Page 108 of Swept Away

“But I fell in love with her. I love her.”

He nods. He’s trying.

“And she’s gone completely silent?”

“She won’t speak to me.”

“Perhaps she can’t bear to, after what happened to you both. Itwasa trauma, Ezekiel.”

“I know,” I say.

I’m actually kind of grateful to hear him say that—Lyra’s been acting like I went on a sailing trip and keep complaining about it, and she’s right, it’s bringing out the victim in me. I don’t know what I want people to say, really. What I need seems to change all the time.

“But I don’t think it’s because of the trauma. When we got back, Lexi was with all her family, and then suddenly, she just…” I flatten down my curls, trying to think. “Someone pulled her away really fast. At the time, I thought she was just going for some quiet time with Mae—that’s Lexi’s best friend’s kid. Lexi helped raise her, she’s almost a mother to her, really. But the more I think back on the whole thing, how quickly they pulled Lexi away…I don’t know. I wonder if somethinghappened. Brady said this stupid thing about how I must’ve done something wrong, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Done something wrong?” Jeremy asks.

“Actually, he said I probably slept with someone I shouldn’t have,” I say, with a laugh I don’t mean.

Jeremy says nothing for a while, just walking along, hands linked behind his back.

“Lexi helped to raise her friend’s child?”

“Yeah. I told you, she’s amazing.”

Jeremy adjusts his glasses, pausing to look out at the view over the green fields surrounding the castle. The sunlight’s lower now, giving each tiny blade of grass a shadow.

“Where’s the dad? Is he not in the picture?” he asks.

I shake my head. “A one-night stand who didn’t want anything to do with the baby, apparently.”

Jeremyhmms again.

“When you came up to sell Dad’s boat,” he says, “did you stay in Gilmouth for long?”

He’s using that measured voice he slips into when he’s solving a puzzle.

“Just one night,” I say, watching a family clearing up their picnic below us. The castle looms behind, and for a strange second its bulk reminds me of the shadow of the oil rig.

“Alone?”

“Pardon?” I turn to stare at Jeremy.

“Did you sleep with someone that night? If I remember correctly, during that year after Dad’s death, you were out every night with a different woman.”

There’s only ahintof judgment in his voice—not bad, by Jeremy standards.

“I think I…Yeah, I brought someone back to my hotel room.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Where are you going with this?” I say, but my heart is starting to beat too fast. “I met her at the pub. There’s, like, one pub in Gilmouth.”

“The pub where you met Lexi?”

“I mean…yeah.”

Like a gust of wind, it comes over me: I’d had that weird feeling of déjà vu at the pub on that first night, hadn’t I? I knew I’d met someone chatting across that bar before. I’d wondered for a split second if it had been Lexi, but then—like I’d told her—I figured it can’t have been, because I would’ve remembered her.

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