Usually, I am quite enamored by how handsome my husband is. He’s wearing a cream-colored sailing shirt, unbuttoned at the top, though not as low as usual. I suppose he doesn’t want his illness on display. Still, it cuts his frame nicely. He hasn’t trimmed his beard in a few days, making him extra scraggly. His green eyes sweep across my body with mixed pleasure and longing.
I find it quite annoying.
“What’s this for?” I ask, nodding toward the wooden sword in my hand.
“I thought we’d spar. For old times’ sake.”
“You never did spar with me much. That was always Maddox. You didn’t want to be the one to train me, remember?”
“Yes, well, I was afraid back then what it might turn into.”
I don’t have enough control over my body to keep the heat firing within me from making my cheeks go blotchy.
“And is that what you’re hoping for now?”
Nolan’s lip curves so slightly, I can’t tell if it’s just the sun bearing down so brightly that I’m seeing things. “Oh no. I’m much too cynical for such hopes.”
I tap the wooden sword with my fingers in succession. “Are you feeling well enough to be out here sparring?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not concerned about overexerting myself while sparring with you, if that’s what you mean.”
I stare at him blankly.
“Oh come now, Darling. Let’s both stop pretending that you don’t desperately want to wallop me with that,” he says, prodding my wooden sword with his own. “Unless you’ve forgotten that I have been a witness to your affinity for violence.”
He holds up his hook as evidence.
When I turn to examine the ocean carefully, his voice deepens. “Tell you what. Spar with me, and whoever wins gets their way regarding your plan to find the Sister.”
I come at him.
My sword meets his parry, a clashing I find more pleasant than I would ever admit.
“There she is,” he says.
I attack again, this time with a jab aimed at his unprotected side. Again, he blocks me, though with slightly less force than before.
As we fight, I run through my options. I’m small enough that I’m forced to fight two-handed. The captain fights one-handed, but as that’s more out of necessity than anything, I wonder if I can use that to my advantage.
Just as I’m about to deliver a slash I know will be awkward for him to parry one-handed, Nolan lunges for my leg. I’m too busy planning an attack to defend myself, and the point of the sword jabs into my left thigh.
I let out what ends up sounding like a very offended gasp, as if he had just insulted my mother in an alternate reality where my mother was someone I actually held respect for.
Nolan grins. “What? You thought I would let you win?”
I let out an angry groan—enraged that as his wife, I’m being forced to fight to have my opinion fairly considered based on a challenge he so clearly keeps the advantage in—then charge him, attacking with more speed than aimed skill. I imagine the image is rather amusing—one of how a toddler might pummel an adult with their tiny fists repeatedly, because Nolan lets out a laugh of surprise.
This annoys me further, so I keep on, whacking at him like he’s my father’s hedges and I’m a contractor being paid for a job completed.
By this point, Nolan is laughing so hard that he’s wheezing. This should probably concern me given his weakened state, but it seems that if I don’t win this spar, my headstrong husband is going to die anyway.
So I take my chances with the wheezing.
My anger has blurred my vision to the degree that, by the time I knock Nolan’s sword from his hands and he’s leaning back against a wall for support, clutching his belly as he bellows in laughter, I’ve only just now realized that I’ve backed him all the way to the other side of the forecastle, the two of us tucked away behind barrels and crates from the wandering eyes of the crew.
“You did this on purpose,” I say, breathing heavily, realizing now that he’s managed both to get me alone, and with my heart racing.
Nolan’s green eyes flash. “If that were the case, it would behoove me never to admit it.”
