Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Fresh air. That's the official reason. My last client ran an hour over because she wanted to talk about her divorce while I worked her calves, and the treatment room smelled like lavender and tears by the end, and I needed wind on my face and sky above me and the feeling of being very small next to something very large. So I came up here, to the highest open deck, the one the crew calls the crow's nest, and I leaned against the railing, and I faced the water, and I've been here twenty minutes and I haven't thought about Artem once.
Twice. Three times. Maximum four.
Twelve. It's been twelve.
Add to planner: 23:00, fail to not think about Artem Almazov. Duration: indefinite. Status: pathological.
"You shouldn't be up here alone."
I don't jump. I should, probably. A voice behind me at eleven o'clock at night on an empty deck should produce a jump. But I know his voice now, I've been listening to it ask me questions in dim rooms for three weeks, learning its registers like my thumbs learn the topography of a scar, and I know what it sounds like when it's giving an instruction versus asking a real question, and this is neither. This is just him, offering a fact without expectation, standing somewhere behind me in the dark, and my body recognised him before my ears finished processing the sentence.
"I'm not alone now," I point out, without turning around.
He comes to the railing. Not close, because he never stands close, because the exclusion zone exists even on an empty deck at eleven at night under a billion stars. A foot and a half of space between us, which on this ship might as well be a continent. He leans his forearms on the rail and his sleeves are pushed up because apparently he's decided that rolled sleeves are his entire personality and he's RIGHT, it's WORKING, it's been working since the corridor encounter and it's going to keep working until the end of time and there's nothing I or my cardiovascular system can do about it. I can see the scars on his hands and wrists in the low deck lighting, silver against brown, and I don't look away from them because I've traced them with my thumbs, I've mapped every ridge and line through oil, and looking away now would feel dishonest.
We stand there. The wind is cool, coming off the water, carrying salt and engine exhaust and the faintest trace of whatever the kitchens are cooking twelve decks below us. The ship moves. We move with it. The railing hums under my forearms and the sky is enormous and I'm standing next to the man who tracks my laughter and brought me coffee with the wrong amount of sugar and told me I'm worth more than my hands, and I should go to bed.
I don't go to bed.
"I come up here most nights," he offers.
"I know." I don't know. I've never been up here at night before. But it feels true, feels right, feels like something that's been waiting to be spoken, and when he glances at me I add: "You don't seem like someone who sleeps much."
"No."
I wait. He doesn't explain. The water hisses against the hull far below.
"Why not?" I ask, because I want to know, and because up here, in the dark, with a foot and a half of railing between us and the whole Mediterranean spread out beneath like a secret we're sharing, asking feels possible. Everything feels possible up here. Maybe it's the sky. Maybe it's the fact that I can't see his face well enough to blush. Maybe it's the fact that he's standing here at all, on the highest deck on his own ship, in the dark, and he told me I shouldn't be up here alone but he was already up here alone himself, which means he's either a hypocrite or a man who comes to the dark to put down the thing he carries and wasn't expecting company.
He faces the sea. His jaw works once, and I can see the muscle bunching even in the low light. Then: "I did things, in another life, that don't let me."
I hold still. Not because I'm afraid. Because I can feel how much that sentence cost him, the weight of it, how he delivered it face-forward to the ocean as if the water might accept it without judgement in a way that a person might not.
"Military?" I ask. He's never confirmed it. But his body told me the first time I touched him. The trained posture, the braced muscles, the scars that aren't from accidents or clumsiness or anything domestic. His body told me his history in the first four minutes and I've been carrying it since, alongside the cedarwood and the almost-smiles and the sound of him saying my name.