Page 80 of The Worst of Them

“You scared me,” he said, louder when she offered no answer. “I can handle your hate and weather your insults, but I can’t see you dead. I could only think that I was going to lose you again. Altogether. In every way. I hate your silence, and I’d hate it even more if it were permanent.”

She gaped, confusion clouding her thoughts. “I—you just tried to kill me!”

Jack groaned and pulled her down an unfamiliar street, forcing her to jog to keep up. “Because all you’ll do with me is fight.” He bit the words at her like an accusation. “So have it your way. If I have to fight you to the death to get you to listen to me, then I’ll do my best to be the end of you.”

He must have taken a shortcut because the buildings quickly gave way to trees, leaving them on a dark road bathed in silvery moonlight.

Cecily didn’t have a witty or smart reply. Too many questions battled their way from her brain to her mouth, getting jumbled and lost as they tripped over each other. She wanted him to kiss her again like he had in the tavern—breathless, desperate, and punishing. She wanted to hear him say it again—you’re mine—so she could test the truth of it in her mind and heart.

Jack abruptly veered off the road and tugged her into the trees. The last time she’d been in a forest alone with him hadn’t gone so well for her and, scared by the memory and the possibility that he might yell at her again, she pulled away.

He immediately let her go, then stopped with his back to her.

Cecily watched his shoulders rise and fall, expecting him to berate her, to call her a fool, to fight with her as he had so many times before. The silence between them was interrupted only by chirping bugs, wind rustling through the trees, and waves crashing in the distance.

She backed a few paces away as she waited for him to speak. She wasn’t cold, but she wrapped her arms around herself, holding all her confused, shattered, terrified pieces together.

Broken, her mind whispered. You’re so broken.

There was no more rage, no desire to kill. She’d left those back in the tavern along with her knife and Hein’s sword, and now she had nothing to defend herself—not even the fragments of her broken armor, which had dulled and flaked away from his kiss. He had completely undone her, and there was no finding her way back so quickly.

Jack scrubbed his hand over his face and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

She shivered. “For what?”

“For what I said. Calling you mine.”

No. No, no, no, she didn’t want him to apologize for that. Anything but that. She didn’t want to hear him cast her aside again.

“Don’t,” she begged in a whisper. “Please don’t apologize.”

He finally turned to her, his features drawn in regret, and noted the space she’d put between them.

“It was a poor choice of words,” he said in a thin voice, like he didn’t want to say it at all. She wished he wouldn’t. “I don’t wish to possess you or treat you as something to be had. I don’t want you like that.”

Surely her fear was plain on her face. She could hardly recall how to breathe, let alone how to hide all she felt. “But you—” She gulped. “Do you…want me?”

The first time she’d asked the question, it had been to mock and manipulate him. This time, there was no animosity between them—only truth and their fear of it.

Quietly, hardly louder than a whisper, Jack said, “Cecily, I want you more than anything.”

She searched the trees, her tears threatening to rise. Her arms tightened over her middle as her heart began to unravel and reveal how much and how deeply she felt for him.

“But I couldn’t say that,” he went on. “You wouldn’t let me talk to you, and even if you had, I didn’t know how to tell you how desperately I desire you without sounding like any other bumbling oaf who wants your attention. Lord, you—you’re all I think about, but I keep losing you. I thought that if I gave you time, you might finally give me a chance. But you ran away.” He nervously shoved his hand through his hair. It was surreal to see him express anything but control. “To go to damned Spain.”

“You keep losing…? You said you thought you’d lose me…again.” Her voice wavered, but there was no hope of mastering it. “You haven’t lost me. I’ve been here the whole time.”

A muscle fluttered in his jaw. “After you defended yourself from Morgyn on the Fortuna with the knife…I lost you.”

Cecily forced her lungs to work. “I don’t understand.”

“We were friends,” he said softly, reluctantly. “For a week. And we were going to stay friends, I thought, when I convinced my father to stop punishing you. I wasn’t upset about the knife the day we came ashore, but I was furious because Copson put you back under my supervision. He unknowingly took the one thing I’d wanted—to be your equal—and destroyed it. Made you hate me. He made you my problem and made me yours.”

Pressure built behind her eyes until they blurred.

“I never wanted our arrangement or to occupy you with menial tasks. I never delighted in lording over you and only wanted to make it end. I never pushed you as much as my father wanted me to, and I’ve skirted his rules and made allowances so that you—” He pursed his lips and sighed. “I knew you were scared and lonely, so I gave you work where I knew you’d feel comfortable. Maybe even happy, if it wasn’t too much to hope for.”

Stede. Jack didn’t have to say it for her to know—he’d had her work with the cook because he had seen right through her when she hadn’t meant for him to see anything at all. And in the galley, she’d felt safe and hidden. As he’d intended.