no philosophical framework that did. Human emotions were too mushy for such rigid constructs.
    She should have kept her mouth shut, she thought. She knew he was not ready to deal with this. She aimed the beam of her own flashlight squarely in his face. He did not flinch or blink. He was frozen.
    "Well, don't just stand there like a deer caught in the headlights." She knew her voice was laced with a distinctly waspish note, but there was nothing she could do about it. "It's your own fault. You had to go and get sarcastic about the whole thing. You know how that irritates me. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm under a lot of stress at the moment. I sometimes act impulsively when I get under stress. I've explained that to you."
    He did not move or speak. With a sigh, Charity lowered her flashlight. The beam pooled on the floor at her feet while she studied Elias's dark silhouette. The silence that gripped the old cabin was eerie. She could feel her pulse.
    After a moment or two she began to get really worried.
    "Are you okay, Elias? We can't stand here staring into the dark all night. We've hung around long enough. We should be on our way."
    He finally moved. A single step toward her. "You can't just leave it like that." The words sounded strained and awkward, as if he had trouble stringing them together in a logical sentence.
    "Why not?"
    "Damn it, you know why not." He took another step forward, moving with a stiff, jerky motion that was completely unlike his normal, gliding stride. "This is important. A lot more important than what we came out here to do."
    "I disagree," she said crisply. "If you get arrested, we're going to have a bigger problem on our hands than sorting out the interpersonal dynamics of our relationship."
    "Don't," he said, "make a joke of it."
    "Sorry."
    "Are you sure?"
    "Sure that I'm sorry?"
    "No." He came to a halt directly in front of her. His hand was clenched around the flashlight. The light poured down on the floorboards, flowing into the white pool created by her flashlight. "Are you sure about what you said a minute ago?"
    "About being wildly, madly, passionately in love with you?" There did not seem to be much point in denying it. Charity resigned herself to the inevitable.
    They had managed to sidestep the issue last night thanks to the timely distraction created by the discovery of Rick Swinton's body. But she could hardly count on another, equally diverting event this evening. Not that she wanted one. Two murdered bodies were enough for one summer. She was certainly pushing the limits of her stress threshold.
    "Yes." Elias's voice sounded disembodied, as though he spoke from a great distance. "Are you sure about being in love with me?"
    "Very sure." She raised her chin. She was vaguely surprised to realize that she did not feel even a tremor of anxiety now. It was certainty, not panic, that welled up inside her. "I'm sorry if that upsets your delicate philosophical balance, but you'll just have to deal with it, Winters."
    "Last night." He broke off, apparently searching for words. "Last night you said you wouldn't move in with me because there was no love between us."
    "No, I didn't say that. You weren't listening, were you? I meant that I wanted us to be in love before we took that step. I once made the mistake of