CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Day Eighteen—Seven teams remaining
Archer
The sun had almost finished slidingbelow the horizon, which meant I needed to get back to camp. I’d been sitting alone in the shallow water near the shoreline for more than an hour now.
Gentle waves lapped against my chest as I leaned back on my hands, thinking about the workout I planned to do tomorrow.
I needed to focus on shoulders, so I’d do push-ups on the beach and pull-ups on the tree branch I’d found in the jungle that was the perfect height. Fuck, that kiss earlier had been hot.
Exhaling hard, I shook my head and tried to clear away my thoughts of Lauren’s mouth on mine. This was how I’d spent every minute since our kiss—trying to focus my mind on anything but that, and failing every time.
Sitting in the water was relaxing, but I’d come here mostly so I’d stop getting hard every time my gaze wandered to her chest. It wasn’t just physical, either. There was still something between us. Or something again? Point was, there was something, and it was tough to think about anything else when I was so close to her.
She’d said “we can’t” and I had to respect that. All I wanted, though, was to hoist her over my shoulder and carry her into our shelter to pick up where we’d left off with the kiss.
I pushed myself up to a standing position, brushing sand from my legs. Like sweat, sand was just a part of life here. I’d been annoyed by it at first, but now I was used to it.
Linda was at camp when I returned, though there wasn’t much to film because Lauren was lying in the shelter.
“Hey,” I said as I sat down on the bamboo floor of the shelter.
“Hey,” Lauren said. “I think I have a bug bite inside my nose, so if you see me scratching it, I’m not picking my nose.”
I smiled. “I get it. I’ve got bug bites on my ass.”
“Island life isn’t glamorous, is it?”
“Not at all.” I crawled to the spot next to her and lay on my back. “Think we’ll have a competition tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. There never seems to be a pattern; it’s like they want to keep us guessing.”
“Are you feeling better than you were this morning?”
She turned her head toward me and smiled. “Much. I think lying around doing nothing but drinking water today helped. Thanks for refilling the canteens so many times.”
“No problem.”
A bolt of lightning lit up the sky for a long second. The air felt even thicker than usual, which meant we were about to get a thunderstorm.
“At least we’ve got a tarp to sleep under,” Lauren said.
We covered up with the tarp and discovered it was a double-edged sword. It kept us dry, but trapped in the humidity and made it too hot to sleep.
“I can’t,” Lauren said, moving out from underneath it. “I feel like I can’t breathe. I’d rather be soaking wet.”
I set the tarp aside and we lay side by side in silence for a couple of minutes, surrounded by the sound of falling rain. Poor Linda was drenched, a plastic cover over her camera as she filmed us.
“Tell me something,” I said to Lauren.
“You’re an even better kisser now than you were before.”
Her comment caught me off guard, and I laughed. “Is that a backhanded compliment?”
“No, I just…” She blew out a breath, a smile in her tone. “I think I should have said something else.”
I gently poked her side, where she was ticklish. “Good job, Lo. You just made it awkward.”
She recoiled, giggling even though I’d hardly touched her.
“Seriously, was I a bad kisser before?”
“Not at all. You were very…eager and I liked that. Now you’re more refined, like you’ve completed a graduate degree in kissing.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Come on, Archer, we both know it’s not hard for you to get women.”
That was true. But it was hard for me to find women I actually wanted. With my travel schedule, it was hard to find enough time to really get to know someone. Inevitably, every woman I tried to start something with disappointed me, so I’d quit trying more than a year ago.
“Look at you, Lo. You’re even more beautiful than you were when we were together. You’ve had a lot of kissing practice yourself.”
“Oh, stop.”
“What?”
“I peaked at eighteen. You don’t need to flatter me.”
A single note of laughter burst out of me. “You think I’m bullshitting you?”
“Of course you are.”
I leaned up on my elbow and looked down at her face in the darkness. “I meant it. You seem wiser and stronger now, and that’s very attractive.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
The rain was falling harder now. Water was pouring through gaps in the roof along the edges of the small tarp I’d secured to the top of the shelter. It was impossible to sleep through this.
“You want a shot of whiskey?” I asked Lauren.
“I guess one wouldn’t hurt. But that’s all, because we need to be ready in case there’s a challenge tomorrow. We have to beat Maks and Irina.”
I grinned at her. “They bring out the competitor in you, huh?”
“That bitch can take our canteens, but we’re taking the money.”
“That’s my girl.”
I retrieved the bottle of whiskey, opened it and passed it to her. She took a swig, cringing, and then handed it to me. I took a shot from the bottle, savoring the warmth of the liquid in my throat.
“Your turn,” she said, smoothing back her dripping wet hair. “Tell me something.”
“I haven’t kissed as many women as you probably think I have.”
“How many?”
I considered. “Maybe eight?”
She laughed. “You mean seventy-eight?”
“I’m serious.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated a moment too long and cleared her throat. “Are you glad you came here? If you could do it over again, would you make the same choice?”
“Yes to both. What about you?”
“I think I’d do it again. I knew when I agreed to it that this would be about more than trying to win the money. Just getting the experience and all. But I didn’t truly get what that meant until I lived it. I won’t take small things like bathrooms and restaurants for granted anymore.” She yawned and covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t know why I’m sleepy. I slept so much today.”
“Why don’t you lie down? I’ve got an idea.”
I took the tarp we’d tried to use as a blanket and wove some twine we’d gotten with our supplies into the grommets at the corners, then tied the twine to the four posts I’d used as supports for the shelter. When I put the tarp at an angle, it did a decent job of deflecting the rain.
“Move to the middle,” I told Lauren. “That’s where it’s driest.”
She scooted over to the center of the shelter. “What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Archer, we can share the middle.”
After our kiss earlier, there was no way I could be that close to her and not go out of my mind. I tried to think of a reason to decline, but I came up empty. Why would anyone prefer to get rained on if they could be dry?
I stretched out next to her, hands at my sides and eyes on the tarp. Though I could have used a couple more shots of whiskey, I closed my eyes instead, willing sleep to come, but doubting it would.
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