The boat seems to hold its breath.
A low moan rises from Julio’s bunk room, followed by another burst of hacking coughs.
“Fine,” Amber mutters. “But I’m not going in there alone.”
“I’ll go with you.” Woody slips down from his bench. “Somebody take the helm—”
“No,” Amber says, turning to point at me. “You know how this works. You’re coming with me.”
As I turn for the berths, Fleur grabs my hand. We both jump at the static-like shock. “Thank you,” she whispers. She presses her lips to my cheek.
I don’t move. Can’t speak. She’s still holding my hand and her mouth is so close and the yearning I feel is enough to bring me to my knees. The raw nagging hunger to kiss her leaves me dizzy and a little weak. She pulls away slowly, as if maybe she’s feeling it, too.
“Better get down there,” Woody says, his lip twitching with a smile.
The lingering spot of warmth on my cheek spreads to the rest of me as I watch her walk away, lost in the color of her hair and the shape of her hips. The way her bare feet curl under her legs as she settles on the couch across the room. “Yeah. Right.”
Head buzzing, I descend the stairs to Julio’s berth. The tightspace smells strongly of perspiration. He’s hardly conscious, shivering through his sleeping bag, his skin sallow and his hair slicked with a layer of sweat and salt.
Amber backs into me as another cough overtakes him. “What do I do?” Her voice is small and uncertain. She looks ready to bolt from the room.
“It’s not hard.” I clear the lie from my throat, thinking back to the long hours I spent holding Fleur’s hand, watching her sleep, waiting for her to wake, wondering if she would. Some nights it felt like the hardest thing I’d ever do. “All you have to do is touch him.”
“Will you stay?” she asks, her eyes pleading. I don’t recognize this Amber, the timid one who doesn’t know what to do with her hands. The Amber I know could be bleeding out in the dirt and would just as soon spit on my shoes as ask me for anything. The air in here is too warm, the room nothing more than a small bunk bed and a narrow strip of floor, thick with the smell of dying summers. There’s hardly room in here for two, much less three of us. And I don’t relish the idea of being a fly on Julio’s bedroom wall.
“Sure,” I tell her.
Her breath shudders out of her. I ease to the floor at the foot of Julio’s bed, my knees curled against my chest and my back against the bunk. It creaks as Amber settles into it beside him. Julio murmurs restlessly, as if stirred from a fever dream.
He coughs, gentler this time. Moans softly in his sleep.
I shut my eyes, feeling the ghost of Fleur’s body against mine. The weariness of every sleepless night since. And I hope, maybe for the first time, for Amber’s sake, that her heart survives the night.
23
Anywhere
FLEUR
Jack and Amber disappeared into Julio’s berth hours ago. The rain has stopped, the sea calm after the storm, and I head out onto the deck for some air. A lighter scrapes over and over, throwing sparks as Marie struggles to light a cigarette in spite of the wind.
“Thank you for what you did back there.” I lean on the wet railing beside her, watching thick clouds blow over the moon. She’s been livid with Julio since she woke up in that crate beside me.
She throws me a side-eye as I sink down onto the deck next to her. “It’s my job to watch out for him,” she says around her unlit cigarette.
Abashed, I look away. I may not have been the one to drag her along, but I’m the reason she’s stuck here. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? You weren’t the one who stuffed us in a box.” She shakes her head. “For reasons I may never understand, Julio likes you. A lot. But Julio didn’t do this for you. Julio did this for Julio. Trust me. He has his own reasons.” The hard line of her mouth softens, and she takes thecigarette from her lips. It feels strange to sit beside her, just talking. I’m so used to hearing her through Julio’s transmitter, her urgings to kill me tempered by thirty-seven hundred miles, thirty stories of earth, and Julio’s reluctance to hurt me.
Her cat burrows out from inside her jacket, sniffs the wind, and then disappears back into it, rustling the dog tags around her neck. “How’d you meet Julio, anyway?” I ask.
Marie squints at me sideways. Some people, like Julio, never talk about how they died. But it feels like I should know this. Like I should know these people who’ve sacrificed, willingly or not, for Poppy and me.
“Fell off the Coronado Bridge.”
“Fell?”
Her cold eyes pierce me, the line I’ve crossed drawn in the strands of dark hair blowing across her face. “Fell.” She frowns out at the water. “Julio found me right before I slipped. The guy has a hero complex. It makes him do stupid things.”
