Page 11 of Swept Away

I make a mental note to take Paige a bottle of wine tomorrow as a thank-you, knowing already that I’ll forget. I’m not good at that kind of stuff even when I’m sober. Mental notes just drift out of my head—I’ve always been that way.

“So,” Lexi breathes, pulling back a little. “Bedroom?”

She cranes her head to look through the boat’s windows.

“Yes. Definitely.”

I help her up onto the deck. She tries the handle as I’m patting my pocket for the key, but it’s open. I must’ve left the door unlocked earlier—habit, I guess, as Dad never used to lock it. We tumble down the steps into the living area. First time I walked back in here earlier today, it shocked me with its smallness, maybe because I was a lot littler when I used to stay here, or maybe because itissmall—twelve meters long, low-ceilinged and cramped. The sensation of the floor shifting underneath my feet makes me feel sick, and I have to grip the wall as I step through into the bedroom. I’m getting déjà vu again. I turn to Lexi and shut the old thoughts away.

Once we’re in bed, there’s no danger of anything tugging me away from her. She’s so fucking beautiful. I feel her hesitation as I pull back to look at her body under the covers, even in the near-blackness—we hit the light switch, but it didn’t work, so all we’ve got are the foggy lights of the marina and the full moon in the center of the skylight above us.

“You’re incredible,” I tell her, my hand tracing a gorgeous rolling line from breast to waist to hip to thigh. “Do you know that?”

She’s keen to press herself against me and I’d bet half of that is to stop me looking. She meets my gaze squarely, hot and fierce, but I’ve not forgotten that she said,I’m not but thankswhen I told her she was beautiful. One night’s not enough to undo whatever’s made her feel that way. I can give her what she asked for, though: reckless fun. A night to escape the real world.

As I kiss my way across her collarbone, I settle in. Let my mind clear. She moans, and my body heats in response. I taste her skin, touch her, try to show her what I mean when I say she’s incredible. Our bodies seek a rhythm together, and I already know how to please her, how to take the slow, teasing, meandering path to where we want to go. I press hot kisses to her stomach and feel her writhe.

But then I look up. Her unraveled hair, open mouth. Those smart wide ice-blue eyes. Our gazes meet, and it sends thisjoltthrough me. Like I’ve burned myself. It knocks me out of rhythm. I hear my own breath catch.

I can’t seem to switch off.

It doesn’t usually feel like this, says my head, but I duck down, kiss the fine skin of her upper thigh, ignore it. One night, one night, one night. Surely if I know how to do anything right, it’sthat.

Day oneagain

Lexi

We begin bypanicking.

“We can’t be in the sea,” Zeke keeps saying, which is infuriating, because, look, there’s the sea, andlook, here we are, bloody well definitely in it. The sun slashes bright across the water and the boat creaks beneath us.

I don’t want to think about the creaking. I’ve never been particularly involved with the houseboat—Mum had it for less than a year before she died, and she left it to Penny, so she’s always handled the upkeep and rentals. But I do know it’s a “refurbished” Dutch barge, designed to be more house than boat. Mum bought it to rent out—her “savvy business decision,” she always called it, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that she basically just fell in love with the cute little windows and the idea of it all. This boat is supposed to sit in a marina with plant pots on its roof. It’s calledThe Merry Dormouse, for fuck’s sake. The chances of it being seaworthy seem extremely slim.

“Did someone—did someone untie my boat?” Zeke asks.

He spins to the other side of the deck, leaning so far over the railing I have to resist the impulse to step forward and grab him.

“Penny’sboat,” I snap.

Zeke stays unnaturally still, leaning over, ringlets falling forward as he stares into the water. The railing out here on the deck is a thin, rickety thing—just a few poles, really, more a boundary line than anything protective. For a split second I imagine Zeke slipping and sliding out under the bottom rail. My gut seizes. If one of us falls into the sea, can we even get back up here?

“Lexi,” Zeke says, “what did you actually do when we retied the rope last night?”

“What? I did what the busybody neighbor told me to do, I held on to the boat while you got the center of the rope around that thingy and she did the knots. Zeke. Zeke?”

He is terrifyingly quiet. Eventually, at last, he turns. His hair is wild, and his eyes are so wide I can see the whites all around his irises. Fear congeals in the back of my throat.

“Paige toldyouto loop the center of the rope around the cleat on the pontoon,” Zeke says. His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.

“No, she didn’t. She told you to do that. She said…” I trail off. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I watch Zeke figure it out. How we both took that sentence. How we both thought Paige was talking to us when she saidyour boat. How we both thought the other person was thefriendwho would secure it at the pontoon, and how easily that went wrong in the fog and the darkness.

I feel sick. Not just nauseous, but as if quite suddenly I am going to vomit. I press my palm to my mouth and run to stand beside Zeke, leaning over—not as far as him, but far enough.

The boat is tied to itself.

“Are you fucking joking?” I say, clinging to the rail. “You didn’t loop it around the thingy on the…”

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