Page 70 of Swept Away

I stare and stare at the rig. Imagining the people who might be there.

“Please step away from the edge,” Lexi says, voice choked.

I don’t want to say it, but there’s not really anywhere to be except the edge—the platform is maybe three-by-three meters, but the mechanism takes up most of the space. I grip the freezing railing, my hair whirling in the wind.

“Maybe they’ll check on this rig,” I say. “The people in that one.”

“This place doesn’t feel very checked-on to me,” Lexi says, wiping her face with one hand.

“Here,” I say, moving to help her up.

“No!” She flinches away from me, crouching lower. “No. I’m good down at floor level, thanks.”

She shuffles in a fraction before realizing that only brings her nearer the hole in the center, where the cables plummet to the sea below. She lets out a whimper and crouches even lower, her cheek to the grating. Her face is tear-streaked and pale. I sit down slowly beside her. I’m not scared of heights, but I’m still moving slowly—there’s a bad vibe up here, a sense that the teetering platform might tumble sideways if we don’t step carefully enough. It doesn’t help that the grating is gappy and you can see through it to the structure beneath us.

“Just think of the deck of the houseboat,” I say softly. “There’s more space here than there.”

“The deck wasn’t a million miles up in theair, though,” she says.

“Yeah, but you didn’t fall over the edge and into the sea for over a week, so why would you do that here?”

“That is helpful, but also really annoying,” she says.

I smile. “Reckon you could at least sit up?” I ask. “Like this?”

I nod down at myself—I’m sitting with my knees up, back to therailing, facing the rusty orange pulley. It blocks out a fair bit of the view, which I think might help Lexi right now.

She sniffs and pushes up slowly on her arms, then clenches her eyes shut when she glances over the edge.

“Ugh,” she says.

“Just look at me,” I say, pushing my hair back from my forehead. “Hi.”

She opens her eyes and meets mine. I can see her temptation to shift her gaze to the skyline, but I keep our eyes locked, and slowly, slowly, I watch how she softens. Her shoulders drop ever so slightly. Without breaking eye contact, she reaches to grip the railing and rises to sit cross-legged.

We stay like this for so long I lose track of time, just looking at each other, the bare sky whistling around us. After those days cramped in a tiny wooden box with her, all this space makes me feel light-headed. But whatever else changes, Lexi’s still Lexi: brave, frightened, strong, soft, warm, cold. I’ve never met a woman who’s so many things at once. And I want her, even here, after this mad, wild day. I want her like I’ve never not wanted her, like every other time I’ve wanted a woman, I’ve been looking for Lexi.

“Sixty,” she says faintly.

“Pardon?”

“Women. Sixty women?”

“Oh my God,” I say, breathing out a laugh.

“What, you thought I’d drop the topic without getting an answer out of you?”

“Well, no, I mean, I do know you. But…” I swallow, finally breaking eye contact to stare down at the grating beneath us. “Sixty-five. There you go. And I’m not even sure it’s right. It’s a guess. That’s how…That’s how messy it all got. There’re women I don’t even remember.”

She sobers, looking at me with those wide, icy-blue eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Don’t say sorry,” she says. “Not to me. I was just thinking how easily I could have been one of those women you don’t remember.”

I shake my head. “You wouldn’t’ve been.”

Her eyebrows rise slightly.

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