Page 10 of Dance Practice, Marooned: Part 2

I pull away.

An automatic reaction, but one that hurts him. I can hear it when he sucks in a breath.

“Gracie...”

“I know that you regret what you did, Ace. I can see that in you. But a choice was made, and that choice has cost us all so much. I don’t...I just don’t know if I will ever feel the same way after that.”

He falls silent, for a long moment.

“I’m fuckin’ sorry, for whatever that’s worth.”

“I believe you,” I whisper. “But I have to ask myself what kind of man you really are, if you were willing to hand innocent girls over to be sold, just to pay off your own debts.”

“It wasn’t...”

I cut him off. “Maybe it wasn’t, honestly, I don’t want to know the reason why because it doesn’t feel like any reason will justify it. You were going to sell us, Ace. You were delivering us to a fate so bad, I wouldn’t even send my worst fucking enemy to endure it.”

“I know,” he growls, low. “I fuckin’ know.”

“Then stop asking me to forgive you,” I whisper. “Because...I just fucking can’t. I can’t. Please, just stop. Leave me alone. You’re making this so much fucking harder than it has to be.”

Someone shifts before he can answer, and then I hear the shuffling of feet.

The conversation is cut short, and I scoot away from Ace with an ache in my heart that feels unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s deep and jarring, like someone has their hands around it and is squeezing so hard I find it hard to breathe.

I don’t want this to be the end of the story for Ace and me, but I don’t know how I can ever look past what happened.

Right now, I don’t know anything.

I just want to get off this island.

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.”