Page 24 of Lawless (Dauntless Island #2)

They’d never found his body. And it didn’t change anything—of course he’d drowned in that storm, dragged down by the ocean he’d loved so much—but it gave a place in my mind for crazy fantasies to build.

Maybe he’d hit his head and lost his memories.

Maybe he’d been picked up by a cargo ship, and even now he was working his way from port to port, wondering why his heart kept pulling him towards a tiny little speck of an island in the middle of the ocean.

Maybe it’d take him another ten years to get back here, but he’d find his way.

Dauntless Islanders always found their way back home.

The difference between me and Mum was that I knew it wasn’t real, however much I wanted it to be.

Will stepped into the kitchen. He grabbed a fork from the drainer and sat down at the table. Nodded at me and then dug into his pasta.

Mum pulled away from me, and I watched her watch him. She pressed her mouth together in a shaky line, and tilted her head, and then looked away from him, her expression suddenly blank as though she’d already forgotten about him. Maybe she had.

“You didn’t put another Band-Aid on,” I said. “You’re not supposed to get your stitches wet.”

“Don’t bloody start,” Will muttered, but there was no heat in his words.

Mum wandered out of the kitchen, tugging her robe tightly around her body.

I filled a glass with water from the tap and sat down across from Will.

It was dark outside, and quiet. I wondered if Dominic was still up.

Probably. It was pretty early. I bet he was sitting in his kitchen just like we were, except instead of eating pasta he was eating toasted sandwiches because he was terrible at cooking.

I thought of when I’d shown him how to cook mudcrabs, and my chest ached.

It wasn’t just the sex stuff that I’d never have again with him—it was moments like that as well; everyday moments that were just as amazing as kissing.

“You were late tonight,” I said, if only to pull my thoughts away from Dominic.

Will grunted into his dinner. “Took longer to unload. We were down a hand.”

“What?” I hadn’t heard anything about that.

“Young Archie,” Will said, with a look that dared me to complain.

Young Archie Hooper’s wife, Anna, was sick.

She’d been going to the mainland for chemo for months now.

Some days she was good, but on the days she was bad, Young Archie stayed with her.

I hadn’t seen Anna sitting out in the sunlight by the harbour wall for a while, so maybe she’d been having a lot of bad days lately.

I drew a breath. “I could have?—”

“Natty,” Will said, his voice low, “I managed when you were at school, and I can manage now you’re back. I’m tired of fighting with you about this. You’re not coming out on the boat, because I need you here. Mum needs you here.”

I clamped my mouth shut, because I knew if I said anything else it’d just lead to more arguing.

And it wasn’t like Will was wrong—but he wasn’t totally right either.

Mum needed someone, but it didn’t have to be me.

When I’d been away at school, Aunt Jane or Big Johnny or Aunt Agnes had visited Mum every day to bring her lunch and check in on her when Will was out on the Adeline .

Mum hadn’t gotten worse once I got back to Dauntless or anything—she was just the same as always, or at least the same she’d been since Dad had drowned.

If Will had managed when I was away at school, like he said, then what was different now I was home?

He didn’t have a good reason for not letting me work on the Adeline —he was just being stubborn.

Button John said he probably didn’t want me to talk back to him in front of his crew, because I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

There was more truth in that than I wanted to admit, but he didn’t have to put the word out to everyone else not to hire me.

Nipper Will regarded me warily, his good hand clamped around his fork. “Thanks,” he said at last, gruffly. “For dinner.”

I think he really meant for not arguing.

“The wind got up today,” I said. “Must have been rough out there.”

He nodded. “Bit rough, yeah. Not too bad.”

As much as I wanted to fight with Will until he admitted he was wrong, I knew that wouldn’t happen until hell froze over, and I also liked not fighting. I just wished we had more to talk about than his job, and I fished around uselessly for some other topic.

Will cleared his throat. “Copper’s yard needs mowing.” Apparently he thought we’d needed a change of subject too. I just wished he hadn’t picked that one. He scraped his fork over his plate. “You slacking off?”

“You didn’t want me working for him in the first place!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t, and I don’t, but you gave your word.”

“Well, I still am,” I said. “I’m just running late this week.”

Will’s raised eyebrows asked me what the fuck I had going on in my life that was so important my schedule was blowing out.

I tried not to think about what his expression would do if I told him the truth: I’m avoiding the copper ever since he sucked my dick, actually.

That was not a dinner conversation that either of us needed.

“I’ll get to it tomorrow,” I said.

Will nodded and looked at his empty plate. “There any more of this?”

“Yeah.” My chair scraped as I got up and went to the fridge. I grabbed the container out and spooned some more pasta onto Will’s plate. I carried it over to the microwave.

“It’s good,” Will said, and there was something hesitant in his tone, even though it was hidden well under his usual gruffness.

We were both tired of fighting, I guessed, and both realising that we didn’t have very much to talk about at all.

“It’s just sauce from a jar.”

“It’s good,” he said again.

Even when we were kids, me and Will hadn’t been close, because we hadn’t been kids at the same time.

By the time I was old enough to keep up with Will, he hadn’t wanted to hang out with me, and by the time I was old enough to be interesting, he’d been at school in Sydney.

When he came back on holidays he sometimes took me swimming with him, and he and Red Joe would keep half an eye on me for a few hours to make sure I didn’t drown.

But there was a decade between us, and a decade was a lifetime when you were kids.

I’d always thought that one day we’d have a boat of our own together, and he’d be the captain and I’d be the first mate, and Mum and Dad would be waiting for us in the harbour every afternoon when we tied up at the jetty.

“Thanks,” I said. It should have felt better that we’d spent this long talking without arguing, but it somehow felt worse, because it just showed how much distance there was between us and how neither of us had the right words to bridge it.

I went and looked in on Mum while Nipper Will was finishing up his second helping, and she’d already taken herself to bed.

It wasn’t like she couldn’t do stuff—she just sometimes needed reminding.

To eat, to shower and dress, to brush her teeth, to go to bed.

I remember after Dad died that everything felt fuzzy and foggy and not real, like my brain had just turned off or something.

But after a few weeks, it changed. It didn’t hurt any less—it hurt more, in some ways, because I’d finally realised it was real —but it changed shape just enough to make room for the other, ordinary stuff.

Schoolwork, the jobs I did for pocket money back then, hanging out with Button John, taking the yabby pump to Seal Beach at low tide, buying junk food from Mavis’s shop; the ordinary stuff.

Sometimes I thought that Mum was still stuck in the fog and had never come out the other side.

“Natty,” she said with a smile when she saw me standing in her bedroom doorway. “You’re getting so big !”

“Goodnight, Mum.”

Her smile faded as she closed her eyes. “Goodnight.”

Usually I would have hung out in my room to avoid having to talk to Will, but usually we were fighting, and usually my room was my sanctuary.

Now it was the place where I felt guilty and weirdly turned on, especially whenever I looked out the window towards Dominic’s house.

So I went downstairs again, figuring that avoiding Dominic was more important than avoiding Will, and started to do the washing up.

Nipper Will surprised the fuck out of me by grabbing a tea towel so he could dry. “Sea John Barnes heard from Buzzy Pete that the phone network should be working in a few days.”

“Me and Button John went up and had a look this morning. There were guys all over the lighthouse.”

“Yeah, we saw them from out off the point.”

“You do okay today out there?”

He grunted. “Not great, but not bad either.”

“Amy says it’s getting all fished out around here. Not by us, but the bigger commercial operators from the mainland. She says?—”

“Natty, come on.” He took a dish out of my hand and wiped it aggressively. “Just for once, I’d like to not do the maths in my head, okay?”

“The maths?”

“Fuel prices, maintenance, wages, and smaller and smaller catches every year.” His mouth twisted bitterly, but it wasn’t at me. “I’m tired, okay?”

My stomach lurched. “Sorry. I didn’t know. Is it bad?”

He hung the tea towel over the handle of the oven, then dragged a hand through his hair. “It’s not great, but what the hell else have we got?”

I didn’t know if he meant our family, or the whole island.

“I didn’t know,” I repeated softly.

“It’s fine,” he said, and shook his head. “I’m just tired and talking shit, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.” His smile looked forced. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”

“Night,” I echoed as he left the kitchen.

A few hours later as I let myself out of the house, Will’s words were still ringing in my head.

“It’s not great, but what the hell else have we got?”

Yeah, Will, me too.

I didn’t look back at Dominic’s house. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to turn around and go there instead of meeting up with Button John and then crossing the island to Mayfair Bay.

Young Harry Barnes was expecting us tonight.

It wasn’t like he paid much—but it was still better than nothing, and I’d given my word that I’d help him out.

And on Dauntless, for better or worse, all you had was your word.