Page 64 of Ship Happens
I grab Frankie’s arm. “What are you doing, sweetheart?”
She snatches out of my grip, her eyes still trained on the woman. “Did they tell you to catch one of us big baddies? Did you believe you would have the opportunity to work your way to the top rather than sucking your way there?”
“Oh shit,” Eve says through a laugh. “Do you think she’s a fed?”
“What? I’m not one of them!” Anne says as her hand flies to her chest. “What makes you think that?”
Yeah, I’d like to know too. The alternative is that Frankie has truly lost her fucking mind.
Frankie glances around, finds what she’s looking for, then yells, “Jim! Permission to kill Anne...” She looks at the woman.
“Wilcox,” Anne says.
Frankie’s eyebrows rise, and she smiles. “Wilcox...really? My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Wilcox.”
“I married into the name,” Anne says. “My maiden name is Smith.”
“Anne Smith. What a tragically mundane name.” Frankie shakes her head and turns again. “Wilcox!” Frankie shouts toward Jim.
“Permission granted!” Jim shouts back.
And the chase is on.
Anne takes off toward the other side of the deck, but she soon realizes she’s trapped. Frankie and Eve take off after her, the latter having the forethought to find a weapon on the way. Eve snatches a broadsword from Ezra’s side, but it isn’t needed. Anne takes one look back at the women rushing toward her before hoisting herself over the side and disappearing. Her scream cuts off abruptly when she smacks against the water.
I hurry to join Frankie and Eve as they peer over the side of the ship. Anne resurfaces seconds later, though one of her arms dangles in the water as she pinwheels the working limb to compensate and stay afloat.
“Fuck, she survived,” Frankie says. “Where’s a bucket of chum when you need it?”
A crowd gathers, and we watch as Anne treads water for several minutes before finally disappearing below a rogue wave. She doesn’t resurface.
“How’d you know?” I ask Frankie as Jim yells for us to prepare for the game.
“I’ll tell you later,” she whispers. “Right now, I want to prepare for what I’m about to do. That wasn’t satisfying enough, so this one has to be better.”
“Didn’t they teach you about the desire for escalation in fed school?” I whisper back. “This isn’t you, sweetheart. You don’t have to do this.”
Frankie stops walking. She faces me as she thrusts a pointed finger toward the railing Anne threw herself from. “No, Maverick.Thatisn’t me. I have never been accepted as one of them, but here on this ship, with all of you, I finally feel like Ibelong somewhere. I’ve been in my line of work for most of my life, and do you know how many friends I’ve made? Zero. Not a single one. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have relationships because of work, but it’s because of me. I’ve crammed myself into spaces where I didn’t belong, and now that I’ve slotted in so nicely here, I can finally see that.”
“Frankie—”
She holds up her hand, silencing me. “You broke down a fucking door to save my ass, but the people I was supposed to trust put me in that room.”
“You don’t know that. He could have been lying.”
“He wasn’t.”
She looks down at her feet, and the cracks in her veneer show through. The woman is angry, hurt, and betrayed. Whether her emotions stem from fact or fiction doesn’t matter because the emotions are very real, and I’ve been an ass. She doesn’t need a lecture. She needs comfort.
“Come here,” I say as I pull her into me, and I’m pleased when she lets me. “If you need to kill Castle, then I’ll support you. Just don’t let this change who you are, okay?”
She looks up at me, and my heart breaks when I see the tears forming in her eyes. “At nearly forty, you’d think I’d know who I am, huh?”
I lean down and kiss her forehead, and she sighs.
“If I kill Castle, can I still knock you around and get fucked stupid when we get back to the room?”
Smirking against her skin, I close my eyes and accept defeat. “Definitely.”
