CHAPTERELEVEN
Day Fourteen—Eight teams remaining
Lauren
“Did you catch anything?”I asked Archer as he returned from fishing.
He shook his head, droplets of water flying from the ends of his hair. Two days after I’d eaten some of the most disgusting things imaginable, I hadn’t eaten much since. We’d had a cup of beans and a cup of trail mix each yesterday, and a cup of trail mix each this morning.
It had been raining nonstop for nearly twenty-four hours, though, and without a fire, we wouldn’t be able to cook beans for our evening meal.
“I’m so fucking hungry,” he grumbled. “I’d probably eat that warthog asshole if I could.”
“You’ll be able to fish again when it stops raining.”
He nodded and looked up at the sky. “Yeah, hopefully it’ll be clear by morning.”
A gust of wind shifted the direction of the rain so it was hitting me straight in the face. Our shelter was closed in on three sides by rudimentary walls of stacked branches, but it was open in the front. That meant we could never fully avoid the rain. We’d been soaked since it started and had both hardly slept last night.
“It’s getting windy out on the water,” Archer said, carrying his fishing gear to the side of the shelter and setting it down. “I’m going to reinforce the tarp on the shelter’s roof. Can you pack everything you can into the trunks?”
I nodded, pushing the wet hair out of my face. He was no weatherman, but Archer was an outdoorsman, and I could tell without him saying it that he thought this storm was going to get worse before it got better.
* * *
Eight hours later,the rain was coming down even heavier than before. It was after midnight, and I was curled up in a ball on my side of the shelter. Every few minutes, a torrential gust of wind would blow rain through the exposed front of the shelter, and our makeshift roof was leaking.
“You okay?” Archer asked from beside me.
“Freezing,” I said, lacking the energy to put together a full sentence.
Every item of clothing I had here was drenched. Wet clothes made me feel even colder, so I was shivering in my swimsuit.
“Hey,” Archer said. “Will you turn around?”
I turned to face him and saw that he was lying on his side facing me, arms folded over his chest.
“Tell me something,” he said.
My heart clenched, a flood of memories pouring through me. When we’d been together, in quiet moments, especially ones when we were naked and sated, one of us would tell the other person to tell me something, and it had to be something we didn’t already know about the other.
I wanted to tell him he’d lost the right to play this little game, but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I answered him.
“Yesterday was Sunday dinner back home,” I said. “My mom always cooks for me, my dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my nephews. And it’s always something amazing like lasagna. I spent a lot of time yesterday wishing I was at my parents’ house, warm and dry, and in the dining room stuffing my face with my family.”
“You miss them?”
“I do. Who do you miss?”
The corners of his lips turned up in a small smile. “My teammates. They’re pretty much my family now. Since my parents got divorced and my mom moved to Florida, I don’t see her much anymore. My dad’s in Minneapolis now, so he comes to all my home games, but I usually don’t get to see him after. We get together for dinner at least once every couple of weeks though.”
“I didn’t know your parents got divorced.”
“Yeah, a couple years ago.”
A burst of wind hit, sending sticks and pieces of bark flying into the shelter, along with more rain. Archer put his arm around me, shielding me but not touching me.
“Are you okay?” he asked when the wind gust died down.
“Yeah. What is this fresh hell, anyway? Like this game isn’t hard enough as it is.”
“It’s no good. I bet people will tap out tonight.”
“But not us?”
He smiled. “Not us. My partner’s a badass.”
I laughed lightly. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just a broke teacher who will never have another chance at this kind of money again.”
“Are you shivering?”
“Yes.”
“Is it all about the money for you?” he asked.
“Mostly. But I also want to prove to myself and everyone else that I can do it.”
After a few beats of silence, he said, “You know what might warm us up?”
My heart raced with shock. That was shock, right? I wouldn’t allow it to be excitement.
“No,” I answered.
He laughed softly. “You mean no as in you don’t know, or no as in—”
“No as in we’re not having sex. I’d rather freeze to death.”
Another laugh. “Ouch. I wasn’t talking about that, actually.”
Well, shit, that was embarrassing.
“I can’t imagine anything else you could have been talking about,” I said.
“You’ve got sex on the brain,” he teased. “I know how you are.”
I rolled my eyes. “I do not have sex on the brain. There’s nothing less sexy than freezing your ass off in a monsoon.”
“You make it look good.”
My heart raced again, but I ignored his comment. He wanted to get me going, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“The whiskey, Lo. I’ve only had one sip of it.”
I scoffed. “Alcohol? After my hangover from hell? I don’t think so.”
“I won’t let you overdo it. I promise. Just enough to warm you up a little.”
I was exhausted, hungry, and on the very edge of defeated. A shot of whiskey might not help, but it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt, either.
“Okay,” I agreed.
Archer got up, put his sopping wet shoes on and retrieved the bottle of whiskey from one of our trunks. When he settled back inside the shelter, his shoes tracked in mud and I had no choice but to laugh.
“This is the dark side of paradise,” I said. “No one mentioned we’d need an ark and an appetite for warthog anuses.”
“Is that the plural for anus?” Archer grinned. “I feel like it should be ani.”
He unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a long swig before passing it to me.
“Hell yeah,” he said. “I’m warmer already.”
I took a generous sip, not feeling the burn until I’d passed the bottle back.
“Doesn’t feel bad,” I agreed.
We passed the bottle back and forth three times. Archer took a fourth drink after that and then screwed the cap back on the bottle.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“How else are we going to pass this miserable night?”
A smile played on his lips. “There’s always Tell Me Something.”
I was feeling dangerously comfortable with him right now. In the relentless rain, with nothing but whiskey in my belly, it was hard not to.
“Okay then, tell me something,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself in an effort to stop shivering.
He paused a moment before saying, “My grandpa loved you. He…” He looked out the front of our shelter at the raging storm. “He really loved you.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. “I loved him, too. Thank you for telling me that.”
“Your turn,” he said. “Tell me something.”
“I’m afraid I’ll never get to have kids,” I admitted, blurting the words out before I’d thought about them. “Sometimes I think about using a sperm donor and having them on my own, without a partner.”
In the moonlight, I could see Archer’s eyes widening comically. He looked so shocked. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. It’s one of the reasons I want to win the money so badly. Insurance doesn’t cover much.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but decided against it. Just as he opened his mouth a second time, another powerful blast of wind hit the front of our shelter. The crack of a branch snapping off a tree nearby sent a wave of fear through me.
“Shit, we lost the tarp,” Archer said. “I need to go after it.”
I looked up. The tarp that had kept the worst of the rain from leaking in through the roof of our shelter was, in fact, gone. But with the storm so bad that trees were falling over and losing branches, I didn’t want Archer to risk getting hurt over a tarp.
“No.” I reached out and touched his forearm. “Stay here.”
“Are you scared?”
I stopped myself from outright lying and telling him of course I wasn’t scared. Lack of sleep and food had brought me to a place where my defenses were completely down.
“A little,” I admitted, a lump welling in my throat. “And I’m so cold and exhausted. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“Hey,” he said softly. “Come here.”
He laid down on his side and put his arms around me, gently pulling me against his chest. His warmth radiated into me, bringing immediate relief. When he put his elbow on my shoulder and rested his hand in my hair, he blocked the rainfall from my face.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“This storm will pass,” he said. “And then you can sleep as long as you want.”
I tried to hold back my tears, but I couldn’t. “I just want to be dry and not so hungry. I feel sick and too weak to do anything. This is harder than I thought it would be.”
“I know.” He kissed my forehead. I was worn too thin to protest. “We’ll get through it, though. I promise.”
“Tell me something,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut in an effort to stop the tears.
His breath was warm on my face. “I know it’s too late for us, but when you say I dumped you and never looked back, you’re wrong.”
I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but my eyelids and lips felt too heavy. Day Fourteen on the island had tested me in every way. And while I was strong, I knew there was no way I could’ve gotten through it without Archer.