Page 62 of Swept Away

Lexi looks like a superhero right now, braced there on the ladder, drenched and bare, the rope in her hands.

“Just stop a second,” I say, grippingThe Merry Dormouse’s railing. “What if you use your body weight on it? One arm around the ladder, stand on the rung where you’ve tied it…and then do a sortof one-legged squat? Push down on the rope with your other leg? It should create some slack, and then you could tie it up again…”

It takes her a few more tries after the first one, but itworks. The houseboat is about a foot or so closer to the ladder now, definitely.

“You,” she says, her voice hoarse. She says nothing else, but there’s a lot in that word, and all of it makes me glow.

The untying and retying is such hard work, I can see her legs shaking from here. I keep saying, “Let me swim over and do it,” but she shakes her head, teeth gritted, and I don’t want to say to her that she can’t do it herself, because look. She’s amazing. She can.

“Don’t you dare jump in and swim the last bit,” she says, when I’m just a couple of meters from her. “We did not come this far just to open up your wound again and get a load of seawater in it.”

The exhaustion’s rolling off her. She’s shaking so much, red-faced and sweaty and sea-soaked. I want to hold her so badly, want to wrap myself around her. I’m useless over here. I shove Lexi’s abandoned boots into her holdall, sling both our bags over my shoulders, and glance at Eugene in his box. We’ll have to come back for him. It’s stupid how much the thought of leaving him hurts.

When I finally leap across to the ladder, pain sears through my stitches so sharply that I can’t avoid crying out.

“Zeke!” Lexi shouts down. She’s climbed up to give me space to get on, but I can hear she’s paused on the ladder.

“I’m OK,” I call back, forehead to a rung, pain still lancing through me. “Keep going up. I’m OK.”

Every step to the first deck of the rig hurts. When I finally get there, we don’t say anything; she just turns in to me as I drop the bags at my feet. She presses her face to my chest. I hold her bare, trembling body. One minute, three minutes, five. We stay like this in the wind and the quietness, and I try not to notice how empty the rig feels around us.

Lexi steps away eventually, reaching for her bag and pulling outsome dry clothes, along with her boots. I glance around as she yanks the jumper over her head. Everything looks so massive after the boat. I feel miniature, like an ant. And the bleakness, the echoing caws of seabirds…it’s freaky.

It looks a hell of a lot like this rig’s deserted.

Once she’s dressed, Lexi takes my arm, and we pick our way across the mussel shells covering the rusty grating beneath us. The shells pop and crack under our feet. Lexi’s shaking all over. I need to get her somewhere warm and dry. We head up a set of steps and reach a concrete level—firmer ground.

“You’re OK,” I tell her.

“Right. So are you,” she says, but her eyes keep flicking to my T-shirt, and I know she’s looking for blood. I’d like to do the same, but I don’t want to freak her out.

“There,” she says. “Try that door.”

It’s an emergency fire door. I try the handle—it’s unlocked, and there’s a gloomy corridor on the other side. Lexi’s hand tightens on my arm. It sends a warm feeling through me—even though she’s holding on to me for comfort, it’s working the other way around.

The corridor has that cheap, temporary vibe you get in institutional places. It’s all made with pale cream panels, and there are signs everywhere.Eyewash, it says on the wall, above some kind of contraption a bit like a handwash dispenser.Emergency Exit, says a big green sign, pointing back the way we came.

“Are you scared?” Lexi asks quietly.

“Nah. Not me.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“I’m mostly cold,” I say.And worried about you.

“Bah!” she says in my ear, and I jump about half a meter.

“Lexi! Jesus.”

She’s laughing. A thin, wobbly laugh, but a real one.

“I knew you were scared.”

“Fine, yes, this dark, derelict oil rig has given me the creeps a tiny bit, OK?” I say, pulling her closer to me with her arm on mine as we take in blank walls and dirty floors.

“Your toxic masculinity is showing,” she says, with a smirk in her voice.

I laugh, then my laugh trails off as a great creak rumbles through the structure around us.

---