She wouldn’t hide behind the argument that he wasn’t going to believe her because so what if he didn’t? She could hold her head up high and say she had tried. The way she’d always imagined doing.
The way she would have done if her weakness back at the lifeboat station hadn’t allowed that... intimacy to occur between them. The way she would have done if he hadn’t then followed her home and seen Seth before she’d had a chance to explain.
The radio crackled, making her jump, and everything in her clenched painfully.
How immeasurably cruel would it be that the moment Seth and Zeke had finally found each other, Zeke was taken away from his son again?
And what about you?
Tia hastily crushed the whispering voice, but it was too late. The words, the implications, were already coursing through her entire body as if she herself had toppled into those inky-black ice-cold waters that churned outside in the darkness.
‘If you end up killing yourself and leaving Seth broken-hearted, Ezekial Jackson,’ she muttered so silently that no one else could hear, ‘I swear I’ll never forgive you.’
And she told herself it meant nothing when her own heart felt as though it were ready to fragment into a million pieces.
* * *
One more practice run at it to make sure he fully understood how the two vessels were likely to interact, Zeke thought, and then he would make the first full attempt to rescue the first crewman from the Queen Aetna.
The port side of the cargo ship was now fully submerged, an invisible hazard every time he brought the lifeboat too close. But there was nothing else for it. The crewmen would surely perish if he didn’t try something.
His men were harnessed up as per his instructions and each were in their positions, whilst the Delburn Bay lifeboat was holding as steady as they could a little further out, their searchlight trying to illuminate as much as possible for his team.
He always felt the responsibility of getting his guys home safely from shouts, back to their families. And it wasn’t always a guarantee when you were in a lifeboat crew—the sea could be a fickle, dangerous mistress. But tonight, it felt as if there was another edge to it. A sharper, more brilliant one.
Tonight, he had someone he had to make it home for, too.
He had his son.
And Tia.
No, not Tia. Zeke instantly thrust that thought from his head, ignoring the voice that whispered that it was too late to pretend he didn’t still care about her.
But certainly Seth.
Thank goodness they were back home where he knew they were all right. Safe.
Icy cold reality raced back in to douse him, to drag him back to where he was. The conditions were atrocious, the noise of the crashing water drowning out anything else. They were all going to need to be flawless in their hand signals, but he trusted his team. Hadn’t he trained most, if not all, of them? Not to mention the very real danger that if he overshot his mark, even by a few metres, the cargo ship could crash down onto the lifeboat’s bow.
There was no choice. Lives were on the line.
Then, as the storm blasted around them, Zeke made his first real approach only for the sea to open up in a great, unpredictable, menacing yawn. Both vessels rolled.
Then collided.
It took all of Zeke’s skill to extract his lifeboat without any serious damage. A lesser coxswain might have bottled it. But that wasn’t him.
It never had been.
Maybe Tia saw it as a flaw, his so-called pig-headedness, but he saw it as a fundamental part of his psyche. He would never willingly leave a man behind.
Checking his crew were ready, Zeke manoeuvred himself back into position and set about a second approach.
* * *
It was three hours, more than seventy approaches and a lifetime of exhaustion before Zeke and his crew—and the Delburn lifeboat—finally turned and headed back for shore.
Twelve of the fourteen crew from the cargo ship were safe on his boat, whilst the other two, who had missed the jump from their sloping deck to his, had been fished out of the water by Delburn’s crew.