Zander nodded. “That’s another thing,” he said. “I expected the crew to be larger. More… menacing?”

Ace laughed at that, looking over at the crowd of drunken men on the main deck. Abdoul and Santiago had now teamed up and were making a game of embellishing Aled’s dance moves. Just behind them, Daniel, a short, chubby fellow from Greenwich, was vomiting over the edge of the railing. Amir, a deckhand from Southern India, stood next to him, his hand rubbing slow circles on Daniel’s back.

“You mean to tell me this isn’t the most menacing group of outlaws you’ve ever seen?” she asked playfully.

Zander shook his head. “Certainly not the bloodthirsty treasure hunters I’d come to expect.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Chicken Leg. Bloodthirsty treasure hunters have been known to roam the high seas. But you’ll find none of them aboard The Valerian.”

“Oh, I’m not disappointed at all,” Zander said.

“So you didn’t chase down my boat in hopes of fame and fortune?”

Zander shook his head, looking into his cup.

“What were you chasing, then?”

He looked up at her, daring to meet her eyes again, and it was like a door opened, suddenly and inexplicably. The words were falling from his mouth before his brain could reign them in.

“I was chasing you,” he said softly.

His tentative declaration hung in the air between them. A tender look flashed across Ace’s features, and he wondered if she was thinking about the kiss they shared on the island. A kiss so perfect, so life changing, Zander no longer knew how he fit into the world if he wasn’t near her. Which is why he’d jumped into the ocean.

Zander doubted he had any business being on a pirate ship. He had no clue if such a life was for him—if this adventure was his own, or one he’d borrowed, like a child wearing their parents’ clothes. But when he looked at her, a small voice whispered from deep inside him.

This is where you belong.

“I sure hope you didn’t leave anything special behind just to chase after me, Chi—Zander,” Ace said.

Special? Zander almost scoffed at the idea. In the face of the whirlwind that had been the last two weeks, everything else in his life paled in comparison. He felt as if he’d been wandering aimlessly for 26 years. Now here he sat, looking into the face of his very own North Star. And rather than being blinded, he felt like he could see for the first time.

“I didn’t,” he answered.

“No family?”

“My family is still back in England. All I left behind in Barbados was a shack full of tanning tools and my favorite shoes.”

“Oh no,” Ace said, chuckling. “Not your favorite shoes.”

“The very ones,” Zander teased, nodding somberly.

“Will your family worry?”

Zander considered his parents. What would they think of him running away and joining a crew of pirates? It was unlikely anyone would miss him in Barbados; he’d lived a relatively solitary life in the two years he’d been on the island. But eventually one of the many other English settlers who lived near him would wonder where the local tanner went. If word got back to his parents he was missing or presumed dead… well, then what?

Nothing much, he supposed. His parents would grieve him, and life would go on. Between seven older brothers and sisters, he’d never become very close with either of his parents. His father was more concerned about training him to leave home than getting to know him, and his mother was often unwell.

The realization that everyone he knew may soon believe him dead was strangely liberating.

“I don’t think so,” he said thoughtfully. “We were never very close. I’m the youngest of eight, and by the time I came around my parents were… tired. My father did his duty training me for the family business, and my mother kept me fed until I could feed myself. Honestly, I think they were somewhat relieved to see me leave England.”

“Quite lucky for us, I’d say,” Ace said, smiling gently at him.

Zander simply smiled back, thinking he was most certainly the lucky one.

“Eight kids, you say?” Ace said. “How did your parents keep track of you all?”

“They didn’t, most of the time,” he said, chuckling. “My brothers and sisters looked out for me when I was little. Kept me mostly out of trouble. They’re the ones who named me, actually. I was born Alexander, but I didn’t know it until I was sixteen. Everyone always called me ‘Zander,’ or ‘Z’ for short.”

Ace scoffed. “You didn’t know your own name until you were sixteen?”

Zander nodded, smiling. “No one ever had need of my real name before then. I began factory work when I was ten, taking my brother John’s place at the textile mill when he started his apprenticeship. But to my memory, no one ever asked me for my name. To my siblings, I was Z. To my mother, Darling. To my father, Boy. That is, until the day my apprenticeship started, and my father brought me a document to sign with the name ‘Alexander’ printed on it. When I told him he’d printed my name wrong, he looked at me as if I’d lost my head.”

Ace threw back her head and laughed, prompting Zander to laugh as well. He’d never really considered how funny it was.

The sound of shouting pulled Ace and Zander from their shared moment, and they looked over to see two of the younger crew members—deck hands named Jurgen and Raphael, brothers hailing from Germany—brawling at the edge of the crowd. Ace simply sighed and watched as nearby crew members pulled them off one another, laughing. She and Zander then fell into a comfortable silence as they continued to watch the crowd.

“And what about you?” he asked her finally.

“What about me?”

Zander gestured to the boat, the crew, the sea. “How did you become a pirate?”

Ace smiled and took a drink from her cup, looking out at the crew fondly.

“I suppose I’ve always been a pirate,” she said. “Not in name, of course. But I spent my childhood on the sea with my parents.”

“Must have been some childhood.”

“Aye, it was. Not one’s typical upbringing, I suppose.”

Ace paused, shrugging. Zander smiled and gestured for her to continue, making a show of settling into his seat so she would continue. Smiling, she did.

“My father was a merchant from Spain. My mother grew up among the maroons in Jamaica. She learned how to build boats—sloops like this one, and smaller boats as well—from my grandfather. She and my father met when he was looking for someone to repair his vessel. She told him he’d be better off scrapping his beat-up old schooner and buying something more well made. He agreed, and he stayed in Jamaica until a new vessel could be made for him, all the while courting my mother.

“A few months later, they left Jamaica together. They built a life on the ocean as merchants, and they were good at it. Eventually, they had me. We were a team. I often pretended I was a pirate, but my childhood was regular in many ways. I had a bedtime, reading lessons with my father, chores, all that. But I grew up with homes all over the world—Jamaica, Spain, Virginia, Portugal. But above all, the sea was my home. It was all I knew until I was twelve years old.”

Zander considered Ace’s accent, which he’d never been able to place. It was a beautiful mix of inflections. Listening to her now, so calm and close to him, her voice was almost hypnotic. He made an effort as she spoke to keep his expression composed, lest he start grinning like a maniac.

As for Ace, she was wondering what had gotten into her to make her share so openly with a brand-new recruit who’d barely gotten his sea legs. Despite her misgivings, she continued talking, strangely comfortable with this supposed stranger.

“It was around that time my dad got sick,” Ace continued, her tone changing subtly. “Doctors told him it was the ocean air that affected him, so my parents took their savings and bought a house in Spain, away from the coast. They started stuffing me into dresses and parading me about like a little lady. But I have never been a lady. I will always be a pirate.”

She said the final words with an edge of bitterness that belied there was more to the story, but Zander didn’t push. As she gazed out onto the deck, he could sense some old pain behind her eyes, and he didn’t want to force her to relive it. But he wanted more. After two weeks of silent looks and playful nicknames, she was finally opening a door to herself, and Zander couldn’t let the moment pass just yet.

“And what is a pirate, exactly?”

This made Ace turn and look at him, a thoughtful expression on her face.