I’m going to vomit. But now is really not the time, and the captain’s quarters are definitely not the place.
Beck leans against the headboard, swaying gently with the ship. The rocking motion feels more like a landslide to me. I struggle to keep my feet under me and the sparse contents of my stomach below my esophagus.
“Where is . . . ?” Beck looks around the snug room that has grown dim, thanks to the fading daylight through the portholes. Kern gives a little hop, and then marches across the room—all five steps—and pulls a leather pouch from his pocket, laying it flat on the side table.
“Need anything else?” Kern asks.
“I’ll scream if there’s a problem,” Beck says with a winning smile that only emphasizes the bloody slashes across his face.
“Beck, you’re going to need stitches,” I say.
“Don’t you fret, I’m on it.” He reaches across his body, and I realize his right shoulder is sitting at an awkward angle. With the bruised fingers of his left hand, he unties the leather pouch and opens it until it lays flat across the table, a long rectangle of soft leather, containing thin silver needles of varying lengths and looping thread.
“You can’t be serious,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Capo, what have I told you? I’ve got this. ” He tugs a piece of black thread from the pouch and puts it between his teeth, wrapping his cut lips around it. He squints down at the end of it, his fingers fumbling to twist it into a knot, but he can’t quite get it tied on account of having only one eye open and only one functioning hand. I’ve had about enough.
“Don’t be difficult,” I say, bobbing and tripping across the rocking floor to assess the contents of the pouch. There are a dozen silver needles, ranging from impressively long to nightmare inducing in length. Some of the thread, though, looks secondhand. I frown at him and watch as blood trickles down his cheek, along his jaw, and to his collar.
“Here,” I say, pressing a damp cloth against his head. “Before you lose something you can’t get back.”
“That was almost funny,” he says, cracking half a smile. “I must have lost a lot of blood.” Now it’s my turn to crack a smile, and something tugs at my gut. I swallow hard and look around the room, avoiding his eyes that see so much more than I want him to whenever I least want him to see it.
“You must have some rum stashed away in here, right?”
“Check the drawer.”
“Which drawer?” I ask, starting for the chest of drawers built into the opposite wall. Behind me, I hear the slide of wood on wood, and when I turn, Beck has a cork between his teeth and a bottle in his hand. He spits the stopper onto the bed and grins.
“I like to keep the important things close to me at all times.”
“Of course you do.” I return to his bedside and take the bottle of rum from him. I pour some into my palm, and he hisses as I rub the alcohol into my hands. I remove one of the impressively long, slender needles from the case, sliding it slowly to make sure I don’t drop it, and then rinse it with the rum. He curses the wasted booze as it dribbles on the floor.
“I may never forgive you for that,” he says as a trickle of blood catches in his stubble. I take the cloth from him, find a corner that hasn’t yet been soaked through, and wet it with the rum.
“This might sting,” I say.
“Fastest way into the bloodstream—och!” I blot the booze into his cut, and he curses in a spectacular array of words I’ve never imagined could sound so dirty, strung together in a sweet little necklace of profanity. I continue dabbing the rum against the side of his face until it’s cleaner than before and his cursing has died down. Then I thread the cleaned needle and hesitate.
I hover, awkwardly. Because there’s not enough room in here to get the right angle.
“Look, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” he says. “Anything you mess up, Shaz can fix. Did you know he won a blue ribbon for his needlepoint of a whale breaching at sunset?”
“I need . . .” I say, unable to get the words out, which is quite possibly just as embarrassing as if I’d asked him to make room for me on his bed. I shouldn’t be embarrassed. I’ve literally slept in his bed before. Just never while he was in it. But now, after that moment in the dark of the closet . . . I feel my cheeks flush, and I chomp on the side of my tongue.
Understanding lights in his eyes, and without a word, he slides away from the nightstand. I sit next to him, between him and the lamp, casting shadows over his face. I shift so that I’m on my knees, and then remove the lampshade from the sconce above the end table. It helps, spilling light over all the sharp, broken planes of his face.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Ready,” he says, closing his eyes. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly through my lips. The first stitch is always the hardest. There’s nothing more humbling—or nauseating—than the feel of piercing flesh with metal. But there’s an unfamiliar weight to mending Beck’s broken face: this will be the first time I stitch up another person, someone who isn’t me, after an encounter with CJ.
I push, and he winces. I pause as he lets out a shaky breath. I pull on the needle, threading the dark string through his skin until there’s about an inch of it left hanging. Then I turn the needle and go back again. I make the stitches short and tight, leaving the skin to just barely touch. It’ll heal faster that way, so long as it doesn’t get infected.
“You’re good at this,” he says, his voice so soft I almost don’t recognize it. I make another stitch, pressing my lips together.
“Thank you,” I say. I push the needle through, absorbing the calm ritual of the task, the steadiness and the requirement of it. It moves through my body like a gentle wave, pushing away the terror, the fear, the hopelessness I felt today, and replacing it with something manageable. Something I can fix.
“You’ve had practice.” His words are simple and soft. There’s no judgment, and yet, I can’t meet the green-gold eyes I now feel on my face. I don’t answer, because there’s no reason to. I have had practice. Plenty. CJ has broken me in so many ways, and the only way I ever knew how to fight back was to fix what I could and stifle the rest. But today, I fought back. I fought back in the most brutal, final way possible. I saw the life drain from him. I saw him bleed out. I killed him, and he’ll never hurt me again.
But it doesn’t feel over.
I make a stitch and as I pull it out, I feel a tremor move into my hand. I clench my fingers into a fist and use my other hand to finish the stitch. I take a deep breath and feel Beck’s hand at my waist. His fingers curl around my side, solid and still.
Three more stitches is all he needs. In through the nose and out through the mouth, I breathe. I steady my hand, leaning into his hold on my waist, and start the next stitch, finishing it with the opposite hand. Then I do another, and another. Finished, I reach for the tiny shears in the pack and snip the thread.
The tiny black stitches are clean and almost perfect. I run my thumb up them, feeling the soft, raised lines, proud of what I’ve been able to mend, grateful that I finished it before CJ made things any worse. It was so close. Too close. My hand trembles again, and Beck’s fingers move to my wrist.
His knuckles are cut and bruised, and they look brutal against my pale skin. He turns my wrist and lowers my hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss into my palm.
“Thank you,” he says. I nod and blink fast as my vision blurs.
“Of course,” I say. I set the needle and extra thread on the pouch and move to get off the bed, but he holds tight to my wrist, keeping me in place.
“He’s gone, Arden,” Beck says. He is so still.
“I know,” I say, narrowing my eyebrows and shifting uncomfortably on my right knee.
“He’s never going to hurt you again.”
“I know,” I repeat, but my voice quivers. He waits a long minute, waits for me to say something, or to do something—I don’t know what. But it hangs between us, this uncomfortable, horrible thing. What I did. What CJ did to Beck. What could have happened. I feel the tremor start again and squeeze my fist, but Beck squeezes my wrist.
“He’s gone, Arden,” he repeats.
“I know,” I say, my voice harder. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to fix Beck and fix the things I can fix. But I feel the tremor moving up my arm, into my shoulders, and something hot and horrible moves into my throat.
“You were so strong.” His voice is so much softer now, and I break. Everything comes out in a rush, and it’s as if I’m outside my body, hearing the wails of some pathetic creature who has suffered something wretched. I fall into Beck’s chest, soaking his shirt with my tears. I fight against the steadiness of his hold and his heartbeat until all that’s left is a soft, withered bit of a girl who is so tired she can’t stay awake past her bedtime. And then, for the first time in my life, I surrender. Lulled by the sound of the waves and the steady rhythm of Beck’s heart, I sleep.