Page 84 of If I Go Down with This Ship

27A Little Em-Ocean-Al

Returningto my duties feels impossible.Though I try to tamp down the dread, our story is coming to a close, and the last dregs of it are slipping through my hands and into the water as we sail toward Nassau.

The days are dwindling, my time with him growing shorter and shorter, and I want to pull him toward the bed in his cabin, tuck him into my side, and never let go.

But I don’t.I put on a brave face, working until my hands are bleeding and my muscles ache and my clothes are soaked through with ocean spray, and I smile when Silas catches my eye across the deck.

I want whatever time we have left to be the best he’s ever had, and to do that, I need to shelve my worries and focus on us.Onhim.

Although I’m used to a bit of awkwardness after laying all of myself bare, touch feels like the natural progression withhim.His fingers skim over the back of my hand as I walk past; he catches me in the hall leading to the mess and tugs me into the ammunitions room for a not-so-quick kiss.

At night we curl into his cot and I tell him about my time, about Louise.About growing up and going to school in the Pacific Northwest and then moving to London, my travels, the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met, and all the ways the world evolves in the next three hundred years.There’s a softness to his expression when I tell him about the changes in the coming centuries, and it seems to make him more appreciative of what he does have, of the person he gets to be, here and now, free on these waters.

I think more than a week has passed since we left the island.Charlotte is long gone, and despite the increased crew aboard the ship, there’s an almost hectic energy about them all as we steer toward Nassau.

“What has everyone on edge?”I ask Jack as I follow him down to the hold.

“Charlotte drank through most of the liquor.”

I pause on the steps leading down to the hold as Jack scours the dark.“The crew is on edge because…”

“They only ’ave ale.”

Pirates, I think, and I press my lips together to keep from laughing.

“And the crew doesn’t know what to do with so much free time, you understand?”He holds up something in his left hand, a bottle of that sharp brown liquid we drank on the beach.“For months, this crew ’as worked extra ’ard to pick up after the raid, but now that we ’ave a full crew?”He shakes his head.“They don’t know what to do with themselves.”

“Pirates don’t know how to relax, do they?”

He cocks a brow.“We don’ even know the word.”He hands me the bottle and motions up the stairs.“Make sure it makes the rounds, will you?”

I pass it around, sloshing a bit in each of their tankards.By the time I’ve made the rounds, the large bottle is empty, and nearly everyone looks pleasantly buzzed.Damn, this stuff really does work wonders.

I start toward the stairs, bottle in hand, but someone bumps into me, and it goes flying across the deck.I reach for it, but my fingers only meet air as it crashes against the deck into a million glass shards.

“Fuck,” I curse as I scramble to clean up the mess.

“Sorry ’bout that, mate.”Hux stands over me as he takes in the mess.“Bit clumsy, are we?”

“You don’t have to be such a shit about it, Hux.You could help me.”I drop a few pieces of glass into my palm.

“I could,” he says with a shrug before disappearing down to the mess.

“Don’t mind him,” Mick says as he stoops next to me and helps, carefully scooping up glass and depositing it in his open palm.“Hux is just a little shit.”

“Bit of an understatement.”

When he’s done, he drops the glass into my hand and stands with a groan.“And you, Laszlo.How are you?”

“I’m okay.”I don’t know if he can see it in my expression, the anger, the sadness, but if he does, he doesn’t mention it.Glancing down at the glass in my hand, I notice with a sigh the small cut along my palm from the fragments.

“I think you could use a bit of cheering up, hmm?”

This crew… How will I ever say goodbye?

“I’d like that,” I say, smiling.

I drop the glass into a burlap sack and follow him down into the mess.It’s loud and rowdy, and it feels strange for this ship to be so full of laughter.But it also feels right.The tables are crowded with people, and the crew is laughing, even the newcomers.For the first time since I appeared here, there is a sense of peace.