by Amelia Wilde
“I don’t know.” He jumps off the crate and lands somewhere behind me. Jason is the youngest crew member by about five years, and light on his feet. Nicholas didn’t want to hire him. I overruled. I had a sense about him, the same way I have a sense about this night. This moment. “Something out there?”
“There’s always something out there. It’s the fucking ocean, Jason.”
The words aren’t fully out of my mouth before the sea conspires to illustrate the point. My hands tighten on the railing seconds before my legs tense. The water is not calling me now, whatever the hell that means. It’s reaching up to the railing and trying to pull me in.
“What is it?” He’s by my side now, his own hands curling around the railing. “You look like you’re about to jump overboard.”
“Maybe I am.”
The urge to get out there, to get closer, is so strong that my heels are off the deck, knees bent to jump. It’s not always physically impossible to outswim a cargo ship, especially one like this. It’s far more agile than some of my other ships. Under the right circumstances I could do it. It kills me to know that this isn’t one of them. I need the ship for a little while longer.
Jason curses under his breath. He obviously can’t see it yet.
It’s a glint in the moonlight, distinct from the waves because of the way it bobs a second slower than the natural roll of the water. I point a finger right at it, and Jason leans out. He tries harder to see, but seeing isn’t enough. I feel it out there, too. That’s the kind of shit you don’t say to other people—I sense things in the water, about the water.
“It’s debris, isn’t it?”
The moonlight shifts in the water and more of it slides into focus. The telltale red and white of a rescue buoy is bright against the dark fabric of the sea, crowned in more white, like a pearl.
Someone’s overboard.
From my ship? Unlikely. Another ship? It doesn’t matter. We’re on a diagonal from them, heading away into the night.
I sprint for the bridge, where the helmsman, Louis, doesn’t take his eyes off this equipment. He’s got the ship on autopilot. My whole body bristles with adrenaline. It craves this kind of action.
“Man overboard off the port side,” I tell him. “Take it off auto.” The radar screen shows a faint dot, a few pixels. “There. Near as you can get.”
“One of ours?”
“I don’t think so.” Nicholas has been on deck for the last few hours. He’d have noticed if somebody from the crew went over.
The ship is beginning to turn by the time I’m back on the deck. “I lost it,” says Jason, leaning out over the railing. “I can’t see him anymore.”
I can. “We’re moving in.”
His eyes go wide, the moonlight making the whites look whiter. “How close?”
“Far enough to avoid killing them.” There are a few different ways that could happen. Too close, and we run the risk of sucking the person down into the vortex from the engines. Closer, and we could hit them. The force of the collision would be like a car. Worse than a car.
The buoy gets larger, and larger, but against the backdrop of the ocean it looks small. Pathetic. The distance shrinks. My muscles burn with the effort of keeping myself on the ship.
I can see dark hair when I finally give in. One step up on the first rung of the railing, then the top, and then I’m dropping into the ocean.
It welcomes me, rushing up and over my head, and I resist the compulsion to swim down and down and down until there’s no more light. The urge is there and gone and then I’m cutting through big, rolling waves. Brisk, but not intolerable.
At least not to me.
The sea bears me to the buoy… and the person who’s floating on it.
“Fuck.” I didn’t think this would be a great situation before.
Now I have confirmation that it’s bad.
The buoy is clinging to the girl. She doesn’t have a grip on it so much as it has one of her wrists tangled in the tow rope. It’ll have rubbed her wrist raw.
I doubt she feels the damage to her skin.
She’s delirious, murmuring nonsense under her breath, her dark hair in her eyes. Clear signs she’s been out here longer than is safe. She’ll be dehydrated and too cold. Thin white fabric clings to what I can see of her skin. She makes no attempt to move or kick.
I wrap a hand around the buoy. “Sorry for this.”
I don’t know why I’m sorry, or why I say it. The girl mumbles another hushed string of words. She makes a pained noise when I start to tow her but goes back to her prayer or curse or whatever she’s saying.
Nicholas and Jason and five other guys wait by the railing. “You need help?” Nicholas calls down to me.
“No.” I tow her up to the ladder on the side of the ship, brace myself against it, and sweep her against my body.
The second we hit air, her body convulses, curling against mine, and her teeth snap together in the beginning of an earth-shattering shiver. “Look at your manners,” I say. “Not even helping to hold on.”
I take us both over the railing and Nicholas is there, helping to untangle the tow rope from her wrist. It’s not five seconds after I shift her into a cradle when her knees start to go up toward her chest. “With me, now,” I tell him. “My cabin.” I send Jason to get the doctor, and the rest of them scatter. They know what to do in the event of hypothermia. I don’t know how serious this is, but I’m not going to wait to find out.
By the time I reach my cabin there’s already water running. Warm, verging on hot. The man who turned it on clears the way for me, and I lower her directly into the tub.
Her dress is a lost cause and I reach both hands into the water to tear it away. It comes apart with almost no force. How long has she been out there?
She’s got her legs drawn up to her chest, so I climb into the tub too and slowly, slowly, ease her knees down. I don’t want her to get stiff in this position and cause more damage. She sighs, finally relaxing, and I get my first good look at her.
My heart gives a single, oversized beat.
“What the hell were you doing out there?” I ask, mostly to myself. She turns her head, resting her cheek against the tub, whispering now.
The ship’s doctor comes in next, stethoscope already out. “How’s her temperature?”
This gives me another excuse to put my hands on her skin. She’s colder than the bath water, but my pulse slows. “Not bad.”
He reaches down to hear her heartbeat. The doctor, Evans, blinks in the light, pulled out of his bed when he’s supposed to be off duty, but his eyes are clear. “Let’s get her dried off.”
I lift her out of the tub, and Nicholas is there with a stack of warmed towels. I ignore the fact that I’m rubbing down a naked, gorgeous woman and try to focus on the task at hand, which is making sure she doesn’t die. People don’t always mix well with the sea. Sometimes the shock sets in later, after the rescue, and you lose them when you least expect it.
Doc Evans holds the bathroom door open for me when I have her bundled back in my arms. “She can stay in the infirmary. I’ll keep an eye—”
“No.” I stride across the room and use one hand to push back the blankets on my own bed.
The doctor knows better than to argue with me. He waits until I’ve pulled up the sheets around her to make his final study. “Unharmed,” he pronounces. “Except for a bad sunburn, and she’s dehydrated.” He slings his stethoscope over his neck. “A hospital would be ideal, but she should be all right given enough rest and water.”
“I’ll handle it.”
I can tell he wants to press me on this. Nicholas can too. My first mate puts a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and sees the both of them out.
When I’m alone with her there are things to be done. I set out water for when she wakes up, and I’m considering more blankets when there’s a soft knock at the door and Nicholas presses a warm one into my arms. I tuck her in tight.
I take the sextant ou
t of its case and go back to my spot near the window. There’s nothing out there now but waves and moonlight.
I don’t know why I told Doc Evans she couldn’t go to the infirmary.
All I know is I need to keep her with me.
3
Ashley
The bedsheet slips over my shoulder in an insistent tug.
I swim up toward the sensation from a deep, dark sleep as the hand keeps pulling the blankets away. God, why?
I bat blindly at the hand, my arm seeming heavy and pointless. “No, Robbie. I have a headache.”
“I’ll bet you do.” This low voice—this smooth, deep voice with a hint of amusement—does not belong to Robbie. I feel the roll of the waves then. My center of balance shifts. I’m not on my side, after all. I’m on my back in a bed, being eased up onto firm pillows.
My eyes resist opening. I force them. The reward is bleary, dim vision. A strong hand wraps around the back of my neck and turns my head, and then there’s a cup at my lips, and then I have no choice but to swallow down cool liquid.
Water. It’s just water, free of salt. It’s heaven. I didn’t know how thirsty I was until this moment. I didn’t know how the taste of the sea lingered on my tongue. It’s washed away, thankfully, by the first few sips of water. It’s like coming back to life.
Somehow, the water makes it easier to see—or at least to focus on the man in front of me. The man who is holding me upright and making me drink. Blue eyes, the color of deep water, track the movements of my lips on the cup. Because he’s not looking directly at me, since I don’t have to make eye contact with him yet, I can take in the rest—dark, wavy hair, stubble that makes him look like a pirate.
He can’t be a pirate.
Can he?
The rest of the room seems to confirm that he is, indeed, a pirate.
This is no pocket yacht with blinding white fixtures and sleek lines and shiny chrome.
Far from it.
This room is layered in knotted wood, dark chrome, brass. A collection of antique maritime equipment dots the walls—old things that look like they measure or steer or provide light in underground places.
He takes the cup away and I lick the last drops off my lips. “Where am I?”
“On my ship.” The scratch of a pen on paper tells me he’s writing something down. Not important enough for me to look at with my heavy, tired head.
“And who are you?”
He turns those blue eyes back on me and smiles. “I’m more interested in who you are.”
I’m shaken by the smile, on the verge of a shiver, and I can’t quite figure out why. Because it’s beautiful? Yes. And dangerous? Also yes. He’s close enough for me to breathe in the clean salt scent of him. The blanket slides down and cool air meets my peaked nipples.
The crashing shame comes before I look down. My glance tells me what I already know.
I’m naked.
Alone in a room with a man who might be a pirate.
In a bed. Maybe his bed.
I summon all my available indignation and grab for the sheets. “Did you take off my clothes? Where are they?”
He watches this with a curve to the corner of his mouth that makes me want to shrink under the blankets and die. “There was no cleaning them after the soak in sea water they took. I burned them.”
“You what?”
“We don’t have any pretty things on this ship. You can wear my shirt and my pants when you’re well enough to get up. That won’t be any time soon.”
“I can get up right now.” I push myself up on one elbow, away from those damned pillows. It’s a mistake. All the knotted wood spins around me in a dizzy circle. I put a hand out to catch myself. The man catches me instead, with big hands that put me right back where I started. My heart pounds like I’ve been running.
“Now that you’re finished with that, tell me what happened to you.”
“I tried to get up and I failed. Obviously.” My stomach turns like the room.
He chuckles, his voice dark and spiced, like whiskey. “Before that. What’s a girl like you doing this far out in the ocean?”
I pin the blankets to my collarbone and try to test my legs. Sitting up didn’t work, but if I could sit up, then I should know if I’ve broken anything. There are no spikes of pain when I wriggle my toes. “Why does it matter?”
“I had to fish you out of the sea in the middle of the night.” He folds his arms over his chest. “How’s the wrist, by the way?”
“It’s fine.” The second I say it, I know it’s not true. The skin feels raw and I bet it’s red, but I’m not going to look down. I’m not going to prove him right.
The man leans forward, plucking my hand from the blanket and turning it over, palm up. He skims the pad of his finger over what is in fact red flesh. Ouch. My sharp breath brings his eyes back to mine, and I pull my wrist back toward the blanket. Slowly. I have the growing sense that he would react to a sudden movement, and I don’t necessarily want to see what that reaction would be.
“That wrist was wrapped in the tow rope of your buoy. That was the only thing between you and death by drowning.”
A flicker of memory comes to me—grabbing for that rope and squeezing it in my fist as night fell and the waves got higher. “But it wasn’t what saved me.”
“No. If it weren’t for me and my ship, you’d have died of exposure.” He narrows his eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
He reaches out and touches my arm and I fall back against the pillow. I don’t remember trying to push myself up a second time. “You haven’t been warm long enough to be moving around.”
“How do you know that?”
The look he gives me is so coolly irritated that it startles me when he laughs. “I’ve been at sea for a long time. You haven’t. Tell me what happened.”
He’s used to being obeyed—that much is clear. His expression is all confidence and ease and it reminds me forcefully that I’m naked under the sheets. But it’s not just his face. His body is confident, too. The pitch and roll of the ship doesn’t disturb the balance of strong muscles underneath a long-sleeved shirt in a deep black. Dark denim covers muscular thighs, hard and lean and long—a swimmer’s body, with more muscle.
“I was on vacation for spring break.” It’s easier to tell him than it is to lie. I’m on his ship, after all. I’m in his bed. There’s nowhere else for me to go, and nothing else to do but remember. “With my boyfriend.”
Something flashes through his eyes. “Did the boyfriend throw you overboard?”
“No, I jumped.”
“You underestimated the current, then.”
“No.”
What I underestimated was Robbie.
The man waits. It’s as if the rise and fall of the sea below us gives him patience. In the silence the sea grows calmer, and for a delirious moment I think that he must be the one doing it—controlling the ocean somehow. But that’s not possible.
I don’t want to remember.
I have no choice but to remember.
Might as well say it.
“We were anchored off an island. Far off. Maybe he lied about the island, I don’t know.”
“Was this a day trip?”
A prickle of warning leaves a fingernail’s crescent in the back of my neck. “He borrowed his parents’ yacht for the week. A small one. You know.”
He nods. “You were out on the water with your rich boyfriend, and then...”
“Then some other people came.” The thud of the hull of their boat connecting with ours reverberates through my body all over again. I still see that first man’s boot coming down onto the deck. “Robbie said he would handle them.”
“Robbie.” He tests out the name and it sounds lacking in his mouth. Boyish. “Will Robbie be looking for you now?”
I swallow against a lump in my throat. “He can’t. They were drug dealers. It didn’t work out.” I don’t know why he thought it would be o
kay. “They argued, and then one of them shot Robbie in the head.”
I’m watching it happen again, watching his lifeless body collapse in spitting red, and it takes several long blinks to clear the memory from my vision. An angry grief burrows into the middle of my heart. God, I’m so mad at him, so furious at him for what he did and for having the audacity to die before I could fight with him about it. A big, dramatic breakup would have come with a side of closure. Instead, I’m here.
“So.” I clear my throat and push my knuckles into my chest. The story is out in the world now, or at least it’s out in the open in this room, and this man next to me doesn’t seem bothered by it. Doesn’t seem shaken or shocked or panicked. It’s almost peaceful. “They were going to take the yacht somewhere else. I didn’t want to go, so I took the buoy and jumped in the ocean with my phone.”
I pat the bed next to me, looking for it, but the man shakes his head. “You didn’t have a phone with you.”
My stomach drops. It’s too late, because the phone is gone. Lost at sea. It was my only hope while I was out there, for a while. And then I don’t remember what happened. All I know is that I didn’t want to let go of the buoy. For anything.
I was cold for such a long time.
And now I’m warm, underneath these blankets. The sheets are soft—as soft as anything on the yacht. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe they only feel expensive and lovely because of the time I spent in the tide.
“And then I was in the water.” Time lost its landmarks out there. Only the sea existed. Waves on waves. Waves that got bigger and bigger until I was afraid, I was afraid—but it’s a nameless fear now, not one I can put into words. I’m too tired to do it. A big, embarrassing yawn sneaks up on me and pounces. “And then I don’t know.”
“And then I towed you to the ship and put you in here.” It sounds too simple. There was more to it than that. Things involving my clothes and warm water. A cool object pressed against my chest.
It’s getting hard to keep my eyes open, so I close them. If he thinks I’m being rude he doesn’t say anything. Sleep comes in fast and hard, but no—not yet, not yet. I fight it off and force out a word.