The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Thirty

He lifted his face from the crook of his arm. He wiped the sand from his lids and allowed himself to breathe again, taking in the charred air, salt spray and diesel smoke blowing over him in gusts. The smoke was especially foul, caustic stinking grease that seared his eyes and made him wipe at them again.

Armand climbed out of the Atalanta. Whatever had compelled him to fall back here in the first place—that infuriating, unbreakable command from Holms—no longer held him. He leapt down the slope, skidding through an avalanche of dirt and rocks, and bounded across the beach to the other boy.

Holms had collapsed on his side, one arm still stretched out to the channel. Mandy took him by the shoulders and rolled him to his back. It was dark out here, ruddy dark. Or maybe it was just that his eyes hadn’t adjusted yet from staring at Holms when he’d detonated without warning into solid light.

“Holms. Holms! Jesse, wake up!”

Water shifted and sighed over the pebbles. Jesse was getting wet. Armand’s knees were getting wet.

“Holms, did you see it?” he persisted. He tore out of his coat and lifted Jesse enough to spread it beneath him; the wool went damp right away. “She did it! She brought them both down– bloody, bloody amazing. Holms! Did you get the sub?”

There—the smallest thing: Jesse swallowing, his eyes still closed. Mandy felt hope ignite inside him, hard and glittering as the cast of golden fire.

“You did, didn’t you? Come on, old chap. Tell me you did.”

“Did.”

“Excellent! Excellent! So let’s get up, then, eh, and go find her. Go tell her, together.”

Jesse smiled. His eyes never opened. The sea sifted nearer, pulled back. The pebbles all around them shone glassy with water.

“Jesse,” Mandy said.

The wind fell calm. The diesel smoke wafted gently away.

“Jesse.”

The sea drew back. Nothing else moved.

Mandy bent double, lowering his forehead to Jesse Holms’s shoulder. His fingers felt like rusted iron against the coat. He could not get his fingers to unlock.

“I’ll tell her,” he whispered. “I’ll tell her all that you did.”