Page 98 of No One Aboard
Tia wasn’t sure she’d understood him. “What?”
His palms curled to fists, and he raised his head. “I’m. Sick. Of. Apologizing.”
Tia laughed and shoved her hair out of her eyes. “What a time to grow a spine, Ry.” Her stomach felt like one of MJ’s sailing knots, but she didn’t care. She was done letting him get away with everything.
“I can’t be who any of you want me to be,” Rylan replied.
“You can be fucking loyal. It’s not that hard to keep your mouth shut,” Tia barked.
Rylan sprang to his feet.
He was taller and just as angry as she was—two things Tia hadn’t given any thought to.
“I’m trying so hard to keep our family together. I try to be soft for Mom and successful for Dad and adventurous and exciting for you, but I end up not able to do any of it for any of you. And all of you are so... so selfish! You don’t eventryto fix things.”
“Not when Dad makes a point to break everything!” Tia shot back.
He was going to crack at some point. He’d fall back into his bed and spool up like a cinnamon roll.
“So do you! God, Tia, you’re just like him. Mom knows. That’s why she treads so lightly around you. She’sscaredof you.”
“That’s not true—she’s jealous of me. She resents me for being young and speaking my mind. She hates that I get to be exactly who I am while she just smiles and pretends all the time like she’s still on camera!”
Tia snatched a pillow from her bed and balled it up in her hands so she wouldn’t be tempted to throttle him. “Rylan, they sent me away. I was trapped at a boarding school. With nuns. And blizzards. There were spikes on the fence, and everybody ate the same cereal. They might as well have locked me in a 1920s asylum! So why should I try to keep the family together? They’re the ones who preferred us apart.”
“BecauseIneeded you,” Rylan retorted. “I tried so hard to get you home. Tia, please. I... I’m so—”
She didn’t let him finish. “Tell me why it was so bad, then, Ry. Tell me why it was so horrible but not horrible enough to run away with me. What did they do to make you hand over my secrets like a goddamn spy?”
That clammed him up. He backed away and bent his head. Tia waited one second. Then another. Then she blew all the air in her lungs out her nose and faced away from him.
“What a great way to find out we don’t trust each other anymore,” she said, and she went and locked herself in the bathroom.
She had brought the pillow with her, and she pressed it to her face and screamed.
It didn’t really matter where they were going now, did it? Francis and Lila wouldn’t take their eyes off Tia. She wouldn’tget the chance to run away. They might even punish her for planning it. Her last birthday had been one of the worst days of her life. Why shouldn’t this next one top it?
Thunder, soft and foreboding, rumbled in the distance like a monster underwater. Tia lowered the pillow and combed the part back into her hair with her fingers.
Why would Francis and Alejandro sink the ship? The coordinates in the Bahamas were close, sure, but were they really planning on getting there via life raft? Or even if they planned to wait until they arrived to blow it up, they’d be trapped on the island for good with no way out.
Or maybe that was the point.
To get rid of the thing everyone would be looking for when the world realized the Camerons were missing.
The Old Eileen.
And now Francis knew Tia had been planning to run. He knew if even one of them didn’t end up on that island, they risked telling everyone where it was. The bomb in the bilges was already set. He could pack them all on a life raft and blow the ship at any time, trapping Tia with him for good.
She wouldn’t let that happen.
She had to leave tonight.
Tia listened to the waves outside. Was she imagining that they sounded bigger? It seemed to be raining lightly too. Tia wished she understood exactly what was going on. She wished she knew what her father was running from and why MJ’s body was no longer in the freezer and if she could ever trust her twin again. But she didn’t know any of that, and if she didn’t act tonight, she might be too late.
Tia rested her hands on the bathroom counter, needing it to take her weight.
The bathroom was tidy and quiet. Rylan’s toiletries were packed away in a drawer, and Tia’s toothbrush sat alone by thesink. There was a jewelry box by the coiled hand towel. Tia opened it to look at the South Sea pearl earrings and necklace inside. They were the gifts her parents had given her for graduation, which now seemed like it had happened to a different girl on a different ship.
