Page 38 of Swept Away

“If you’re the stupid kid, school isn’t fun.”

I frown. “There’s no way you were a ‘stupid kid.’ ”

He smiles, but it doesn’t touch his dimples.

“Trust me. There’re two things I’m good at in life, and you don’t get graded on either of them at school.”

“Cooking,” I guess, because I know that’s one thing he’s confident about—since he’s not strong enough to stand and cook himself yet, he’s been directing me from the sofa, but between us we have managed to make some genuinely delicious meals out of my random, overemotional Tesco shop.

“Yep.”

“And…”

He cracks one eye open and looks at me.

“What?” I say.

“Huh,” he says, sitting up slightly to give me a wry look. “I kind of hoped you’d remember.”

“Oh. Oh.” I swallow. “Well, yes, you were very good at that. But come on, what are you, a Stepford wife? You can do more than cook and have sex.”

His face goes blank. I pull back slightly, surprised at the suddenness of his reaction—I’d been joking, obviously, but it’s clear from his face that I’ve hurt him.

“Sorry, I just meant—you really talk yourself down,” I say.

I hadn’t registered it until now, actually. He’s the sort of good-looking that tends to come hand in hand with self-assurance, and he’d been so confident getting me to bed. I just hadn’t imagined he could have low self-esteem.

“Would you rather be a mermaid or a centaur?” he asks. A firm change of subject.

“Are you seriously asking me that? What good is a hoof right now? I’d bethrilledwith a fish tail.” I’ve never liked my legs anyway.

“Right,” he says, a smile forming as his shoulders relax slightly. “You go, then.”

I mull it over. I’ve felt myself slowing down a bit in the last day or so—when you’re forced into inaction, you have to lean in eventually or you’ll go mad. Or maybe it’s Zeke, his steadiness, his thoughtfulness. He never rushes—it might be rubbing off on me.

“Would you rather eat a rat or eat a donkey?”

“Rat,” he says, without hesitation. “Donkeys look so sad all the time. I don’t want to give them something else to worry about.”

“Mae loves donkeys, so it’s rat for me, too,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at the horizon. It’s become a habit to check the full 360 degrees, even when there’s two of us.

“Mae’s your friend’s child? The one you help look after?”

I nod, already wishing I hadn’t said her name out loud. I miss her so much I could break with it. Her absence is raw and gaping, a hole in the very core of me, and the only way to cope is to force my mind away from her however I can.

“Tell me about her,” Zeke says softly.

I look back at him, heart hitching in my chest.

“No,” I say, swallowing. “No, I don’t want to talk about her.”

His eyebrows rise a fraction, but there’s nothing judgmental in his face.

“I hear you, I just…We have nothing but time, and I get the impression you’re missing her a lot? I think…it might help you to tell me about her.”

I look back out at the water. Zeke has no idea what Mae is to me. Telling him means showing him one of the deepest, most significant parts of myself. For a moment I resolve not to do it, but then I glance at him, and he’s so familiar to me now—soft eyes, the ghost of a dimple—that it feels a little strange he doesn’t alreadyknow. He’s seen me sobbing and drunk and covered in his blood. What’s the use in hiding myself from him now?

“I’d be missing her even if I weren’t here,” I say. “I don’t live with her anymore.”

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