Chapter 19 #2
A laugh bellows from my chest. The rushing water next to us is loud enough that I needed to raise my voice when talking to Sig, but I didn’t realize they could hear us from where they stand.
Which means they heard our entire conversation.
Including me asking if Weston has ever been with anyone before.
Shit.
“Stassia, I have a hard time believing that you have trouble with men,” I say, hopefully diverting the conversation away from any of my previous inquiries.
She leaps from boulder to boulder toward us. “What can I say? I’m an acquired taste. How about you, Lennox? Are the men lining up to court you back home as much as they are here?”
“There’s no one lining up, at home or here,” I say.
Stassia laughs her high-pitched giggle, and spins back around, heading over the boulders in the other direction. “You’re so funny, Lennox.”
“I’m with Dane, remember?”
“Oh, we remember,” Stassia says. “How could we forget after that warming up by the bonfire?” She looks back and wiggles her eyebrows at me before cackling again.
Sig wasn’t lying when she said the Castaways had seen what happened on the beach. After getting to know her for weeks, it doesn’t at all surprise me that Stassia was probably front and center to observe.
“Alright, that’s enough. Get back to searching,” Sig calls out.
“You’re no fun, Sig.” Stassia giggles before bending down and feeling between the cracks of two large boulders. Auralie shakes her head with a smile and heads down the river, leaving Sig and me alone again.
This is it.
This is my chance to tell her. Dropping my shoulders and lowering my voice, I try to look as genuine as possible. I don’t want her to suspect that I overheard the conversation between her and Weston.
“I’ve already made my peace with never leaving Dawnlin, anyway,” I say with a deep sigh as I stare out over the rushing river.
“You want to stay here?” Sig says, a hint of surprise in her question.
She took my bait, and now I just need to drop the most crucial piece of information.
When Dane trusted me with the knowledge about the dust, he didn’t want any of the other Voyagers to know.
Telling Sig, and eventually Weston, goes directly against his wishes, but if it helps me get back to him sooner, I don’t think he will be upset.
With as frantic as he was to find me over a week ago, I hope escaping sooner will bring him nothing but relief.
I shrug and look toward her, keeping my face as neutral as possible. “I never intended to stay, but I don’t really have a choice now. You all have been searching for a way off the island for years, and Dane’s dust is almost gone.”
Sig’s jaw slackens. “I’m sorry, say that again?”
“Dane’s dust? It’s almost gone. The pouch is almost empty, and he doesn’t know how to refill it.”
Sig’s face draws in as her shoulders pull back. Her eyes flutter around, never settling on any one place for more than a second as her thoughts reel, processing everything I just said.
It’s exactly how I want her to react.
She needs to see the severity of the situation, needs to know how important it is for me to go back. I fit right into her plan, the plan she pitched to Weston that he immediately shot down. But now, time is of the essence. It’s now or never, because once it is gone, it could be gone forever.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t know how to get more?”
“It was full when he became the Guardian, and he never had any instruction on how to replenish it,” I say and step onto a new rock. “We were trying to figure it out before I found the waters, but now I’m here. By the sound of his conversation the other night, I don’t think he’s made much progress.”
She shifts on her feet, glancing down the bank toward Stassia and Auralie. She stays silent, her jaw working, before looking back at me.
“We need to tell Cap,” she says finally, her voice lower than before.
“I can imagine he doesn’t really want that to get out amongst the crew. I didn’t want to say it in front of Stassia and Auralie, but I don’t know. I just…felt like you should know.”
Something inside my chest pinches as soon as the words leave my mouth.
I feel conniving and manipulative, exactly how Dane described Weston to me all that time ago, and I don’t want to be like Weston.
We are the same, though, having to make moves to get what we want.
The fundamental difference is I’m not harming anyone else with mine.
He is.
It hurts watching pain flash across Sig’s face.
I’ve actually come to like her, and even though she is crucial to my plan to get back to Dane, I deep down don’t want to hurt her.
Sometimes I think I’ll actually miss her when I leave, but I push those thoughts away the second they come up. I don’t need any distractions.
She clears her throat, breaking my train of thought. “Let’s just keep searching. We’ll talk to Cap tomorrow. Like you said, please just keep it to yourself. For now.”
I nod, the feeling of success making my limbs feel lighter, but there’s something tugging at me, and I can’t explain it.
Is this the right choice? If it is, then why do I feel bad about it at all?
We head back to the ship shortly after, having covered our small patch of search area unsuccessfully.
I’m thankful for a calm night without the island attacking because there were no distractions stopping me from telling Sig.
She was quiet the rest of the night, and I know she was thinking about what this means for everyone on board.
Unlike last shift, Weston isn’t on deck when we ascend the gangway, and I’m grateful not to have to put up with his mood tonight.
We each go our separate ways once we’re below deck, the quiet of the ship so different from the constant bustle I’m getting used to.
Weston had ordered smaller search areas and earlier return times after the incident with Dane, so the sky is still dark and the hour still too early for anyone else to be awake.
The room is dark and quiet when I enter, the only sound the quiet repetitive lap of the waves on the side of the ship. Weston’s prone form is hanging off the side of the bed, face down, so all I can see is the steady rise and fall of his bare shoulders.
He’s asleep, thank the gods.
Now that things are moving forward exactly how I want them to, I need to fall in line with getting Weston to trust me, which means giving back my dagger. I reach back and pull it from my waistband with a twinge of sadness at handing it right back to the enemy.
It’s necessary. I’ll get it back.
I walk to his side of the bed and set it down on his bedside table lightly, so as not to wake him. Just before I turn around, my eyes snag on his face, relaxed in sleep, and I can’t help but pause.
His hair is tousled, even more than normal, his lips slightly parted. He lays so far away from my side that his arm hangs over the side of the bed. For someone who is so deceitful, so power hungry, and such an asshole, he sure doesn’t look like it when he sleeps.
Breaking out of whatever trance had pulled me in, I walk back to my side, kick my boots off, and change into my shirt.
I curl onto my side, my heavy eyelids fluttering closed the second my head touches the pillow, but they fly back open a second later when Weston lets out a long slow breath, as if he’d been holding it.
Maybe he had been waiting up for me after all.