Page 23 of If I Go Down with This Ship

I watch him go, mesmerized.“I wouldn’t dare.”

8Aye Think I’m Hooked

Everyonetells you “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” but what about ink?Can I cry over spilled ink?

In this life or the next, I was certainly not born to clean up messes.I have spent the better part of an hour trying to clear this puddle of ink and the ensuing trail of inky paw prints from the floor of Captain Night’s cabin to no avail, peeking over my shoulder every few minutes to make sure I won’t be killed for being in his cabin.Yet all I’ve accomplished is staining my hands and clothes with blue-black ink, the dark substance seeping into my pores and skin until I can smell nothing else.It’s under my fingernails and drying into the grooves of my palms and knuckles, stinging against the fresh nicks and scratches along my skin.

“That can’t be good,” I say.

Sighing, I sit back on my heels and wipe a hand over my forehead to get the hair out of my face.

And freeze.

“Oh god.”

I’ve definitely smeared ink across my face, over my nose and lips and eyes.I can taste it, bitter and atrocious, spreading across my tongue until I’m gagging and spitting, my eyes watering as I sit back on my heels with a cry of frustration.This is a fucking mess.I’ma fucking mess.

“It appears as though you murdered a devilfish,” Captain Night muses from the threshold.

Sir pads past me, careful to avoid the mess—where was this caution earlier?—before parting the black curtains with his nose and hopping up onto the small bed in the back, settling in.

“The ship’s cat,” my ass.

“What’s a devilfish?”I ask, swiveling toward Captain Night.

His arms are crossed over his chest, the action flexing the muscles in his biceps.He doesn’t move, but he doesn’t have to.The power he exudes just from standing there is enough to make me shiver.

“It’s a strange creature with eight arms and a large head.Once they clamp onto you, they’re difficult to detach.”

Oh.An octopus.

He looks me over, expression carefully masked as he takes in the mess.“You’re terrible at this, aren’t you, Laszlo?”

“I am,” I say.I puff out my cheeks, turning back to the ink.“I’m sorry, I’ve tried my best—”

I snap my mouth shut when I hear him crossing to me, his steps quiet.I blink up at him as he crouches before me, hands clasped, squinting at the smeared stain on the floorboards.

“You’ve been rubbing, not blotting, haven’t you?”I saynothing, my bottom lip clamped between my teeth.“That’s what I thought.”

Wordlessly, he reaches around me for a rag, his arm brushing my shoulder as he does and setting every part of me ablaze.Dipping the rag into the bucket of lukewarm salt water to my left, he begins blotting the stain.It doesn’t work any miracles, but it does help lift some of the ink.It’s a thousand times better than my work, that’s for sure.

“In truth,” he says as his hair slips over his shoulder, hiding his face from view as he stretches past me again, “there is little you can do for an ink stain that has dried.”

“Then why have me try at all?”

He pauses to tuck his hair behind his ear and peer at me, and it’s only now that I realize how close we are.How easy it would be to reach out, run my hand through his hair and grab him by the collar and—dear god, what is wrong with me?His shoulder grazes mine as he swivels back to the stain, gently blotting away at it, entirely unaware of the catastrophic thoughts in my head.

“It’s fun to watch you flail about.”

The footsie under the table, the song he had Tarly sing, him finding me on deck, telling me about his past, and now this.Am I just a toy?Something he can fling around and laugh at in some game of cat and mouse?Isanyof this real?

He straightens and tosses the rag in the bucket.It lands effortlessly with a littleplop.“It seems you’ve made a mess.There’s some soap and water in the corner.Feel free to use it for your face and hands, clean up as best you can, and head off to bed.”

“But the stain—”

Captain Night wipes his hands down his pants, turning his back to me as if the conversation is already over.

“Nothing to be done about it.Besides, I’m not so particular about my floors.”