Chapter 11 The Deep End
Riley
Riley leaned against the railing, her gaze sliding to the hatch leading to the officers’ quarters.
She couldn’t help it. Her heart skipped every time someone’s head crested up on deck, only to fall with disappointment when that someone wasn’t Calla, the knot in her stomach twisting even tighter.
She was worried. It had gnawed at her chest ever since Calla had come back from her dive yesterday morning.
The memory of that moment still speared her heart as it flashed before her eyes.
Nivros’ first rays had just started painting the deck golden, and they had shone on the pain on Calla’s face so clearly that Riley had nearly choked on it.
She’d wanted to reach out, to find some way, any way to make it better, but Calla’s face had shuttered in a cold, emotionless mask as soon as they’d made eye-contact.
Riley didn’t care about the stupid coral, or the marks, or the visions.
Days had passed between the first vision and the second, and she’d known it wasn’t real from the start, because it showed her things that couldn’t be.
She could put up with that. She supposed the fainting was a little concerning, but it might not have been the vision.
It could’ve been too much rum, or the fact she hadn’t been eating much lately, or any other number of things.
And if it was because of the marks, she could put up with that, too.
What she couldn’t put up with was this sore feeling in her chest.
“You’re just going to stand there?” someone asked, and Riley stiffened all over as the uneven thud of boots approached.
Because that irritating voice, that limping walk, it was Rowe. Just fucking great. Exactly what she needed right now.
“What’s it to you?” Riley gritted her teeth as she faced the new chief gunner, fighting to keep the annoyance off her face. She didn’t want to give Rowe the satisfaction. “You don’t own the deck, and I don’t answer to you. Go pick on someone else.”
Rowe had the audacity to frown. “That’s not what I meant.”
And Riley had been thrumming with tension for two days now, so she couldn’t be blamed that her self-control was less than ideal. She pushed off the railing and walked right up to Rowe, craning her neck to stare her in the eye. “Ok, let’s hear it. What did you mean?”
Rowe’s lips twitched, and she raised both her eyebrows as she crossed her arms, so unbothered by Riley invading her space that it just pissed her off more. “Really? You’re trying to pick a fight?”
Riley scowled. “You started it!”
Rowe tilted her head as she considered her.
“Look,” she said after a moment. “You’ve been glaring at me ever since I set foot on this ship.
I’m sorry about the rat, but I haven’t done anything to you for you to get your pants in a twist like this.
So maybe stop looking for fights where there aren’t any, okay? ”
“I’m looking for fights where there aren’t any?” Riley asked, incredulous. “You insulted me before I ever said a word to you.”
Rowe shrugged. “I don’t get along with strangers.” A fond smile crept onto her lips as she looked out at the sea. “Usually.”
“I can’t fucking imagine why,” Riley muttered, but it didn’t pierce the suddenly serene expression on Rowe’s face, so she frowned and took a step back, at a bit of a loss now that Rowe wasn’t matching her heat for heat. “What are you here for, if not to start a fight?”
Rowe’s gaze was back on her, and whatever fondness had been there before was replaced with a mild look of distaste.
“What she sees in you is beyond me. I find you incredibly irritating, and I haven’t been able to figure out what you bring to her crew to make up for that.
” The heat was back, but Rowe held a hand up before Riley could react.
“You also haven’t gone to see her once since she’s retreated to her rooms. And I don’t get how you of all people got under her skin, but clearly you did, so maybe you should. Go see her. That’s what I meant.”
With that, she left.
Riley could only stare at her retreating back.
This was Rowe not trying to start a fight?
What a fucking joke. She turned to stare at the sea in a huff, and the ache in her chest returned tenfold as she calmed enough to consider Rowe’s words.
Of course that asshole didn’t get it. Because there was nothing to get.
Calla could barely stand to look at her.
She was better off alone. She wanted nothing to do with her.
Except when Riley was hurt.
Except when Riley needed her–
Her breath hitched in her throat, remembering the feel of Calla’s arms around her, lying in Sable’s bed.
The feel of her cool hands on her heated cheeks, her forehead, her neck.
How those same cool fingers had dug into her shoulders like a claim, when someone else had gotten too close.
The way her gaze had been anything but cold when Riley woke up in her lap, and Riley had gotten drunk on that look, meant for her alone.
Fuck, she wasn’t usually this blind.
Calla could pretend all she wanted, but she’d never stopped showing up when it mattered, even after what Riley had done. And now… Riley’s gaze drifted to the hatch leading below again. She hated to even think it, but–Rowe was right.
Her walk down to the officers’ quarters passed in a blur.
With every step, her heart thudded in her chest, and her palms sweated in her gloves.
With every step, the fear in her chest grew larger, until she could barely breathe around it.
It wasn’t only for Calla’s sake that Riley had left her be these days.
It was for her own sake, too.
Because she was terrified that she’d come here and Calla wouldn’t reply. That she would reject her. That Calla would reach her hand into Riley’s chest, rip her heart out and squash it beneath her boot. It was what she deserved, after all.
But Calla needed her. She was alone. And she was hurting.
And she might push Riley away, but they both knew by now she wouldn’t push her away forever.
Riley could do this one thing for her. She would suffer the sting of rejection as many times as it took, because she needed to show Calla she was not alone.
That Riley would be here, whether Calla wanted her to or not.
So Riley reached out to Calla’s door, and knocked.
There was no reply. Not a sound from beyond the closed door.
Riley pressed her gloved palm to the wood. “Calla?” she asked softly, heart twisting painfully in her chest.
Still nothing.
She took a deep breath, pressing her forehead against the door, closing her eyes.
Just silence. A thick wall of oppressive silence.
If this was what Sable had dealt with, Riley didn’t blame her for thinking the captain didn’t want her.
But Riley had seen it for what it really was–had recognized it.
It wasn’t that Calla didn’t want to reach out.
She just didn’t know how to. Didn’t know she could.
“Alright,” Riley murmured, and she turned her back against the door, slid down until she was sitting against it.
Her head thumped against the wood as she leaned back to look at the ceiling.
“You don’t have to come out. I get it. You don’t even have to say anything.
You can just… listen,” her voice drifted off, unsure.
Maybe Calla wasn’t even in here, and she was making a fool of herself. But something pressed on her chest now, and she needed to let it out. Words, burning somewhere in the thickness of her throat. As much as she swallowed, they would not go away.
“I don’t know what happened during that dive, but I know you feel like you failed, and like nothing’s going right lately, and that the only thing you can do right now is hide in there where no one can judge you for failing.”
A bitter smile snuck onto her lips as Patch came out of his nest and settled in her lap, looking up at her in question. Probably wondering what she’d disturbed his nap for.
“It feels safe to hide,” she said quietly, stroking the bridge of Patch’s nose.
He closed his eyes, tolerating the show of affection.
“I would know. I do it all the time, or I try. From you, from others, from myself. But none of you have allowed me to keep hiding anymore since I came here, so I thought maybe I should lend you the same courtesy.” Riley smirked, though it was half-hearted.
It fell with the next breath. “Because it might feel safe in there, but it’s also unbearably lonely, isn’t it?
And you don’t want to be alone. Not really.
” She looked down at Patch in her lap, who’d curled up and gone back to sleep as she kept stroking his fur.
Calla didn’t even have this much comfort.
A heaviness settled in her chest. How had Calla done this for all these years?
How had Riley?
“All I had before you went ahead and lured me into your crew was myself,” Riley said, and she frowned at her own words, because she hadn’t meant to say this at all.
But it was out now, and maybe Calla wasn’t listening, so she went on.
“And it was fucking miserable. All I ever had was myself, and Patch, and my pain. But not anymore.” She took a deep breath.
“So I’m here to tell you that I see you, and I see your pain, even though you’re so good at hiding it. I…”
I’m sorry. For being the one who caused it.
But she couldn’t say that. Her throat closed up. She turned her head, leaning it against the closed door instead. She found different words, and she said them like a secret, “You’re not alone, Calla. I won’t let you.”
After that, Riley didn’t wait. She couldn’t.
Her heart was racing too hard, and if she stayed any longer, Calla might open the door, and Riley would have to come face to face with those piercing blue eyes that would flay her open, layer by layer.
Or the silence would stretch, and Riley would keep talking, and there were too many things she couldn’t say, because she’d have to apologize.
And how could she apologize for turning Calla into something she hated?
For being the reason Calla had been forced to the waters yesterday in the first place?
She couldn’t. So she fled, like a coward.
The deck was mostly empty. Sometime during Riley talking to a door, they must’ve gotten near the storm again, and the incessant drizzle beat against the Moonshadow’s deck in the same lulling rhythm that had been a constant for the past couple of cycles.
Riley kept her head down and hurried across the deck to the hatch leading to the galley, but something stopped her in her tracks.
She squinted through the pattering rain, out into the deep of night.
A whisper, just at the edge of hearing. A pull. Riley couldn’t resist it. She didn’t want to. A gnawing sense of being in the wrong place ate at her stomach, and her feet moved, following that pull to the railing, looking out at the frothing waters below.
That whisper was stronger here. It was familiar. It sounded like–
Riley gasped, clutching at the railing.
It sounded like Sable.
Riley leaned over the railing, trying to see, but the rain beat in her face, clung to her lashes, and the night was too dark, the water too angry to see anything.
That sense of wrongness grew the longer she waited, and every inch of Riley’s body tingled, vibrated with the urge to do something because the whisper was fading again, and if she kept waiting, it would be too late.
She needed to follow the pull.
Something stung her neck just as she hauled herself up the railing, and Riley brushed it away as she balanced herself on the edge. Something soft. Something that tried to stand in her way. She couldn’t let it. There was no time.
Before the whisper faded into the night, Riley jumped.
She didn’t even feel the coldness as she plunged beneath the waves. Her skin was too hot. And she frantically searched the water, looking for what she knew would be there.
There.
Into the depths.
Riley’s heart lurched in her throat, and she started swimming.
Sable was there. She knew she was.
Deeper.
She needed to get deeper.
With a razor-sharp focus, Riley looked down into the dark depths of the sea and pushed against the water, trying to reach, trying to force her body to sink deeper, to find the bottom before it was too late.
But it wasn’t listening. Her limbs were flailing and uncertain against the currents, and she was barely moving.
A snarl of frustration escaped her lips, and she swallowed a lungful of water. She choked on it. Then she swallowed another, and another. If there was enough water inside her lungs, she would sink, and Riley needed to sink.
She needed to get to the bottom.
Dark spots nibbled at the edges of her vision as she battled the currents and her own useless body, desperately trying to follow the whisper, the pull.
Sable was down there.
She needed to save her.
She needed–