Page 37 of Antihero (Tregam’s Fractured Souls #3)
Five lawmen are reaching the spot we just stood, but as Paige cranks the motor, diving the nose of the boat straight through the first wave, somehow soaking us even more, we leave the shore, them, and that future behind.
The awning lasts two minutes, gone by the time we get past the break.
I can hear and see nothing through the onslaught of 60-degree angle rain and the roar of the ocean, like it's mad we’ve dared step upon it.
The island is a dark mass behind us as we crash the boat in a direct line away from it, heading simply to sea.
Away. The headland disappears. The island disappears.
Half an hour or three later, we’re still fighting the world.
The water comes to halfway up my calves, Paige is hauling bucket after bucket out as the wind whips yet more water against her.
She could be screaming right next to me, but I wouldn’t hear a word over the chaos.
I can’t hear my own yells, so fast are they whipped from my mouth.
I try to steer towards where the mainland might be.
Finally, the rain’s easing, but the wind and wildness aren’t.
Both of us are shivering when I shut off the engine and the lights.
We’re invisible. A few more minutes of helping Paige haul more water out of the bottom of the boat, and I’m able to ascertain that the wind and current are at least not taking us back towards the island, but rather towards the huge dark mass of the mainland.
I grab the bucket from her hands and tug Paige down into the bottom of the boat, pulling the tarp over us.
The boat rocks violently, lurching like an overzealous crib, but we cling to each other, shivering, possibly about to die as the worst wind so far tries its very best. The world rages around us.
“Whatever happens,” I shout just to hear myself, and Paige blinks up towards my face, the flashlight clutched against her waist. “I don’t regret a thing.”
Her face breaks into a smile. “I wouldn’t change what I love either.”
I kiss her, and we hold on, waiting to see how long of a future we might yet have. Maybe we deserve it, maybe we don’t. Either way, I know we’ll find that elusive thing called peace.
***
I wake to light.
It glows through the tarp, turning blue as it falls on Paige’s sleeping face.
Water sloshes against my ear, and my tongue seems to be coated in more salt than the rest of me.
But the wind doesn’t howl, and rain doesn’t pelt us.
There are only the gentle, quiet sounds of the ocean lapping at the boat.
The air is stuffy and thick, almost hot under this tarp.
Last night comes back to me, the violence, the dark and chaos. With a burst of movement, I throw back the tarp, and fresh air rushes against my face, cool and enlivening. Paige groans.
I sit up, looking out on a cloudless sky, one side bright pink and orange the way stormy nights can sometimes transform a sunrise into.
The boat rocks gently, the inside water-blasted, the frame that once held the awning twisted and bent.
No other ships around, no one was following or chasing. We’re alone out here. And we’re free.
In the direction of the sun, where it peaks over the horizon, there’s land. A lot of it.
“It’s beautiful.” Paige is sitting. I don’t know if she’s talking about the show of colours, the emptiness, or just the fact that we’re alive.
I stand up, rolling the tarp, finding the bag that somehow avoided being pitched overboard, shoved up against the front dash of the boat.
Paige opens the back storage near the motor as I pull open the bag, finding my own jewels and gifts dumped with others; old, small artifacts; and a few bundles of cash.
“I don’t suppose you thought to pack any water in your stash?
” It would be plain embarrassing to die with hundreds of thousands of dollars in riches but not one thing that could be consumed.
But Paige has pulled some bottles out of the storage compartment, along with two muesli bars in crumpled packets. The water tastes salty inside my dried-out mouth, but I drink it down, my head clearing a little more.
Paige is sitting on the back bench now, idly chewing on her bar, staring out like she’s still shocked to have woken up at all. “You gave me your riches,” she comments, staring at me. “You really were going to take the fall for me.”
She knows I would have. I don’t need to say anything. “Did you look?”
She shakes her head. “No, not yet.”
I tug open the bag, finding what I’m looking for in a waterproof container, with one of a few bits of paper and other photographs.
I sit down beside her and pass her the picture.
Paige goes still next to me. “How did you…”
“The library; buried in an archive from the girls’ home. I know you’ve got to leave her now… but at least you’ve got this.”
“I can’t believe this exists. I… I never knew this photo was taken.
” She’s so young in the sepia photo, clutching the hand of the tall and steady girl beside her.
It seems they broke composure just as the shutter clicked, and their cherub cheeks were round with smiles that crinkled their eyes.
They sway together, Paige’s little face tilted towards her sister.
Her thumb now runs over the other face, which is turned down to gaze adoringly at Paige.
“Molly…” She sniffs back a tear. “She’d be happy I left.
” It’s a question. A seeking of reassurance.
“She would,” I promise. “She would.”
Paige rests her head on my shoulder for a long moment, the photo clutched in her palm, carefully, so not to crinkle it.
“What now?” she asks into the peaceful lapping of the water, to the nearby call of a seabird.
I glance at those bags worth so much, and the priceless woman beside me. “Now, the rest of our lives.”
She lifts her head. “Together?”
At that word, the possibilities stretch out.
A future, for the first time in a long time, that I’m excited for.
And here, soaking wet, shivering in my soaked, itchy clothes, half of my body wrinkled from sleeping on the bottom of a stolen boat, my leg aching, eating a bar that probably expired three years ago, this, I can say;
This is the happiest moment of my life.
I crank the motor, and we lurch towards land.
“Together,” I say.