The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(28)
I spot Swift tucked away in a darkened corner with a girl on her lap and Code slumped next to her, nursing a bottle. He perks up when he sees me, one eyebrow arching. “Hey, Swift, your wife’s here,” he says as I approach, his words scarcely audible over the din. “And she don’t look too pleased.”
Swift startles. Her arms slide from around the girl’s waist and she almost stands, then seems to think better of it. “How the hell’d you get here?” she asks.
“Took the long way ’round.”
Her eyes are rimmed with red, and a stringlet needle dangles from her elbow. The girl pushes out of her lap and disappears back into the crowd, leaving Swift looking rumpled and flustered. “You’re lucky,” she slurs. “You could have been killed coming up here.”
It’s taking everything I’ve got to keep myself from punching her again. “You want to talk lucky? Your worthless ass is lucky that I got the damn beast on this ship before it took off, that I had the sense to take care of the thing that both our lives depend on after you locked me on the trainer deck.”
“Can’t hear you,” she mouths. “Too loud.”
I grit my teeth and lean in, propping one foot up on the bench next to Swift as I tower over her. A satisfied smirk curls over her lips, but I can’t let that throw me if I’m going to make her understand just how pissed I am at her. “You almost got us both killed,” I start, yelling right into her ear. “If you had just listened to me instead of rushing off at Santa Elena’s whistle, we could have kept Bao in the water, and you’d still have taken the ship.”
I draw back, searching her for any sign of guilt or worry or any of the things I want her to be feeling, and for a second I think I see it in the glint of her eyes as they wander. Her expression shifts, and I can see her on the cusp of spitting something out, see the gears in her brain churning as she tries to process this information.
And for a split second, just when the light shifts, I stop seeing and start noticing. I notice the muscles in her jaw pulse as she bites her lip, notice the curve of her collarbone where her tank top has shifted, notice the imprint of teeth on her earlobe.
Something lights inside me.
It’s not like with the girls I’ve dated at school—no, she’s too much of a disaster for anything like that. She’s a pirate. But there’s a hunger in Swift, and maybe it’s just my trainer impulse that makes me want to feed it for a moment.
Then her attention flicks back to my eyes. “When an all-call goes out that we’re about to hit a bucket, I’m at the captain’s side no matter what. If I’m not there for her, I’m as good as dead anyway. It’s your job to save my skin when the beast is concerned.”
Moment’s over.
“Also, you’re dripping on me,” she adds.
I push away from the bench and catch Code’s eye. He sniggers, taking another swig from his bottle. “C’mon, have a stringlet or something. You need to relax, girl.”
“No thanks, my life’s a living hell already,” I snap back at him. “Swift, I’m sleeping belowdecks tonight. Bao needs to be observed after today’s ordeal. No need to come get me.”
She shrugs, her hungry eyes roaming over the crowd of pirates. “Was probably going to need the room to myself tonight anyway.”
I don’t have anything left to say to her after that. I scoop some of the spoils onto a tray and carry it with me down into the bowels of the ship. Since I’m still locked out of the trainer deck, I find the closet full of cleaning supplies where I spent my first hours on this ship. I close the hatch behind me and feel around for the switch. When I flip it, a bare bulb flickers on, filling the closet with a dim, sickly light.
In the thick of the fighting, I thought I’d be too nauseous to eat the food we took today, but the dead aren’t using it, and my stomach is growling. I eat with my hands, running my fingers over the tray until I’ve scooped up every last bite. The meal sits heavy in my stomach, but not on my conscience.
It should horrify me. It doesn’t.
16
I get used to sleeping on the trainer deck again. Santa Elena’s liable to burst in at any time, but it’s the closest thing I have to a space to call my own on the ship, and with a few extra pieces of bedding ferreted out of Swift’s laundry carpet, I make the counter comfortable enough that I no longer wake up sore.
Autumn deepens, and in bits and snatches of conversation that I catch from the crew in the mess, I discover that it’s the last week of September already. If all had gone right, if the Nereid had continued her voyage, I’d be back in school now. I’d be a high school senior, trying to convince my parents that I don’t need to go to college, that I can be a trainer full time, that my future is in the industry.
Given the circumstances, I think that future’s been dragged out back and shot.
But I’ve fallen into the Minnow’s rhythm so easily. I sleep with the trainer deck doors wide open, listening to the sea against the ship’s hull as I drift off and rising when the sun crests over the horizon to glare murderously into my eyes. In the hours before Swift comes to drag me to the galley, I hop into the sea with Bao and give him a once-over, and it’s in that moment each day that I let myself pretend all of this isn’t happening. In the cradle of the NeoPacific, with the Minnow to my back, I imagine that I never left home, that this massive, round baby is just one of the new additions to our stock and I’ve been assigned primary care on him.