Page 85 of Swept Away

I cut her a look. She blinks back, her cheeks still giving away the smile she’s trying to hide.

“Will you stop taking the piss?”

She flashes me a quick-fire grin.

“Taking the piss? Whatever do you mean? I’m here to make you look fanciable, aren’t I? And to fluff your ego? This is an action film, right?”

I grab for her, and she dances away, then sobers as a distant rumble sounds somewhere deep in the rig below us.

“I’m pretty sure we broke a lot of laws for this,” I say, eyeing the gently smoking building in the center of the rig.

We’re standing by the ladder down to the houseboat, watching our handiwork in action. The action’s just a bit…low-key. When I threw the flaming rum bottle into the alcohol-soaked building, with its trail of sheets running toward the basement, I fled to the ladder hand in hand with Lexi, heart in throat, blood pounding. But…nothing really happened. So now we’re hovering at the ladder, wondering if we need to try again.

I figured a burning oil rig was a sign nobody could miss. Nothing saysWe were herelike arson. But this little trail of smoke’s just getting snatched by the wind.

“I wanted more drama,” I say, squinting against the bright white-gray sky.

“Oh well. If I’ve learned anything these last two weeks,” Lexi says, patting my arm, “it’s that drama is overrated.”

Boom.

Flame, brightness, sparks, something flying through the air—something metal, maybe, rearing toward us, screeching as it hits the grating—and a flurry of seagulls screaming, rising up through a thick cloud of smoke billowing dark against the sky.

“Oh, fuck,” Lexi says, scrabbling backward, hand flying to grab my jumper. “Go, go, go!”

We almost throw ourselves down the ladder as that chunk of metal goes tumbling over the side a meter or so to our left. I can smell fire and the bitter sharpness of alcohol, and something flat and nasty that smells a lot like gas.

“Get on!” I shout down at Lexi, already fumbling with the ropes.

I don’t have time to think about how this’ll work. I just untie the second rope and then leap before the houseboat can swing awayfrom me, landing on the deck with a knee-jarring thump, stumbling into Lexi and pushing us both into the helm with the impact. My wound wrenches and I gasp.

“We need to move, we need tomove! Why isn’t she going faster?” Lexi says, then she ducks and screams as something drops into the sea beside us with a hiss of sparks meeting seawater.

It’s dark above us and flickering with firelight. I can hear the fire’s sinister low crackle through the sound of the waves and the scream of the rig as it burns. The seagulls are already gone, black Vs in a distant patch of sky. I spare a fleeting thought for Eugene, heart hurting. I hope he’s gone with them, away from the smoke and the ash, off to the open ocean.

“We’re getting somewhere,” I say, voice raised. I lean over the side to look at the waves, as if I can will the current to carry us faster. “We’re moving, Lexi, we are. Here, get inside.”

“Is that even safer?” she says, voice thick with panic.

We both duck again as another sizzling chunk of steel goes plunging into the sea.

“Inside,” Lexi says, already wrenching the door open. “Got it.”

So here we are. Back on the fucking houseboat.

I stare at the rig, now a distant, burning pillar on the horizon. We definitely made an impact. Smoke stains the sky, and I can still see the orange-red-yellow of flames licking at the tower we once climbed, can still hear the occasional roar and rumble as something collapses. It’s midafternoon—three or four, I’d guess—and there’s a tie-dye effect to the horizon, white to blue behind the blazing rig. The sea’s smoother than it was when we arrived, rockier than it was when we first woke up after our one-night stand. I’d call it a solid three out of ten, zero being dead-lake mode, ten being we-are-dead.

“Are you OK?” Lexi asks, coming up behind me on the deck. “Or as OK as a person can be when…”

“I’m fine.”

I don’t know what else to say. I feel like this is all happening to someone else. We’re both a bit high on the adrenaline, maybe. And I know I’m shell-shocked from finding out about Jeremy. I feel almost nothing at all when I approach the thought, just a kind of…blankness, like the whole area’s numb.

“Fine,” Lexi repeats, sounding unconvinced.

“I’m…compartmentalizing.” I gesture in one direction. “Over here, we have the fact that I spent my whole life believing my father wasn’t my father. Over here”—I gesture in the direction of the sun—“we have the fact that said father is dead, so I can’t tell him I’m sorry. And over here, straight ahead, we have the likelihood of dying at sea.”

“Is there a nice compartment? For puppies and rainbows?” Lexi points to a random bit of sky. “Maybe over here?”

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