“Trust me, Becca. I got this,” I said, and held the wheel, five degrees to starboard, steady as she goes.
The lights and alarms began to quiet themselves. The hiss of the bow cutting through the water returned, replacing the thump thump slam the keel had made as it impacted the surface. As I suspected, it gave Maddox the opportunity he needed to get back to his feet. And boy, did he look pissed.
My nakedness and I turned around, giving him a full, frontal view. As he approached, I thought that this may be one of the first times I hadn't seen him with an erection. Not even that giant cock of his could remain at full attention with the cold ocean water blasting against it. Not unless it had super powers or something.
I hopped up on the console, smiled, and spread my legs. Reached up to my chest, between my breasts, and toward my thighs.
He actually paused. The mother fucking, sexually deranged son of a bitch actually took a moment to check me out.
World, I am doing you such a favor, I thought. And as one hand traveled closer to my sex, I shifted my hips, giving him a gynecological point of reference, and hiding my other hand as it inched toward the throttle.
There would be nothing for him to hold on to. He was out there in the open, and as he took one final step toward me, I sneered, blew him a kiss, and shoved the throttle forward. The good ship Insatiable took off like a rocket. It must have been so beautiful to watch.
It's known as the slingshot effect, and I was counting on it to work again. Whatever Maddox may have thought of his grand and glorious self, when it came right down to it, he was no match for gravity and physics. He flew, literally flew, back down the deck. Toward the stern, and up and over the side.
Score one for the good guys.
I did a fist pump. It was a silly fucking thing to do, but I couldn't help it. My heart was beating so fast, so hard, and I'd done it! Flung him off the back of a boat and into the sea, dumping him like the garbage that he was. How perfect was that? I may not even get arrested. Accidents at sea happen all the time and I could come up with a great story. A fish story. As I ran down a list of possible alibis, I should have known better than to celebrate so soon. Evil doesn't die that easy.
Inch by inch, I saw his hand move higher and higher on the stern cleat.
It was a scene from a horror movie. The villain, thought vanquished, rising up from the dead like some kind of unkillable zombie.
He must've gotten hold of the swim ladder. How was that even fucking possible, though? Defying the odds, probable or not, I watched in disbelief as his other hand clasped the cleat. He was going to pull himself all the way up, he was going to survive this, and that was simply not an option.
I turned back to the front windows, saw all the stars twinkling, pretty little diamonds shining tiny and white, and then shimmering against the black glass sea.
Stars don't shine on the water, though, do they? No. Stars don't. Angels don't. What I was seeing wasn't anything celestial. What I was seeing were white caps breaking before the rise of the surf. And a long horizontal line of black. Maybe a mainland, maybe an island.
Whatever kind of land mass it was, it didn't matter. What mattered was the white caps. They only broke like that if they were churning above a reef. Hidden stretches of deadly rocks that will smash a boat of any size into toothpicks.
That's what lighthouses were for, of course. To warn approaching vessels of impending disaster.
These were big white caps, too.
And there was no lighthouse.
What there was, however, was Maddox hoisting himself up on the railing.
I pushed the throttle to maximum, and aimed the bow straight for the breakwater. There was no way I was going to allow him to survive this.
Another alarm sounded, as the Insatiable begged me to rethink my actions. I was going to miss her, this boat, like I missed my parents who had pushed Rebecca and I on the swing set. Like I missed my dad who taught us how to fish and who took us camping for our twelfth birthday then cried at our graduation. Like I missed the tears in my parents’ eyes. Tears like the ones in my eyes at Becca's wedding. Tears like I cried after hearing Leslie’s diagnosis and when the hospital called and –
A strangely soggy sound of wood and fiberglass colliding with solid rock pulled me away from my thouhgts. The boat's hissssing upon the water suddenly disappeared.
As I saw the jagged shore coming up so quickly, yet so slow, I wondered what sort of star I would be.
Chapter Eleven
MADDOX
Gritty.
Sandy.
As if I'd fallen asleep on a mattress made of wet gravel.
There was the sound of ocean waves, and the air was thick with the smell of salt. And my head hurt.
It was warm, too. Not my head, but all of me. Humid. Where in the fuck was I and what the shit happened...?
I raised myself up on my elbow. A bolt of pain shot just behind my ear as I saw the splintered remains of the Insatiable not too far from where I lay, just down the shoreline.
Funny how the mind works. As I focused on what was left of the boat, the front of it crushed in on itself, the first thing I thought of was Gilligan's Island. Where the S.S. Minnow had run aground, two gaping holes in its side.
I never understood why the castaways had
