Page 69 of Swept Away

Maybe she sees my doubt.

“Seriously,” she says, “I know you. Maybe if we’d just met and you told me you’ve slept with thirty women…”

I bite my lip harder.

“…I’d be a bit eye-roll about it and make some assumptions about the kind of guy you are, but…”

She pauses, and I watch her hands tighten on the ladder. She takes a shuddering breath. I’m about to say,Let’s just go down, when she takes another determined step up the ladder.

“But I know you’re respectful, and kind, and that you’ve taken a look at what that sex was about for you, and I know you’ll have made sure the women you slept with were on the same page as you. So, no. Not judging.”

I swallow. I don’t think I realized how much I needed to hear her say this.

“Was I close with thirty?”

“Mm,” I say.

I reach for the next rung, arm muscles starting to shake.

“Higher?”

“Bit.”

“OK, fifty? Higher or lower?”

She’s out of breath from the climb, but her voice is starting to sound stronger. I guess I should be pleased that my body count isdistracting her, but it’s making me hot with embarrassment. I wish I were one of those people who could say,I don’t regret those nights, but I do. I know I slept with those women for all the wrong reasons.

“Higher.”

“Wow, right, a hundred?”

“Lower,” I say, with relief.

It’s almost easier to talk like this—not looking right at her, and moments away from probably dying. Really helps you open up.

“Seventy?”

“You’re close,” I say, and then I gasp.

She’s reached the top. Suddenly she’s falling forward onto her hands and knees, disappearing from my view as a bunch of outraged birds swoop away from the summit.

“OK?” I call, grabbing at the last few rungs.

The platform at the summit is really a walkway around a central pulley that drops down the middle of the tower, all rusted and rank with bird poo. Behind the machinery, there’s the most insane view. It’s like being on a plane. The horizon’s fuzzy, like the edge of a torn sheet of paper, and the sea’s so vast I can’t get my head around it.

“Behind you,” Lexi says, still down on all fours.

Her voice is different: hoarse and choked up. But I can hear how relieved she is—the relief you feel when you thought you were going to die and haven’t yet. I’ve got really familiar with that feeling lately.

I turn to see what she means, gripping the pulley at the center of the platform to keep myself steady. There’s just more sea, more sky.

No. Something else: another rig.

“That one might not be abandoned,” Lexi says, voice hushed.

She’s still kneeling, as if she can’t quite bear to stand up. Today’s been so hard on her body—she needs rest. I hope she can make it down that ladder again, a thought I’m careful to keep off my face as I look over my shoulder at her.

“It feels like we’re so close to life,” I say, letting go of themachinery and moving gingerly toward the railing. “Being here, seeing this…”

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