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“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
We let Aodhan do his thing with the fish.
Meanwhile, we all went back to fishing on our own, Nugent with his new pole and Greer and I on the complete opposite side of him.
In the end, we all caught a bit more, but nothing nearly as big as the tuna.
When we were done, the waves had all but doubled in size, and I was regretting not bringing my medication.
It wasn’t that I got seasick, per se, but it was that I had inner ear problems. Get me off balance, and you would see me turn into a big baby.
Which was how I felt like I was acting now.
“Dude, I’m sorry,” I said to Nugent, even though I felt anything but. “But I have to go downstairs and lie down. It’s either that or I pass out.”
Nugent jerked his chin. “I’m gonna hang out here and watch him deal with the fish.”
Aodhan’s way of dealing with the fish was by cleaning it and storing it in the well in quarters.
Whatever worked I guessed.
Greer followed me downstairs, going straight for the medicine cabinet that hung in the bathroom.
I collapsed on the bed, moaning.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I grumbled.
I should’ve never said yes to an overnight trip.
I should’ve said no, told him my reasoning, and he would’ve been okay with it or not. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be here, suffering, pulling fish hooks out of my girl’s belly.
My girl.
Yeah, Greer was my girl.
Through the nausea and waves now hitting the big-ass boat, that didn’t seem so big with the waves hitting it, I found myself realizing a few things.
My inability to cause her harm meant something a whole lot more in my book than it did in everyone else’s.
I was in love with the damn irritating woman.
I was in love with Greer fucking Ortiz. The woman that lived to make my life a living hell.
The woman that was my best friend’s best friend, who on a daily basis I couldn’t fucking stand. At least before, when I hadn’t been doing bad things to her.
“You okay?” she asked as she sat on the other side of the bed from me.
I blinked open one eye and said, “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
She looked down at her belly and shrugged.
She had a piece of white gauze pasted to the wound with some medical tape over it.
She had her t-shirt over it in the next second.
“I’m fine,” she promised. “It was an accident.”
It might’ve been.
But that didn’t stop me from wanting to murder the man.
Lightning pierced the air between us, lighting up the cabin. Then a dark rumble filled the air around us.
An alarming feeling of unease rolled through me, and it definitely wasn’t my nausea.
“Yo, bad news,” I heard Aodhan say from the top of the stairs. “That lightning just took out the instrument panel. I don’t have anything that’s working anymore. Not even the trolling motor. We’re fucked.”
We were miles offshore.
With no instrument panel…who knew how long we’d be sitting there.
“What’s that mean for now?” I called up to him.
“For now, we ride the storm out,” he said. “Your client is taking the cabin up here. I’m going back up to the tower to hopefully flag down any ships. Y’all are on your own down there.”
Then he shut the light off, which I realized was an emergency light.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled.
“Seems pretty par for the course for us, right?” she giggled, then fell back onto the bed she’d been sitting on.
CHAPTER 18
I know your lane sucks, but stay in it.
-Coffee Cup
DAVIS
“This is bad,” she said as she hit the wall with a dull thud.
Unable to deal with the idea of her hitting the wall one more fucking time, I got up, made sure that I was steady on my feet, and yanked her off the top bunk.
She squealed as she all but rolled into my arms, and I caught her solidly between my large grasp, pulled her to me, and then sank into the bottom bunk again.
With my arms still well and truly around her, I lay back, twisted, and forced her to roll with me. Then, I held on with my back to the bunk’s wall and wondered how long this would go on until we got where we needed to go.
The waves were intense.
With the motor not working, we were sitting ducks. An extra-large bobber in the middle of the ocean, just waiting for either Aodhan to figure out the motor situation or for someone to come help. Which, in this storm, was highly unlikely.
I wasn’t sure if the lightning had fried the electronics, too, but if I had to guess, that was likely what happened.
I hadn’t stayed long enough at my last check-in with Aodhan to figure it out.
One, it was unsafe to be in a small space where he was working. Two, I was not an electronics guy. When I’d gotten internet when I’d moved to the new office location, I’d had to call my damn brother over to figure the shit out.
