“I don’t know,” I said. I thought of Carrie, of how brave she had been, and how fragile. I thought of the masks she wore to hide the terror and loneliness inside. I thought of the bruise on her collarbone, and the fear in her eyes. I thought of how she had given up everything for me.
“Listen.” I sat up and wrapped the sheet around me. “That job you were talking about, before I left. The one in New York. Did you turn it down?”
“Yes, I mean, well, no . . . I’m going to. I haven’t called them yet. After you went missing, it kind of slipped my mind. Why?” Judah’s voice was suddenly uneasy.
“Because I don’t think you should. I think you should take it.”
“What?” He sat up, too, and a shaft of moonlight fell across his face, showing me an expression full of shock, anger. For a minute he didn’t seem to know what to say, then the words came pouring out. “What the hell? Why? Where has this come from?”
“Well, this is a chance in a lifetime, right? It’s the post you’ve always wanted.” I twisted the sheet around my fingers, cutting off the blood until they went numb and cold. “And let’s face it, there’s nothing holding you here, is there?”
“Nothing holding me here?” I heard him swallow, saw his fists clench and unclench against the white sheets. “I have everything holding me here, at least I thought I did. I—am—are you breaking up with me?”
“What?” Now it was my turn for shock. I shook my head and took his hands, rubbing my fingers across the sinews and the bones of his knuckles, hands that I knew by heart. Fuck. “Jude, no. Not in a million years. I’m saying—I’m trying to ask . . . Let’s go. Together.”
“But—but Velocity—your job. Rowan’s maternity cover. This is your big chance. I can’t screw that up for you.”
“It’s not my big chance.” I sighed. I slid down beneath the sheets, still holding Judah’s hands in mine. “I realized that when I was on the boat. I’ve spent, what, nearly ten years working at Velocity, while Ben and everyone else took risks, went on to bigger and better stuff, and I didn’t. I was too scared. And I felt like I owed Velocity for standing by me when things were bad. But Rowan’s never going to leave—she’ll be back in six months, maybe less, and I’ve got nowhere to go. And the truth is, even if I did pull myself up the ladder, it’s not what I want anymore. I never wanted it—I realized that on board the boat. God knows I had enough time to think about it.”
“What do you mean? It’s—ever since we met, it’s all you’ve talked about.”
“I think I lost sight of what I wanted. I don’t want to end up like Tina and Alexander, traveling from country to country and only seeing five-star hotels and Michelin restaurants. Yes, Rowan’s been to half the luxury resorts in the Caribbean, but in return she spends her life reporting the stories that people like Bullmer want her to tell, and I don’t want that, not anymore. I want to write about the things people don’t want you to know. And if I’m going to start pulling my way up from the bottom again, well, I can freelance from anywhere. You know that.”
A thought came to me, and I let out a shaky, involuntary laugh.
“I could write a book! My Floating Prison: True-Life Hell on the Seven Seas.”
“Lo.” Judah took my hands, his eyes wide and dark in the moonlight, and painfully beseeching. “Lo, stop, stop joking. Are you serious about this?”
I took a deep breath. Then I nodded.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
Afterwards, Judah lay in my arms, his head in the crook of my shoulder in a way that I knew would give me a cramp eventually, but I couldn’t bear to pull away.
“Are you awake?” I whispered. He didn’t answer for a moment, and I thought that he had fallen asleep, in that way he had of slipping out of consciousness between one breath and the next, but then he stirred, and spoke.
“Just.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Shh . . .” He rolled over in my arms, touching my face. “It’s okay, it’s all over.”