Page 97 of Endless Depths

“I’m not talking about sex.” He shoves four massive crab toward the chute. “What was with the solo swim attempt last night?”

Alejo becomes very focused on the crab in his hand.

“Let me guess, you guys held a deckhand meeting over my welfare while I was gone, and Lawrence drew the short end of the straw?”

“Nope. I volunteered.” He tosses another crab in, and casually adds, “You weren’t trying to jump, were you?”

“Lawless!” Javi shoots him a scandalized look.

Lawrence shrugs. “What? No one else was going to say it.”

“It wasn’t like that.” And now I lost count.

“What was it then?” Lawrence asks.

“None of your business?” Last night was hard enough. I don’t want to rehash it.

“Swear on Finn,” Lawrence says.

“What? No, I’m not swearing on an orphan.” This whole discussion is pissing me off. “I don’t need to. I would never just leave him like that.”

Javi nudges his arm against Lawrence’s. “If he says he’s good, he’s good.”

Lawrence shakes him off. “My dad said he was fine, and we all know how that turned out.”

My stomach drops. “Shit. Lawrence, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What we went through last year was traumatic,” Wes says, meeting my gaze across the table. “If you’re having a hard time, you can talk to us.”

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but the only thing traumatic is dissecting my mental health at the sorting table that nearly killed my husband.” I push back from the table. “I’m not suicidal. Sleep deprivation just got the best of me, or maybe it was the ocean playing tricks. I don’t know.”

“What kind of tricks?” Wes asks.

“I thought I saw Cole out on the bow.”

Lawrence whistles. “Shit.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Seb?” Javi asks.

“I guess it could have been Seb. I just assumed it was Cole for the obvious reason that he’s alive.”

Javi and Wes trade glances.

A chill curls inside the collar of my jacket. “What?” I ask, but I already know.

We all saw Dan on the boat that first season after he died. We mistook shadows for his silhouette or saw him in our peripheral vision. Nothing dangerous though. Poor Cole had it the worst. He couldn’t work nights in the wheelhouse alone, kept thinking he heard his dad coming up the stairs leading out to the deck. I used to sleep behind his chair to guard his back. I forgot all about that.

“A few days ago, I saw Seb,” Javi says, light brown skin paling like when he first joined the boat and battled seasickness for days on end. “I was last out on deck, looked up at the wheelhouse, and saw him standing at the center window.” He points to the windows, illuminated in the dreary weather.

“That could have been Cole,” I suggest.

Javi shakes his head. “Cole was at the wheel.”

I suppress a shiver. Hopefully Cole isn’t listening. The ocean is so loud, you have to crank the volume up pretty high to hear people talking on deck, and at that decibel, the ocean sounds more like static screaming through the speaker than white noise dreamscapes. We usually only turn the speaker on when communication is absolutely necessary.

Did Seb only haunt Cole’s dreams, or has he struggled in the wheelhouse alone, unwilling to ask for help?

“The other night, I thought I heard Seb,” Alejo says. “He told us to go break ice. I jumped out of my bunk and turned on the lights, which Wes wasn’t thrilled about.”