3
I SHOULD PROBABLY SAY it was some sense of purpose, or even hope, that gets me moving again a few days after the pirates leave.
But that would be a lie. What really gets me moving is sheer, miserable anger.
The kind that starts somewhere behind your ribcage and eats its way outward, so by the time you’re upright, you can’t think about anything else except how badly you still want to punch a hole through the universe.
Which is how I find myself at the water the next day, leaning against a tree, pathetically attempting to tie three large branches together, strong enough to wedge against a boulder in our shelter, so the rain stops fucking coming in and hitting us.
I watched Kellen do it yesterday. I know for a fact it’s possible.
Yet for some reason, my hands are numb with cold and every knot I attempt slips out and immediately bites me in the arse.
I manage one, then go to anchor the second, and the whole thing collapses, sending the timber tumbling to the ground in front of me.
It makes a sound so pathetic, I want to scream.
Instead, I slam the sticks into the ground, hands balled into fists.
The second I do, I realise how badly I’ve been shaking.
My vision is rimmed in black, like I’m about to pass out.
Maybe I am. I feel like shit, maybe it’s exhaustion or maybe it’s just me wanting all of this to end.
I press my forehead to one hand and try to just breathe.
I can feel in my blood that the migraine I’ve been holding off for days is coming back with a vengeance, and it is eating holes in the inside of my skull.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to remember what it felt like to be an actual person, with actual problems you could fix in a day, instead of problems that simply keep reminding you how much worse things can get.
The silence of the dusk is so deep it actually amplifies the sound of approaching footsteps.
The crunch of gravel and fronds. I hear him before I see him, and of course he comes out of the trees, like fucking Tarzan, right on cue, as if some part of me telegraphed the anguish and summoned him out of thin air.
Ace. He takes one look at me, sitting on the ground with my fingers pressed to my temples, and makes a non-committal grunt.
I look up, staring at him, my face unmoving.
I can tell he’s been working for hours already.
His shirt is filthy, there’s mud up his arms past the elbows, and a thin stripe of blood trails from somewhere on his forearm.
He’s holding a coil of that trash rope he and Zeke found, slung over one shoulder.
“Nobody taught you how to tie knots, I see.”
His words agitate me, maybe it’s because he is right, or maybe it is because I’m so damn angry at him.
“The fuck does it matter, it’s a knot,” I snap, then close my eyes.
I know I’m being a cow, I know it.
I can’t help it right now.
He strides forward, arms crossed as he stares down at the mess I have made. He looks angry, too. Like he has had the same kind of day as me. Good, because he fucking deserves it. “Looks like you tried to hog-tie a chicken.”
I glare at him, throat blazing with a hundred insults but none of them are clever enough to say. “If you’re here to make fun of me, just go.”
He crouches down, one knee grazing me as he balances in front of me. “Not making fun. Trying to help.”
I can’t stand that he’s here. I can’t stand even more that a tiny part of me is relieved he is.
My hands are useless. My brain won’t stop ricocheting off the inside of my skull.
But I am so goddamned tired of being helped.
He reaches for the stick, and I lunge for it, slapping his hand away.
“I don’t need your goddamned help, Ace.”
He doesn’t move, just watches me for a second, all those unreadable emotions tightening his jaw.
I can tell there are a million things he wants to say, but he holds them in.
I get the stick standing upright, balancing the ends in the dirt.
As I go to pull the rope through, my hands slip and the stick scrapes along my finger.
Hard. I know it has pushed a splinter into my flesh, but I pretend it hasn’t.
My eyes water, and I ignore the pain and try to cinch it, but in the process I end up digging the splinter so deep into my finger that I hiss, jerking my hand away. “Fuck.”
Ace says nothing, except, “Let me see.”
I shove my finger angrily into my mouth and shake my head, refusing to meet his eyes. “It’s nothing.”
He tries again, this time gentler, and wraps his hand around my wrist. “Grace,” he says, the word so soft it actually registers beyond the pain, “let me help you.”
I yank my hand out of his. “No.”
Am I acting like a child? Yes, yes I am.
Do I care? No.
He leans in, and I can smell the musk of sweat and dirt and smoke from the fire.
When his hand clamps over my wrist again, I don’t fight as hard as I want to.
He turns my palm upward, peering at the splinter wedged into my finger, slowly trickling blood.
It’s such a nothing injury, I want to scream for how childish it feels.
Then his cold fingers press in, pinching the splinter between fingernails, and I clench my jaw tight to stop myself losing it.
When he gets it out, he wipes the blood with the hem of his shirt. I rip my hand away the second he’s done. The anger is so much sharper than the pain. “Happy? Hero moment accomplished?”
Gosh, I am such a fucking bitch.
I know it, yet the words just keep flowing.
The frustration in my chest is so strong, so heavy, I can’t seem to stop the words coming out of my mouth.
His nostrils flare. “You know,” he says, voice steady, “you can be mad at me all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m here and I’m goin’ to help you.”
I chuck the stick aside as hard as I can. It goes maybe two feet and thunks into the dirt. “Why are you here? To make me feel like shit? To beg? What? What do you want, Ace?”
“I’m here because we’re all fuckin’ here,” he snaps, his frustration bubbling to the surface now, too. “I don’t have a fuckin’ choice and neither do you.”
I finally look right at him, letting every cell in my body throb with resentment.
“You think I don’t fucking know that? God, all I want is to not be on this fucking island.
I want to not have to see your goddamned face every day.
I want—all of us—to not be living like rats, waiting for the next person to get sick or die or have their heart broken or whatever fucking next trauma this place has planned for us. ”
There’s a beat. Then he smiles, followed by a grunt, but it’s not a happy smile. It’s like someone just told him a joke about hell, and he recognised the punchline. “I never planned any of this, Grace.”
“Yeah?” My voice is shaking. “You and the others keep saying that, but you all knew what was happening. Every one of you. You could have fucking stopped all of this by not agreeing to sell a bunch of innocent girls.”
My voice breaks into a scream at the end, shocking even me.
He gets to his feet, looming over me in that way he does so well.
I stand, too, because fuck him, I’m not about to let him have the high ground.
I’m half his size but the moment I’m upright, the tension between us turns into something so boiling hot it makes the hair on my arms rise.
His voice, when it comes, is low and dangerous.
“You think I don’t fuckin’ regret it, Grace? ”
“You made a choice, and you were going to follow through with that fucking choice until we took matters into our own hands. So fuck you, Ace. I have no sympathy for you.”
He’s inches from me now. “You’re so fucking heroic, aren’t you? Acting like you wouldn’t have made the same choice? You are the reason that yacht capsized, Grace. You are the fucking reason.”
I slap him.
It comes out of nowhere, a rage that just unleashes.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t react, just glares at me like I have done something wrong.
I’m trembling. “Fuck. You.”
He steps closer, crowding me so my back hits the tree I was leaning against. “You are proof that anyone is capable of doing something desperate, if it meant saving yourself or someone you love.”
I open my mouth, but the words aren’t there.
He sees it. He sees every raw, ugly thought that’s flashing through me, the way my certainty runs out and is replaced with something even more dangerous.
I want to scream at him, or hit him, or maybe just collapse.
But I do none of those things. He studies me, so close I can feel his breath tickling my cheeks.
“I am trying to fix it now, I am trying to keep you safe,” he says, his voice nothing more than a rasp.
“Bullshit.” My voice cracks. “You tell yourself whatever you have to, to make it better, but you are a fucking arsehole, Ace. Own it.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. He smashes his fist into the tree beside me, a burst of wild, unkempt rage.
I’m breathing so hard now, it might as well be hyperventilating.
The next thing I know, his hands are in my hair, hauling me forward, and his mouth is on mine.
I shove him as hard as I can. The world tilts.
I slap him, claw at him, but instead of letting me go he just yanks me tighter, kissing me so fiercely my lips bruise.
I break first, face hot with shame—or maybe not shame at all.
That is the worst part. That I want him.
Even now, with all the things that should have killed the desire, I want him so much it hurts.
He breaks the kiss, staring down at me with wild eyes.
His fingers knot in my hair, rough and unyielding, and for a long minute we just glare at each other, both breathing hard.