Chapter Ten
A ship,” he says, his voice ghostly, razor-thin. “A freighter.”
My heart begins beating wildly. My hands reach for the slick rocks, pulling myself up the shore, while my blood races down my veins.
I want to see it from higher ground. I need to know for sure.
From atop the bluff, the lights are unmistakable. A single row of them, like streetlamps tucked neatly together with several smaller lights above. I can’t make out the shape of the cargo ship in the dark, but I can imagine its outline framing the visible lights.
Clay climbs up from the shore.
“You’ve seen one before?” I ask, my voice trembling—a thing I can’t hide.
He straightens, his silhouette tall and lean in the moonlight. “From time to time, when passing through shipping lanes.” There is no urgency in his voice, no anxious thrill beating through his chest like I feel in mine.
It’s been seven months since I swam to the island, and we haven’t seen a single thing. No lights, no dot of land. And I had started to hope we never would—that I wouldn’t have to decide.
But now…
It feels like shining a flashlight into a dark room.
I stare for so long that the lights blur into one glowing orb in the dark, then settle back when I blink.
The ship doesn’t seem too far off. Close enough I could reach it in the small boat.
Except the freighter is moving far faster than I could row.
I’d never get to it before it motored out of sight.
My eyes swing up the path, to the circle of rocks where sometimes we sit around a small fire in the evening, where Clay smokes the fish he catches, burning the outside to a crisp so the inside is tender and soft. Where a stack of driftwood waits to be dried in the sun.
The candles inside the house aren’t bright enough for the ship to see. But a bonfire—they couldn’t miss it. It would be unmistakable.
I move up the path, dropping to my knees beside the ring of rocks.
A metal bucket beside the rocks holds a dozen small strips of wood, and I begin placing the kindling quickly between the rocks, angled together like a tent, just like Clay taught me.
“It’ll catch quick this way,” he had said, cupping his hands around the wood splits, blowing on a small ember until it lit the wood and sparked into the sky.
I lift my head now, noticing Clay standing a few yards away, watching me.
“I need a flame!” I say, panic choking my throat. “One of the candles from the house.” My heart is beating faster with each second that passes, knowing there isn’t much time before the ship will chug out of sight. Then it’ll be too late.
Still, he does not move.
My lungs tighten—this is the moment he warned me about. The one we both feared.
This is my chance, my first real hope of being found… and now, I will need to decide. I know that if I make a fire large enough, and the ship turns, coming to our shores—I will have to choose.
Him.
Or the ship.
I ease myself up, brushing my palms down my bare thighs, and I shift my eyes out to the dark sea, lights bobbing on the horizon.
“What do ye want?” Clay asks directly. But I don’t dare look at him, or I know the ache that will knot itself in my throat. I know what I will want. Him. I know I won’t be able to say goodbye. “I winnae blame ye for leaving. It’ll hurt like hell, but I winnae hate ye for it.”
I swallow hard, feeling like I’m going to cry. Or scream.
“We could leave together,” I sputter, out of breath, out of time.
He looks away from me, to the sea. A second passes. Then another. “I’d do anything for ye,” he says. “Anything ye asked. But…” I can see his heart beating at his throat. “I dinnae belong in that world anymore. That time. Your time.”
I know he’s right. I’ve always known it. He can’t leave this island, his home—it’s where he belongs. Asking him to leave would feel like death, taking him from this place, forcing him to live in a world that is nothing like he remembers it.
“Tell me what to do,” I ask, I beg, keeping my eyes on the sea. The ship.
“Ye know I can’t. Ye already know what I want.”
I coil my hands into fists, glancing up at the house.
I could be up the porch steps and through the front door in thirty seconds.
I could be back at the bonfire with a lit candle in less than a minute.
It’ll take some time for the tinder to catch on the larger chunks of driftwood, until the fire is bright enough for the ship to notice.
Massive enough to draw the attention of whoever is on night watch.
“I don’t know—” Fuck. I think of Nana, worrying herself into sleeplessness, illness even.
The last time I saw her, she looked so bone-thin; I don’t know how long she could go on waiting for me.
But if I leave, if I go back to her, the island will drift away.
And I’ll lose him with it. For good. I press my palms to my eyes.
I don’t know. How can I decide my whole life in a single, fragile moment?
How do I know what’s right? What choice will I regret?
Which one will keep me awake for years to come, wondering, wishing I’d done something different on this awful night?
Before tears can spill from my eyes, Nana’s words find me, as if brought in by the tide. Go find your island, she said in the driveway, just before I climbed into the rental car. Be a little reckless for once in your life—you just might find exactly what you’re looking for out on that ocean.
Tears shed down my cheeks.
I found far more. I found a dizzying, unshakable feeling that I never thought I deserved. And Nana wouldn’t want me to give that up. For her. She’d want this, this life, the one that makes me feel like I’m drowning, like I’m punch-drunk, senseless, and impractical.
And in love.
I drop the piece of kindling in my hand. Like a static shock—sharp and unmistakable—there is no question of the choice I should make.
I cross the few paces between us, bare feet against the hard soil, my heart settling into a cadence I know—I trust. I touch his lips.
This man who is certainty and shelter against the worst storms. Who I know I love.
Who I won’t lose. I hear his breathing change, the rhythm growing heavy, desperate, like he’s afraid of what I’m going to say.
“I don’t care about the ship,” I whisper, my lungs burning. “A hundred ships could anchor at our shores, and it won’t change anything. I’m not going anywhere.” I rest a hand against his chest. “I don’t want my old life. I want this one.”
His arms fold around my thighs, lifting me up against him. My naked flesh against his, still dripping with seawater, the heat of the night air pulling into our lungs, we leave the lights of the ship behind as he carries me up to the house.
We don’t make it to the bedroom. The couch is as far as we get.
And when his hands press against me, when he eases himself inside me, gentle, slow, it feels different from all the times before.
It feels like sorcery spun between us. Irreversible.
Stronger than husband and wife, than a ring on a finger, than everything we’ve left in our past. The terrain of his body is not written down on any map; it belongs to me.
My hands are the only marker. He mutters ancient Gaelic words against my flesh, his tongue tracing my earlobe, and my hands get lost in his sun-kissed hair, all while the ship makes its way farther out into the dark, past the island.
The closest I’ve ever come to rescue. A thing I once wanted. But maybe I’ve already been saved.
With Clay’s mouth against mine, tugging against me, breaking me apart, how could I ever leave?
How could I ever want what I had before, in my old life, when I have this?