# Read the first page of Swept Away by Beth O'Leary

Read the opening of Swept Away by Beth O'Leary free, no signup. Two one-night lovers wake adrift at sea on a houseboat.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/swept-away-beth-oleary
- Genre: Romance
- Year: 2025
- ISBN: 9780593640159
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780593640159&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780593640159
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780593640159

## The opening

I WAKE UP on the houseboat wearing a trilby.

. . . huh.

I look around, moving gingerly. You’ve got to approach a hangover like this carefully in case it’s a feral one. The boat’s not changed much in the last five years: same wonky rectangular skylight, same wooden cupboards built into the sloping walls. One thing should be different, though—there should be a Lexi in this bed with me. A gorgeous, surprising, complicated Lexi.

I frown up at the skylight, pushing the hat back off my forehead. Has she . . . already left? I thought we’d have coffee first, at least, but I guess this is karma doing her thing. You can change your ways, but the past’ll always catch up to you, and I’ve snuck out of enough morning afters to earn a stint as the one left behind.

The houseboat sways beneath me. I grip the side table. Must be one of the larger boats from the marina passing too quickly. There was a surprising amount of that last night, and some drunk idiot threw something at the hull, too. The sound had been loud enough to make Lexi pause beneath me for a few gasping breaths before she said, Do we need to go check that out? We’d started to get up, then kissed again, then forgotten all about it. It was an amazing night—worth breaking all my rules for. The sort of sex that makes you wonder why you ever do anything but that.

I close my eyes again. God, she was beautiful. Is beautiful. I guess she’s still beautiful, she’s just doing it somewhere else.

There’s a new cold twinge in my stomach, a kind of wistful sad feeling, and I stay still for another moment to figure it out. I think I’m almost . . . missing her. Which is ridiculous. We met yesterday. Maybe this is the thing everyone says happens once you “open yourself up to finding something meaningful”—the bit where suddenly everything seems to hurt. Not sure how I feel about it, so far.

I slide out from under the duvet, shedding my trilby and reaching for my boxers. When I open the bedroom door, I find Lexi standing at the sink in the tiny galley kitchen, wearing the same massive bun and irritated scowl she had when we first met. I smile when I see her, and it feels sort of like a reflex, like jumping at a loud noise. I’m glad she’s still here. She doesn’t smile back.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re up. I’m just figuring out coffee.”

“Hey. Yeah, sorry, I should be doing that,” I say, immediately getting distracted by the sight of myself in the bathroom mirror.

The door to the bathroom is just behind Lexi, a concertina one that my dad made himself. It’s folded back into the frame right now, giving me a full view of my embarrassing bed hair. I pat sleepily at my head, despite having been cursed with this hair for twenty-three years and knowing full well that without mousse there’s absolutely no way to sort out the situation. One curl’s sticking up at the front, like a question mark hovering above my forehead. Should’ve kept the trilby on.

“There’s no kettle,” Lexi mumbles, pulling open all the cupboard doors in turn. This shouldn’t take long—there’re only four—but she does each of them twice, in a different order, as if she’s not sure which one she looked in last.

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