Page 34 of Swept Away

Zeke

The next morning,I doze in and out of sleep, only waking properly when I find Lexi perched beside me, on the edge of the bed. Her wide eyes are fixed on my midriff.

“Good morning,” I say, smiling, even though my stomach hurts like hell.

“Have you looked at it?” she says.

When she sewed me up last night, she’d breathed as if she was feeling each pinch of the needle herself. But she didn’t hesitate once. She was incredible.

“Not yet,” I say, shifting up the pillow a little with a wince.

“How does it feel?”

It burns. I’m due more painkillers, but I’m trying to stretch myself. Use fewer. Get by. The wound is so hot I keep wanting to check the temperature of it with my hand, but I know I should touch it as little as possible.

“Bit sore,” I say. “I’m not feeling sick or anything, which is good.”

She hands me a chocolate digestive. “Breakfast.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that these were on your shopping list,” I say.

I take it from her carefully. Got to look after every crumb of these biscuits. We opened the packet yesterday, after the shock of the knife. There are these and some of those dry amaretti biscuits that’re never as nice as you hope they’ll be. That’s it for sweet foods.

“Shall I look at it? So you don’t have to?” Lexi says as I nibble at the edges of my biscuit.

I consider this. “You’d have to do a really good facial expression. If you look freaked out, I’ll freak out.”

“Christ, right, so how do you want me to look?”

“Pleased?” I say, after a moment’s thought.

She unfastens the belt we used to hold the towel in place, and a tiny, testosterone-fueled corner of my mind manages to think dirty thoughts for just a second as her fingers move across the buckle.

“Well?” I prompt, trying to read her.

“This is my pleased face,” she says, still examining me.

“You’re frowning quite a lot.”

“I’m thirty-one, Zeke,” she says. “A frown is just drawn on my face in perma-marker now.”

“You know thirty-one is really young, right? You act like it’s eighty.”

“I have almost a whole decade on you.”

“Eight years.”

“Right. That’s basically half your life.”

“Which half? The first one flew by.”

That makes her eyes smile.

“And it’s actually a third of my life, thank you,” I say. I try to sit up and her hand claps down on my shoulder, holding me in place.

“You need to eat more than a biscuit. Keep your strength up. Could you manage some cereal? Cornflakes are pretty good dry.Don’t pull a face, you food snob, we’re surviving at sea, you’re not getting eggs Benedict.”

This is all said at speed. I smile up at her, and I watch her face soften as she looks at me, the way the skin around her eyes crinkles.

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