128

Marianna POV

Race morning.

I wake up before the alarm, which my body has apparently decided to do for every significant event since May, like some internal catastrophe detector that can't distinguish between bad and important. 5:47 AM. The circuit lights through the curtain. Duane's arm around me, warm and heavy.

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• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   202

  MariannaOkay, hunger, it has no dignity.When you’re sixteen and your heart gets broken, you can lie in bed for three days living on lime popsicles and Taylor Swift tracks, because your mother is downstairs making picadillo and the smell of garlic will eventually drag you out of the room by your nostrils. But when you’re nineteen, stranded in a half-demolished Spanish house with no electricity, and your entire emotional archive has just been shredded into a 30-gallon black Hefty bag, your stomach doesn't care that you’ve reached the tragic climax of your young life.It just wants carbohydrates.It was nearly 2:00 a.m. by my phone’s dead reckoning—which was currently sitting on the console table plugged into Duane’s portable

• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   201

  MariannaFloodwater brings up everything the municipal drainage system has politely agreed to hide since the dry season: ancient lawnmower clippings turned into black paste, cigarette filters swollen to the size of cocktail sausages, and that specific, oily gray silt from the bottom of the Tamiami canal that smells predominantly of sulfur, dead water hyacinths, and three decades of two-stroke engine exhaust.My canvas sneakers were ruined. Completely, irrecoverably dead. Canvas shrinks when it gets soaked in brackish canal water and then air-dries in ninety percent humidity; I could already feel the stiff, crusted fabric of the left shoe waiting to saw the skin off my pinky toe the second I tried to jam my foot back into it. That’s forty-eight dollars down the drain at the Dadeland Mall Payless, which had closed

• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   200

  MariannaDuane’s furious rebuttal was violently interrupted.It was the unmistakable, rushing noise of a massive volume of moving water suddenly finding the path of least resistance.We both froze. The argument, the tension, the terrifying reality of the digital mob outside—all of it evaporated in a single, terrifying heartbeat.I looked down the dark, shadowed hallway.A murky, churning sheet of dark brown water was actively surging beneath the gap of the heavy, arched wooden front doors.The porous limestone foundation of these 1930s Spanish-style builds could only take so much saturation before the water table simply rejected any more liquid. The nearby canal had breached its banks, and

• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   199

  MariannaI woke up to the sound of rain. It wasn't the frantic, horizontal lashing of the night before, but a heavy, relentless drumming that vibrated through the plaster walls of the old house.I blinked against the dim, gray light filtering through the edges of the hurricane shutters. For a terrifying, disorienting second, I didn't know where I was. I was drowning in an oversized black t-shirt, tangled in a heavy duvet that smelled faintly of cedar and clean laundry.Then, the memory of the Wynwood alley, the catastrophic news broadcast, the trek through the storm, and the bitter fight in the kitchen all crashed down on my chest like a collapsing roof.I sat up, rubbing my swollen, gritty eyes. My phone, which I had definitely fallen asleep holding, was sitt

• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   198

  MariannaDuane lowered his glass. His eyes fell on the glowing screen.The silence in the kitchen shattered into a million jagged pieces. I lunged forward to flip the phone face-down, my face burning with a sudden, agonizing humiliation, but I was too late. He had seen it.Duane stared at the back of the phone casing. He didn't move. He didn't speak. The muscle in his jaw stopped ticking.He slowly looked up, his dark eyes locking onto mine in the lantern light."Marianna," Duane said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet whisper. "What if I were that person?"I froze, the wet towel slipping slightly from my shoulders."What?" I breathed.

• Saved by Brother's Best Friend   197

  MariannaThe sharp, combustible stench of hard alcohol cut cleanly through the fresh, metallic scent of rain and ozone."You’re drinking," I breathed, the shock momentarily overriding the freezing rain hammering against my skull. My clinical training flared up with knee-jerk indignation. "Duane, your spine. You’re not even cleared for high-impact cardio, what the hell are you doing drinking straight whiskey?""What the hell am I doing?" Duane shot back. His voice was a harsh, gravelly rasp that barely cut through the howling wind, but the furious incredulity in it was unmistakable. He didn't let go of my arm. Instead, he pulled me a half-step closer, shielding me slightly from the brunt of the horizontal rain. "Marianna, there is a Category 1 hurricane currently making landfall

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