Over everything.
Sev isn’t speaking to me. My dad still hasn’t shown up in Saltkiss Bay. AndIstill haven’t told Jack about the stupid perfect drunken night that lives in my soul like a second heart. Add-in that crab prices have crashed through the earth’s core and I’m so done I don’t even care I’m adrift in the ocean with no back-up battery to save me.
I lie on the deck and let the rain pelt my face, eyes shut, body listing with the waves. I’ve slept like this so many times it’s hardto believe I’m awake, but the crabs in the hold keep skittering, claws clacking and scraping loud enough to drag me back each time I start to drift.
Crabs that’ll barely cover the fuel it took to haul them. If I ever get home to sell them, that is. A prospect that seems less and less likely as I lie in the rain, waiting for a sign beyond the yearning ache in my chest that I need to get up.
Jack needs you.
So does my mum. But I haven’t been to see her. Haven’t looked for my dad or paid out any more to the Kings or random loan sharks. Haven’t done any of it and I’m terrified. The part of me that said such awful things about my dad to Cam O’Brian…what if it’s growing bigger? What if it’s winning? What if the apathy I’m starting to feel is the price for every stolen night with Jack? His weight on my bones, his mouth at my throat, and his fingers…
I can’t finish the thought. Can’t tame the memory of that night enough to survive the HD replay. Least, I think I can’t, then it hits me anyway, hot and sharp, and I throw an arm over my face, shouting a wretched groan into the wind. This would be a hell of a lot easier if Jack was bad at sex.
Or even just a little bit less than devastating.
Ruinous.
The kind of good that has me leaving all rational thought on the deck as a sacrifice to the sea and being a little slower to retrieve it each and every time.
You need to tell him.
About that night, and that I’m head-over-heels in love with him. Facts that haven’t changed—facts that won’t change. And yet every time I open my stupid mouth, fate intervenes. So maybe I’ll stay out here. Let the sea have me for a while. Let the cold and the grey eclipse the racket in my head until there’s nothing left of me but the salt on my skin.
In the end, though, the gulls get bored of circling and one finally lands close enough to scream the sign I’ve been waiting on right into my skull.
Go home, Sol.
Fine. I wrench my eyes open and roll to my feet. Spend an hour wrestling with the engine, then another two nursing theSironahome.
It’s dark when I reach the harbour and I’m so late my phone has been pinging with messages since I sailed back into range.
Oscar.
Skylar.
Oscar again.
I reply to them both with a proof of life thumbs up emoji and steer theSironato the quay where the crab buyer waits. Sell my catch for peanuts and sail on to the cove, come alongside and shut off the engine.
Sudden quiet swamps my senses.
Stillness.
I’m hyperaware of eyes on me—Jack and Mal would be proud—and I glance around to find the friendly loan shark heading my way.
I mutter a curse, mooring theSironauntil it occurs to me too late he might’ve come for her.
As it happens, he hasn’t. But he needs something to keep his bosses happy until the new year, and I need him gone before Jack comes outside and tosses him into the sea.
“Wait here.”
I sneak through the abandoned kitchens and into the Joker, for once grateful Jack rarely checks the security screens. Upstairs, I unhook my grandad’s vintage concertina from my bedroom wall and cart it downstairs to pay the growing interest on Dav’s illegal debt. “It’s never going to end, is it?”
The loan shark winces and I almost feel bad for him. “Not without a lump sum payment. You think you might swing it? After Christmas and that? Save me keep coming back.”
I shake my head, tilting my face to the sky and the murky clouds hiding the stars. “Never going to happen. If you’re gonna shank me or take my livelihood away, you might as well do it now.”
He thinks I’m joking and he leaves with the concertina and a piece of my family we’ll never get back.