14. Really Floats My Boat
Really Floats My Boat
“What were you doing in the cap’ain’s room, Laszlo?” Jack asks as we take the stairs to the lower level.
“I don’t see why it’s any of your business, Jack.”
Heat travels from my neck up to my face at the narrowed-eyed look Jack throws my way. It feels like I’m suffocating. Surely he knows. Jack isn’t a fool, of that much I’m certain, and what other reason would I have been alone in the room with Captain Night with his shirt off if not that?
Not that we did anything other than kissing, but it’s difficult to tell if we would have.
I’ve certainly gone so far as to imagine the possibilities, but considering I’m in new clothes and they belong to Captain Night?
The truth of the matter won’t stay hidden for long, I fear.
And I don’t know what I’ll do once it’s out.
“Your lips are red,” Jack whispers, a hint of teasing in his words as if he knows precisely what Captain Night and I were doing. “Looks as though a devilfish wrapped its arms ’round your neck and wouldn’t let go.”
I clamp a hand over my neck, blushing as I duck my head and hurry ahead of Jack.
Captain Night jogs down the stairs ahead of us, seemingly unaware of this exchange, and I can’t stop my attention from going to him and tracing his frame, the way his sleeves billow out with each movement, his firm ass accentuated by pants that fit him extraordinarily well.
When I glance back to Jack, his eyes are narrowed to slits.
He’s still waiting for an answer, and I don’t have one to give.
“Probably best if you don’t know,” I mumble.
“Probably,” Jack says, shaking his head but smiling.
Captain Night slips through the crowd with ease, and Jack and I struggle to keep up. The tavern is even more packed than before, and we’re forcing our way through the crowd toward him.
Jack stops me with a hand on my arm, and I look after Captain Night with a frown. “What are you doing?” I say, craning my neck.
“What are you doing, Laszlo?”
“What do you mean?”
He runs a hand over the top of his head, fingers dancing over his tattoos. “There are … things you don’t know ’bout our cap’ain. I understand that ’e ’as trusted you tonight, and I understand that it might make you feel special—”
“This is really not necessary, Jack.”
“But you need to be careful around Nassau, do you ’ear? Can’t have word getting ’round ’ere that ’e’s got a weakness, not after tonight.” I grind my teeth. “Come on,” Jack mutters under his breath and tugs me after him and through the lively crowd.
Captain Night pauses at the bar, motioning to Astra as Adelphine shoots him a look before she disappears down the hall leading to her office.
Astra’s nose is red and bruising, but they don’t seem to care as they hold out a scrap of paper to Captain Night.
Jack and I stop a few feet away while he reads it over.
His head whips up and he flashes a smile at us.
“This is it.” He nods to Jack and me, and the man he was before is gone.
From his stature, the way he holds himself, the captain is back.
He is no longer the man who told me that he’s terrified to dream, the one who climbed into my lap and kissed me, the one who lets Sir sleep in his bed, nor the one who pressed a cool cloth to my forehead when I was sick.
This is a pirate captain.
Pocketing the paper, Captain Night beckons us forward. “Ready the ship. We leave at first light.”
Jack motions to me. “Come on, Laszlo.”
“That’s not a lot of time,” I say as I stumble after Jack.
“No, but it’s possible.”
“What was the lead? Is it about the ship he’s on? Do we know where Willie Taylor’s docked?”
I want to grab my journal, to scribble these thoughts down for later, but Jack surveys me warily. “Keep your voice down,” he hisses.
With the ale already sold off, the crew has lugged the fresh supplies onto the ship already. Half of the crew is in the tavern; a few are scattered and asleep on the beach. The rest wait aboard the ship, keeping watch as Jack and I gather up the last of them.
“How do we know the lead is good?” I ask Jack as we ready the longboats on the beach.
He shakes his head, tossing the rope into the boat as the last person climbs in.
“It’s a risk we take. Not every lead is good, but considering Adelphine got it less than an hour ago, we ’ave a decent chance, I think.
” He and I push the boat into the water before leaping in. “Leads are never promises.”
I nod silently before accepting one of the oars.
My hands still ache, but my body and mind are wide awake as I row.
The kiss flipped something in me, and while the coat lingers in my mind, my gaze drifting to it thrown over Captain Night’s shoulders mere feet from me, it’s second to the memory of his lips on mine.
When we reach She Deceitful, I climb up the ladder on wobbly legs and throw myself over the railing, dropping to the deck with an oomph. A hand extends for me, and I take it numbly. I try to hide my disappointment as I glance up to find Mick.
“How was the shore?” he asks as I straighten. His gaze goes to what must be a monstrous hickey on my neck, his brows shooting up.
Teeth grinding, I scratch my neck, scanning the ship as crew members haul up the longboat and pull the last of the supplies down into the hold.
“It was about what I expected,” I say, not looking at him.
“Looks like you got more than you were expecting,” Mick says, a bit of laughter in his voice. His gaze slides to someone over my shoulder. “And what happened to you?”
I turn as Astra sniffs. Their left eye is blackening now, swelling shut. Their nose looks worse than before, red and blotchy, bruising.
“Ran into Peter,” they say before spitting over the side of the ship.
That’s an understatement.
Mick blanches. “Peter?”
Astra scrunches up their nose and winces, pressing fingers to the tender skin. “Don’t worry. Captain Night took care of it.”
Silence settles across the deck, and the crew stares. They seem to understand what “took care of it” means in pirate terms. No one asks any questions, instead returning quietly to their work. Mick nods in understanding, and Astra turns and hurries toward the helm, where Clancy is waiting.
One thing’s been clear since I joined the crew: Captain Night would do anything for them. It feels like days since I saw him slice a man’s throat, weeks since I heard the gunshot on the merchant ship, and both of those things happened because he cares that much.
But I’ve barely even been aboard this ship for a week.
“Come on, come on,” Mick says, dropping a line into my hands. “No time to waste, Lasz.”
The thought of doing more work after everything makes me want to cry, but I wrap my tired hands around the rope with a sigh and join him, unraveling the jib and securing the lines.
By the time the first bits of light are cast over the water, the last of the longboats are here.
Our stores are full, the crew is tired but excited, and there’s a strange buzz in the air.
I take a break from hauling lines to help Pip with food, and I hold out one of the large plates to Mick as he leans against the mainmast.
“How are you feeling?” Mick asks, accepting some bread and cheese.
I shrug and take a bite, looking past the bow toward Nassau.
I’ll miss land. I don’t fear the water as much as before, but I’ll miss what happened there, the way the night sky, the dim lighting, and the captain’s little sequestered room made me feel almost safe.
It reminds me a bit of New York, a place that never sleeps.
People arrive in the morning; others arrive at night.
They sleep during the day, or later when the torches have been lit.
There is no set schedule, no set calendar, just an island for the pirates.
But we haven’t slept for a full day, and though I’m still on edge from the kiss, I’m beginning to feel the dregs of everything, the ache in my muscles, the weight of my eyelids.
I want to curl into some dark corner and sleep the day away, but Captain Night is determined to set sail, and I am being run all over the ship to no end.
Is this punishment? I think as I glance at him standing confidently before the helm.
He is frowning as he inspects what I can only assume is the scrap of paper from the tavern.
He must sense my gaze, because his head whips up, and he spies me across the deck.
His lips part like he wants to say something, but he clamps them closed and refocuses on the map.
“Are you sure nothing else happened last night?” Mick asks, brushing away crumbs from his shirt, following my gaze to our captain with a curious expression.
I blink and shake my head, shoving the last of my bread in my mouth. I feel the hickey on my neck like a massive, light-up sign that screams, Look at me! I kissed the captain!
“Nope, nothing,” I say around the mouthful.
I want to tell Mick, to tell someone about the kiss, about the way he makes me feel, but I swallow it down.
Even though my relationship with Louise has been strained, I used to tell her about my dating woes.
She was with me right after Julian hurt me, when the essay was published and my phone lit up.
She appeared at my doorstep with my favorite cider in one hand and chocolate in the other.
We’d lie on the floor in our pajamas while she listened to me complain about him, about what he did to me, how I wasn’t sure I could trust another person like that again.
I cried on her shoulder and promised myself I’d never let anyone take advantage of me again.
She coaxed me out of a dark place when I needed someone most.
And though I know next to nothing about the man at the helm, nothing about the person he is aside from his coat and his ship and his crew, I know that he treats me differently.
He is kind to me.
When Captain Night looks at me, he sees all of me.
And he wants, oh, does he want.