Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
I look at Ace, on the other boat, staring into nothing. His eyes flicker, catching mine. He looks concerned, and that worries me the most because that means things are far worse than we had anticipated. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, but the longer we drift, the worse I feel. Why would my father do this? He might be a lot of things, but I still would have thought he loved me.
“You good?” Ace asks, maybe he mouths it, I don’t know.
I nod.
If he knows what we did, will he ever forgive us?
That is, of course, if we make it out alive.
WE LOST THEM.
The other lifeboats.
As the night drifted, we all got separated, except for our boat and the security boat. Voices slowly disappeared into the darkness, calling out but being unable to stay close. During the night, the seas got rougher, and what was a quiet and terrifying ordeal quickly became cold, hard fear. Our boat slams against theirs, and the sea swirling drowns out Rachel’s wails, which get louder and louder with every passing minute until finally, she exhausts herself and falls into a fit of sobs.
Now the morning sun is blaring down on us, refusing to allow sleep and promising a long and painful day ahead. Nobody is talking now, what is there to say? We made a grave mistake, and now we’re stranded out here, with no way to call for help because we got separated from the other boats. We don’t know if they managed to call for help, or if they’re even still in the water. Maybe they got rescued and decided we weren’t worth waiting around for?
With my father behind all of this, even the most intense and unbelievable situation could be very real.
“How did this even happen?” Rachel keeps murmuring to herself, over and over.
“It’s quite simple, really,” Adrian says, sitting at the back of the boat, “the boat sunk.”
No shit.
Rachel glares at him. “Yes, I know that, you idiot. What I meant was, how the hell did an explosion happen?”
Adrian thinks on it. “Well, boats don’t usually just explode. Someone is definitely going to HR about this one.”
He is absolutely no help.
“What are we going to do?”
That comes from Iris, who has her gaze fixed on Ace, Kellen and Zeke. It is Zeke who answers; the other two are sitting, staring down at their hands, legs wide, heads dropped.
“I don’t know,” he tells her, honestly. “All we can do is hope a rescue call went out and we see choppers or boats soon. Someone will come.”
What if he’s wrong, though?
What if nobody comes because we aren’t even where we were meant to be?
If they didn’t get a distress call out, then the only person who can give any kind of information on our location is my father, but will he? Will he risk everything trying to rescue us or will he write us off as nothing and move on? Considering he was willing to sell us, I know which way I’m leaning. Glancing over at Aggie, our eyes meet and I can see she is feeling everything.
She is blaming herself, but she shouldn’t.
This is on me.
I shift and move closer to her, reaching out for her hand and leaning in close. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I was only supposed to do damage, not light a fucking fire that brought the entire yacht down.”
I squeeze. “It was me who came up with the plan.”
She glances at me. “No, it wasn’t. It was an equal decision.”
We fall silent.
“What if we die out here?” she whispers.
“We won’t, someone will come, I know it.”
Aggie pulls her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them, jaw working quietly as she thinks. “If we do die, at least I won’t have to listen to Rachel’s voice another second because if I have to listen to her wailing for one more second, I will throw myself over.”
I try to smile, even though my lips burn as they stretch. “She’s going to haunt every single one of us if she goes first. They’ll find our skeletons, and the local seagulls will have picked them clean except for the decibel memory of her bellowing.”
Aggie snorts, and it breaks something in both of us—a soft pressure-release after the last twelve hours of terror. “The real tragedy,” she whispers, “is that I can’t even tweet about this. So if I perish, there’s no legacy. No poetic final post.”
“Well, hopefully it brings your name to the surface and makes you go viral, even if you’re not here.”
She huffs. “Will serve me right, for causing this in the first place.”
I try to concentrate on the horizon, but the whitecaps only make me dizzy. “If we make it.”
“When,” she corrects, “when we make it.”
“What did you say?”
Rachel’s voice comes above ours, in an almost shriek. “What the fuck did you just say?”