My Fiancé Tore Off My Oxygen Mask Underwater

I was dead, but I didn’t feel cold.

I hovered just above the rolling waves off the Nā Pali Coast of Kauai. The morning sky was gray and heavy with salt spray. The ocean wind passed right through me. Down below, deep in the pitch-black volcanic caves, my body drifted alone in the dark.

My damaged lungs were full of seawater now.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t even cry. All my tears had run out at the bottom of the ocean, right before the light went away. On my left wrist, my old dive watch was still there. It had belonged to Cristian Allen, my former coach. He died four years ago pushing me to the surface. Now, I was dead too.

It had taken Lachlan only forty-eight hours to kill me.

Two days ago, we arrived at the rented beachfront villa in Princeville.

It was a gorgeous place with floor-to-ceiling glass and endless views of the Pacific. We had a dive crew with us: my fiancé, Lachlan Holmes; two guys from his local team, Jaxton Berry and Porter Wilson; and Arlet Jenkins.

Arlet was a freediving influencer. She was twenty-four, tan, and had half a million followers online. She had a brand-new Garmin dive computer strapped to her slender wrist.

At dinner that first night, Arlet laid her device right next to her plate. The digital screen glowed bright blue in the dim room.

“Look at this descent rate from Maui,” Arlet said, tapping the glass with a manicured nail. She smiled around the table. “My decompression algorithm adjusted in real time. Total control, all the way down to ninety feet.”

Jaxton and Porter nodded along, clearly impressed. Lachlan watched her with a proud grin on his face.

Then Arlet turned to look at me. Her eyes were wide and bright with sweet concern.

“Margot,” she asked softly, “do you have data like this from when you competed? I bet your old logs were incredible.”

“No,” I said quietly. “We used mechanical dive watches back then.”

Arlet reached across the table. She laid her warm hand on my forearm.

“Oh,” she whispered. “That must be so hard. Having all those glory days behind you.”

Her touch felt like a slap disguised as sympathy. Across the table, Lachlan’s jaw clenched. He looked at me like I was embarrassing him just by sitting there.

After dinner, Lachlan poured himself a glass of whiskey.

“Tomorrow is the main event,” he announced, his voice booming with authority. “We’re hitting the volcanic sea caverns off Nā Pali. One hundred and twenty feet down. We swim through the arch and drop straight into the main chamber.”

My chest tightened. A dull, familiar ache flared behind my ribs.

“Lachlan,” I said in a calm, steady voice. “I can’t do that dive.”

He didn’t even look at me. “We already talked about this, Margot.”

“My doctor gave me a thirty-foot ceiling,” I reminded him. “My lungs are permanently scarred. The tissue doesn't stretch anymore. If I go to a hundred and twenty feet, the pressure could collapse them.”

Four years ago, I rescued a drowning teenager off Catalina Island. I saved the kid, but the ascent tore my lungs apart. Bilateral pulmonary fibrosis. Lachlan knew this better than anyone. In the beginning, he sat beside me in hospital waiting rooms. He held my hair back while I coughed up blood.

Now, he looked down at me with a tired, pitying sigh.

“Margot, please,” he said, speaking slowly like he was talking to a difficult child. “Your pulmonologist cleared you for recreational diving years ago. You’re fine. You’re not made of glass. Stop being so dramatic.”

“It’s not drama,” I said. “It’s a medical limit.”

Before Lachlan could reply, Arlet jumped in.

“Hey, it’s totally okay,” Arlet said quickly. She put a hand over her chest and looked at Lachlan with pleading eyes. “I can sit this dive out. Really. You and Margot can stay on the boat, and I’ll just snorkel near the reef. I never want to cause any friction between you two.”

It was a brilliant move. Clean, polite, and utterly poisonous.

Lachlan’s face instantly darkened. His eyes snapped back to me, hot with irritation.

“Nobody is sitting out,” Lachlan snapped at me. “Arlet flew out here for this cavern. You're not ruining this trip with your jealousy, Margot. You're coming.”

I didn't argue. In our relationship, arguing only made Lachlan dig his heels in deeper.

I pushed my chair back and walked into the villa’s kitchen.

Cooking was the only thing that had ever calmed me down. I took fresh ahi tuna, sesame oil, and scallions from the fridge. I diced the fish into clean, even cubes and steamed a pot of white rice. My hands were steady, but my throat felt tight and dry.

Through the kitchen window, I could hear Arlet laughing on the lanai. I heard Lachlan’s deep voice join hers a second later.

I stood alone by the marble counter. I lifted my left wrist and pressed my thumb against the scratches on my dive watch.

I rubbed my skin over the words engraved on the back casing. I knew them by heart.

*Breathe, and never stop rising. — C.A.*

Cristian had given his life so I could reach the air. On the night Lachlan proposed, he had kissed that very engraving and promised I would never have to be scared again.

I could have called a cab. I could have packed my duffel bag, driven to the airport, and flown home to California.

Instead, I scooped the poke onto five clean plates.

“I’ll stay shallow,” I whispered to myself in the empty room. “I’ll stay by the mouth of the cave. It’ll be fine.”

I lied to myself because I wanted to believe he still cared.

Forty-eight hours later, my body was floating at the bottom of the sea.