“We should be safe here for the night,” he says, his voice weighed down with sleeplessness.
Safe… I don’t know when I’ll ever feel safe again.I haven’t felt safe since I landed in Cairo, and being on the run certainly hasn’t made it any better.
Despite purging my woes on paper and Cec’s attempts to reassure me earlier, the feelings I’ve been trying to repress surge back to the surface with a vengeance. Especially after all I’ve been through with Claude and now Ailsa. Heat rises to my cheeks and my hands curl into fists.
I nod stiffly to myself and turn on him, back biting into the metal. “I suppose that’s all I can ask for then. Being safe one night at a time. It’s a completely natural way to live.”
He grimaces, anger and possibly regret sparking in his eyes, the bruises underneath them deepening. “I know it’s been difficult, but a little gratitude would be nice.”
I laugh humorlessly.Now he’s done it.I’m at my wit’s end, and Bes is about to bear the brunt of it.
“Gratitude? You’ve practically abducted me at this point. I’ve had my life threatened more than enough times in the last sixty-odd hours because of you, and I’m sick of it.”
Clearly, the lack of sleep has finally caught up with Bes, because he grips the back of his neck hard. “If it weren’t for me ‘abducting’ you”—the word is saturated with sarcasm—“you would’ve met your end at the hands of the bloody God Men.”
I throw my hands up. “Oh, because you’re so concerned about whether I live or die? You’ve chosen to withhold crucial information from me or flat-out lied to me, likely putting me in harm’s way simply by being near you. And you wantgratitude?”
“I’m doing it for your own good,” he argues. “Can’t you see that?”
“My own good? You don’t know me well enough to know what is and what isn’t for my own good. You expect me to believe all of this”—I gesture around me wildly—“is formyown good, and not the good of the damned amulet?” I throw my hands up in the air. “You can fuck right off.”
The amulet in question warms against my chest.
Bes runs the hand that was gripping his neck through his hair, whirling away from me and muttering. “Idiotic, egotistical, selfish—”
He cuts himself off. But I’m not done being angry with him. Yelling is how we fix things in my family, and if I don’t express myself in a way I’ll most likely regret later, I’m going to explode.
“Selfish what?” I bite out.
He doesn’t answer.
“Go on,” I goad him, “say it.”
He spins and marches up to me, his face sharp in anger, bloodshot eyes flashing behind his glasses. “American.”
Chest heaving, he spits it out like a swear word, like an insult. It’s exactly the kind of thing I expected him to say. But I’m more than the country of my birth. More, even, than my Italian and Irish ancestry.
The longer we stay like this, the more I realize how close we’ve become. He must recognize it as well because his hands unclench and he blinks, his gaze softening. Chest heaving, his deep brown eyes flick to my lips and away again, brow furrowing.
Fighting the heat clawing up my neck, I shove him back, gentler than I mean to. “Well, get ready for history to repeat itself, because this American is about to revolt against her British captors.”
I make a move for the railing, the metal cold and wet beneath my fingers from the sea spray. Before I can attempt to climb up on it, Bes touches my arm. He doesn’t grab it, just barelybrushes my skin. It stops me in my tracks and sends my pulse into a gallop. Which infuriates me. One man shouldn’t hold such power over me from a simple touch.
“Miss Hawkins, I’m sorry,” he says.
An actual apology from Bes Belzoni—will wonders never cease?
I turn, finding him directly behind me, no more than a foot of space between us. We stare at each other, his face as unreadable as ever. The only thing that gives him away is the slight bob in his throat.
In the pressing silence, I have an inexplicable urge to apologize for the things I said too. And yet, I can’t seem to make the words come out.
He breaks first again, taking a step back.
“I can’t tell you what you most desperately seek to know, but you’re going to have to find a way to trust me. Trust us.”
“How?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “I told you, Bes, my faith is earned. I trust my nonna, who trusts Arturo. But you? What have you done to earn it? I don’t know a single thing about you except that you know how to shoot a gun and you’re keeping secrets.”
“You want to know more about me?” Searching the skies a moment, he meets my gaze again. “When Cec and I were children, before his affliction took hold, we went on a few expeditions with my mother. She often left us with the friend of whoever’s house we were staying at, so she could spend weeks at a time on a dig. I promised my mother I’d look after Cec, but, eventually Cec got bored—”
