CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Day Seventeen—Seven teams remaining
Archer
“I’ll trade you some of my berries for some fish,” Irina said, dumping the berries she’d gathered in her shirt on the way to camp into a bowl.
I eyed the berries skeptically. “I’m not sure I would eat those. They could be poisonous.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been eating them back at my camp. Since we ran out of rice and beans, it’s all I have to eat.”
“Doesn’t Maks fish for you guys?”
She laughed. “Maks fishes for Maks. Sometimes he trades me fish for berries, but usually he only catches enough for him to eat.”
I stared at her for a second, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth. But when she pulled her T-shirt up over her head and took it off, I realized she was serious. I could see the outline of her ribs from all the weight she’d lost since the start of the competition.
Fucking great. It was Day Seventeen. Lauren was exhausted, and she was stuck with Maks until tomorrow. If that asshole didn’t feed her, I’d knock him out as soon as I got the chance.
“You don’t need to trade me anything,” I said. “I’ve got plenty of fish for both of us.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The genuine surprise in her tone sent another flare of anger rippling through me. What kind of a man let a woman starve when he could have simply shared his food?
“Want to swim?” Irina asked.
“No, I’m” I looked up from the fish I was cleaning and saw her dropping her bikini top on the ground.
What the hell? I quickly ducked my head and focused intently on separating the filets from the body of the fish.
“I don’t like tan lines,” she explained, sounding amused. “And I don’t mind if you look.”
I looked—but at Nutter instead of her. I widened my eyes to express my shock, and he grinned from behind the camera. I was grateful he was here and I wasn’t alone with Irina, because I wasn’t comfortable hanging around alone with a naked woman who wasn’t my girlfriend.
As soon as I heard Irina leave camp, I relaxed for the first time since this morning. The producers had thrown us a hell of a curveball, and I had to keep reminding myself it was temporary.
It took me about an hour to get the fish cleaned and cooked, and I made a batch of rice, too. When Irina walked back into camp, I averted my gaze.
“Can you please put your clothes back on?” I asked her.
“You don’t like the view?” she asked in a teasing tone. “At least get a good look before you decide.”
“I’d rather you just put your clothes on.”
She giggled. “What a proper gentleman you are.”
I suppressed a comment about Maks. It wouldn’t help anything to say it out loud.
“There’s plenty of food here so eat as much as you want,” I said. “I’m heading out to look for treasure chests.”
“Happy hunting,” she said. “After I eat, I’ll be in the hammock.”
I grunted in response and set out for the jungle. I just wasn’t in the mood to talk—to anyone. Lauren could handle herself, but knowing she was alone with Maks at his camp still didn’t sit well with me.
Would he hit on her? She was beautiful and single, so I had a feeling he would. But she wouldn’t be interested in him. At least, I didn’t think so.
Damn, I hoped I was right about that. He was known as an outrageous, fearless guy who didn’t care what anyone thought of him. If he thought Lauren was a one-night stand, sex-for-funsies kind of woman, he was dead wrong.
When I’d made it about half a mile into the jungle, I looked to my left and saw a huge black snake looking down at me from a tree. Fucker was ominous looking. I pointed and turned around, showing it to Nutter.
“Fuck that,” Nutter said, going off the path to take a longer route and avoid the tree with the snake in it.
I had my machete, so the snake was welcome to start some shit with me if it wanted. Chopping it up sounded pretty cathartic, actually, and then I’d have it cooked and waiting when Lauren got back in the morning.
The snake was too smart for that, though. He stayed in the tree, not moving a muscle until I was too far ahead to mess with it.
“This game fucks with your head, Nutter,” I said.
“How so?” he said from behind me.
“It’s a one-two punch of physical and psychological challenges. This partner change, for instance. All psychological. Designed to test whether our feelings toward our exes have changed after living alone together on an island for seventeen days.”
“Have your feelings changed?”
I was silent for a full minute, because I knew he was recording everything I said and anyone who watched the show could one day hear it. But fuck it. I was going to be honest.
“That’s hard to answer. I knew who Lauren was before getting to this island. She’s strong and smart. Determined to do anything she sets her mind to. Compassionate. The kind of person any leader would want on their team.”
“Why’d you guys break up then?”
I stopped walking and turned to face him. “We were young.”
While drinking from my canteen, I tried to think of how else to explain what had happened between Lauren and me. The timing had been off, I supposed. I’d been too stubborn to get engaged and she’d been too stubborn to accept anything less.
“That’s it?” Nutter asked, sounding disappointed.
I shrugged, turned around, and continued walking, unwilling to share anything else. Before coming to the island and seeing Lauren again, the reasons we hadn’t worked out had slid off my tongue so easily. If I started dating a woman and she asked about past relationships, I told her Lauren and I were young and wanted different things.
Now, though, that sounded like a hollow excuse. The truth was, we wanted the same thing—to be together. We just hadn’t been able to agree on the details. And that was a hell of a thing, to let go of someone who felt like your other half because of simple problems that would never matter in the end.
I walked further into the jungle, not wanting to face my realizations about past mistakes. They followed me, though, heavy in my mind. Still, I walked on, marking trees so I wouldn’t get lost.
I was drenched in sweat from head to toe when I suddenly stopped, listening closely. There was a faint noise that sounded like dull static, and I knew immediately what it was from childhood hikes with my dad.
There was a waterfall ahead. I smiled, wishing Lauren was here to discover it with me. I now had a destination, and I picked up my pace, the sound of the water getting louder as I got closer.
I could see the water though the trees now, a cloud of white from where the falls hit the water below. The dirt around this area was more wet and had turned to mud, so I had to tread a little more carefully, but when I emerged from the thick trees and took in the view, it was worth being covered in mud up to my ankles.
It was spectacular. The waterfall poured over the edge of a cliff, surrounded by lush greenery. There was a pool at the base of the waterfall. It was too beautiful to be real, almost like a scene in a painting.
It was real, though—and so was the treasure chest sitting on the shore about twenty feet away. I took off toward it, dropping to the ground to open it and praying I was the first one to get here.
I opened the chest and found it loaded. There were two ten-pound bags of rice, three dozen packets of Gatorade powder mix, bug nets, a tarp, a flashlight, and a large canister of beef jerky.
“Shit.”
I turned and saw Nutter, who was covered in mud and had a disgusted look on his face.
“What?” I said.
“I’m supposed to keep pace with you so I can record you opening the chest, but I slipped and fell in the mud back there.”
“I can discover it again,” I offered.
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, man. It’s no problem.”
I loaded the loot back into the chest, closed it, and carefully mashed up my footprints, then went back to the edge of the tree line and replayed the scene.
“Shit, how am I going to get all this back to camp?” I asked no one in particular.
I remembered the backpack that had been stored beneath the lid of our last chest. I looked and sure enough, there was a backpack stowed in this chest too.
“Awesome,” I said, loading it up. “This Gatorade will be good for Lauren.”
I packed the bag, put it on my back, and started the trek back to camp. It was a slower return trip since I was carrying about thirty pounds on my back. As soon as I made it back to camp, I looked around for our canteens because I needed water bad.
The pile of canteens I kept next to one of our log stools was gone. My heart raced as I looked around. Four of the six canteens Lauren and I had were sitting there when I left. Lauren had one of the canteens with her and the final one was sitting empty on my hip.
Irina was asleep in the hammock. I walked over and called out to her.
“Irina, wake up.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
She shaded her eyes from the sun with her hand and looked up at me.
“Where are the canteens?”