What am I doing here?
I didn’t have time for this. I needed my children. I needed them to keep my cresting pain at bay. I felt the tears scratching my insides, harpooning me with agonising memories.
He’s dead, they screamed.
You’re alone, they gloated.
I needed to hold Coco and let Pippa hold me as we both cried for the men we’d loved and lost.
I glanced at Stefan. “I thought...I thought you were taking me to see Coco and Pippa?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, disrupting his stethoscope. “I thought it was best you debriefed with the captain beforehand.” Looking at John, he added, “She, umm—she can’t remember much about last night. Perhaps, a re-jog of her memory is in order, sir?”
Goosebumps broke out beneath the white shift I’d been dressed in. I suddenly worried my underwear-less frame might be visible beneath.
The thought kicked my heart then ran away.
So what?
What was the point in caring?
I stood before strangers barefoot, mostly naked, and stripped of natural beauty and vitality thanks to years on a tropical island. No one cared about me. The sad little washed-up rescued girl. No one cared that I was loved and loved in return. That I was a mother. That I was a widow. That I was grieving for a son I’d lost only months before I lost my husband.
They didn’t need to know.
That was my pain, and my pain was more private than my useless body.
The tears scratched harder, biting lonely teeth into my heart.
Bracing my shoulders, I said, “Thank you for what you’ve done for me, but I really must insist that we turn around. I need...I need to go back.”
“Go back?” The captain’s eyes flared. “My dear, what ever for?”
My lower lip wobbled as sobs threatened to take me. All I seemed to do now was cry. If a human body was made up of water, then I didn't have a single droplet left.
“I just do. Take me back. At once.” My voice came out harder than I’d intended, using anger to patch up my terror.
Was that what G did?
The entire time he’d been gruff and argumentative; was he merely blustering with façade to hide his true fear? The fear that he’d murdered. That he’d killed.
He’d passed such horrendous news to me before dying. What was I supposed to do with that? Was it supposed to make me love him less? Was I supposed to hand in his crime and choose the law over my heart?
It doesn’t matter now.
He’s dead.
I rubbed at the bleeding hole where my heart used to be, eaten by my feral tears.
The captain followed my movement, ignoring his question for another. “Are you uncomfortable in the nightgown? I’m sorry it’s slightly too big. That was all the on board gift shop had in stock.”
Glancing down, I read the P&O cruise logo on the frilly collar around my décolletage (not that my boobs had cleavage after so many years).
“It’s—it’s fine.” I swallowed against the bitterness of bereavement. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done.”
Biting. Biting. Tearing. Tearing.
The tears grew and grew.
“I’ll have a selection sent to your room. Dresses and what-not.” The captain cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind that we didn’t launder your bathing suit. We decided it was probably past its use-by-date.”
Yes, I do. They’re memories. Not clothing.
How many times had Galloway undone those bows and made love to me?
How many times had I slipped from the black swimwear to swim beneath the moonlight bare?
I looked at the floor. “No, I don’t mind.”
“I’ll make sure more clothes for your children are sent up, too.” The captain shuffled in place. For the director and man in charge of such a vessel, he seemed nervous around me.
Was I that wild? That savage?
Apologise for hurting his men.
It took so much effort, but I said, “I—I need to thank you, Captain Keung. Thank you for finding my family. I’m sorry for hurting your crew.”
“Don’t worry about it. Gave them plenty to talk about.” He winked. “Not every day we head to an uninhabited island and find locals.”
I cracked a smile. It was what he expected. Even if it cost me everything.
Locals.
That was what we’d become.
And now, we’d been ripped from our home without a choice.
This wasn’t a rescue.
It was a kidnapping.
Achy tears bruised my eyes. I struggled to hide my sob-filled sigh. “Sir...please. I’m very grateful to you. And I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have medical assistance after so long. But...there’s something...someone—”
I couldn’t finish.
My knees gave out, and I pooled to the polished wooden floor of the bridge. The wood was so glossy it mirrored my large, aching eyes brimming with stupid, hurtful, angry, disbelieving tears.
He left me.
He left me.
I hadn’t had time to grieve.
I’d had to make a choice: stay with Galloway or save our daughters. He’d made me put him second best.
And because of that, I never got to say goodbye.
“I never...I never got to say goodbye!” I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t make eye contact with the milling crew in the operating tower. I couldn’t glance at Stefan, and I definitely couldn’t look at the captain.
If I did, I didn’t know if I’d die from the cracking, wrenching sorrow inside or kill him. I wanted to kill him for taking me from the man I loved.