Page 116 of Rears & Vices

D’Arcy reached forward. “Ever.”

Everard flinched back. “No. No.”

Oh, he found. But he was angry after all. So very angry.

D’Arcy’s smile dropped off his face. Hazel eyes flashed wide. He’d seen it too.

“Ever…” he pressed.

“Preston, I cannot.”

“You can’t… what?” D’Arcy laughed bitterly.

Everard couldn’t look at him.

“So, you’ll run,” D’Arcy said, flatly revelatory. “Oh, my God. You’ll leave. Run straight to Alarie. Won’t you.”

Everard couldn’t see what else was left to him. They’d already expected it of him.

“I… Given the circumstances, what choice have I? I can’t trust Vee, not after he’s done what he did.”

His fists, his boots, his arms, restraining, bruising.

“And yet you can trust Alarie? I told you it wasn’t Vee’s fault!”

“I don’t…” Everard sighed. “Look, it doesn’t matter; you plainly can’t trust me. I am the last to know anything, it seems.”

“Everard, that is wholly unfair! I’m being as forthright as I can—more than I should!”

“And Vitya trusts neither of us. Where does that leave us?”

D’Arcy pointed to the floor. “It leaves us here, on this ship,” he said, and even stamped once; sawdust flew from beneath his foot. “Together, regardless.” Then, to Everard’s horror, D’Arcy’s voice began to warp and thicken. “Will my letters even be read this time? Shall I even bother sending a one? Not every—” D’Arcy’s voice broke entirely then. “Not everything can be said in a letter.”

“Oh, Preston.”

“I forgive too easily,” D’Arcy went on, waveringly, “and you don’t forgive at all. You want to know why I’ve kept this from you so long? It isn’t that you couldn’t keep the secret, or would or wouldn’t defect from the Crown, Everard, it’s this: the fear that you would walk away if I told you even a fraction of the truth. It’s this that you’ve held anvil over my head. This, and the three years of utter and undeserved silence you put me through.”

“So, you went and made my decision for me.”

I did not think you would ever want to be pirate, it turned out, was just the same as I didn’t think you’d ever defect from the Crown. I didn’t know you loved me.

“Well, and here you are, making it.” D’Arcy swiped at his damp face.

“I’ve apologised for those years already,” Everard managed. “And we never… we never had an understanding, you and I.”

“Horseshit,” D’Arcy spat. “We’ve had as much of an understanding as men like us can. From practically the moment we met. Whatever else would ‘Where you go, I go’ mean? I said I loved you, put it straight at your feet—you merely chose not to acknowledge it!”

“You’ve never asked me for anything!”

“I hadn’t need to. But it doesn’t matter. Even if I had…” He nodded to Everard’s right hand, the one with Vee’s wide golden ring on the fourth finger. “…you’ll abandon it regardless.” He raised his chin. “Will you wake him to say goodbye? He deserves at least that.”

Everard considered ripping the ring from his finger. Imagined handing it to D’Arcy, imagined his delivering it to Vitya.

No. He wouldn’t be so cruel as that. Even more selfishly, he couldn’t bear to part with the thing. Couldn’t even think what goodbye would look like. No.

“He does,” Everard agreed. “But I shouldn’t wake him.”

D’Arcy cursed viciously. “And I should’ve confessed all this when we floated in the middle of the goddamned Atlantic.”