Exiled

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

Day Twenty-Five—Five teams remaining

Lauren

“You don’t want breakfast?”

Archer gave me a concerned look from his spot on a stump stool next to the fire. It was the morning after Layla and Simon had left, and I’d hardly left the shelter since then.

Yesterday, I’d told myself I was just tired. That maybe I had a touch of heat exhaustion. But with the number of times I’d had to get up in the middle of the night and run into the tree line to expel everything in my stomach, I knew it was more than that. I wasn’t ready to talk about it with Archer, though.

We were so damn close to the finish line. Why was my body breaking down now, after making it to Day Twenty-Five, with just five teams left?

“I’ll eat in a little bit,” I said, pouring a small stream of water from the canteen onto my sweaty face.

If we had a competition today, I didn’t think I’d even be able to walk to the competition site, let alone compete. I was hoping I’d just picked up a little bug from Layla or Simon and it would pass in a day or two.

Archer finished eating his meal of fish and rice and walked over to me, carrying a bowl.

“Can you get down a couple of bites of rice?” he asked.

I eyed him warily, my stomach revolting at the sight of the food in the bowl.

“I think so,” I said, pushing myself into a sitting position and trying not to let on how bad I felt.

He passed me the bowl and then pressed his palm to my forehead. I frowned and turned away from his touch.

“I think you have a fever,” he said.

“No one asked you.”

He gave me a small smile, which made me feel like a petulant child he was indulging. “Lo. Talk to me.”

“I can’t talk while I’m eating,” I said, putting a small bite of rice in my mouth.

“You always could when we were eating popcorn at the movies. Talked constantly, as I recall.”

I rolled my eyes. “I whispered. And it was pertinent information only.”

After eating two bites of rice, I passed the bowl back to Archer and lay down on my back. He put a hand on my cheek, and then moved my hair aside to feel the back of my neck.

“We’re in the tropics,” I said weakly. “Of course I’m hot.”

“Be honest with me about how you’re feeling, Lo. You can catch some bad shit in places like this just from a bug bite.”

I sighed heavily. “I’m really tired.”

It was the truth. I was exhausted. And while I could have mentioned that I also felt nauseated and weak, I didn’t. I just wanted to sleep.

“Drink this,” Archer said, passing me a canteen.

It tasted fruity, so I knew he’d mixed in some Gatorade powder. I thanked him, hoping I’d be able to keep it down, and then curled up and went back to sleep.

* * *

“Lo, wake up.”

It took me a few seconds to open my eyes when I heard Archer talking to me. Why was I so groggy?

“Hey,” I said, putting a palm to my forehead.

I had a mild headache, but I felt more rested than I had earlier.

“Hey, sorry to wake you up, but it’s been four hours and you need to drink more water. You’re sweating like crazy.”

“It’s hot.” I knew it was a weak explanation, but it was all I could come up with.

I took the canteen and found I was thirsty enough to drink it all. My stomach hadn’t rejected the rice from earlier, so hopefully I was on the mend.

“There’s something I want you to do,” Archer said. “I think you need to go get in the water for a little bit and see if we can get your fever down.”

Ugh. First of all, movement. And second, just the thought of leaving the shelter and exposing myself to the hellfire that was the sun in Fiji made me coil up into a ball.

“It’s hot,” I repeated.

That was all I had. My sweat was sweating, and I just wanted to sleep through this brutally hot part of the day. But Archer wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Can you walk or should I carry you?” he asked.

I blew out a breath. I didn’t want to leave the shelter, but it would be nice to rinse off, and maybe getting up would do me some good.

“I can walk,” I said. “And I see what you did there. Giving me two choices, both of which accomplish what you want. We do that in teaching.”

He stood next to the shelter, bending down and offering me his hand. I grabbed on tight to his hand as he helped pull me up from the ground, and after a couple of seconds of dizziness, I felt okay.

Archer grabbed our other canteen and a bowl from one of the stumps, and we walked to the beach together. The sun was high in the sky and it was wicked hot. When I saw the setup where water met sand, I turned to face Archer.

He’d used long branches as posts, covering them with a tarp to make a little sun shelter in the water.

“Your cabana awaits,” he said with a grin.

My throat tightened at his thoughtfulness. He really was an amazing partner.

I walked up to the shelter and into the protection of the shade. The makeshift cabana was about five feet tall, so when I sat down in the sand, the water lapped over me up to my chest, and there was still some air flowing through the top of the cabana.

“This is great.” I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

He sat down next to me in the sand, looking out at the horizon.

“It was weird adjusting to life here, but it’s also going to be weird adjusting to life once we get back home,” he said.

“I’m glad it’s summer. I might just sit in front of the air-conditioning vent at home eating ice cream for a week when I get home.”

He leaned back on his hands and looked down at me. “When this is over, will you still talk to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugged. “You’re stuck here with me so you don’t really have a choice right now, especially since we need to work together during the competitions. But when we both go back home, I hope that won’t be it for us.”

I couldn’t deny that my feelings for Archer had changed over the past twenty-five days. I no longer despised him and held him responsible for breaking my heart. Our breakup had been mutual, and that was a realization that I wasn’t ready for at such a young age. If I had agreed to move to Minnesota with him, I honestly thought we would have stayed together. Together forever? I didn’t know the answer to that, but Archer had remained adamant until the day he left in a moving truck that he wanted me to go with him.

“Do you think we can stay friends?” I asked him.

It pained me to do so. I was more attracted to him than ever, and there wasn’t a man in the world that had ever treated me better than Archer. But we lived in different states, and our love story already had a beginning, middle, and end.

Could I maintain a friendship with Archer? A real one, where we talked about what was going on in our lives? Could I graciously attend his wedding to another woman someday, and smile and congratulate them?

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ve never been just a friend to me. But if it’s friendship or nothing, I’d like to try.”

He dipped his hand in the water and brushed it across my brow, cooling me in one way while heating me up in another. I’d been with men since Archer, but he was still the only man whose touch I knew by heart.

“That feels good,” I said softly.

Everythingabout Archer felt good. Every look, every touch, and every moment spent alone with him in our little slice of primitive paradise. But it couldn’t last. Filming of the show would end and we’d return to our separate lives. He’d play hockey, I’d teach, and hopefully we’d talk from time to time.

“You never answered my question,” he said, his eyes locked on mine as he cupped his hand, filled it with water and poured it over the exposed skin on my shoulders and chest.

“You mean about being friends?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been my friend since we were sophomores in high school. It may seem strange for friends to go eight years without talking, but I never stopped caring. That’s why I went to your grandpa’s funeral. I’ll always care for you.”

“I never stopped caring, either. I know you think I did, but…” He looked away. “For the rest of my life, if you need anything, I’ll be there.”

“I know.” The words were practically a whisper, because I didn’t trust my voice not to break with emotion.

It no longer felt so weird to have such intimate conversations with Nutter or Linda filming us. Today it was Nutter, and I’d almost forgotten he was there until he sneezed.

“Bless you,” I said, and the moment lightened.

“Are you feeling any better?” Archer asked me.

“Yes. Thanks for my cabana.”

His smile was wry. “It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.”

I stayed in the water for another thirty minutes or so, eating a little of the rice he’d brought with us, but when I stood up to walk back to camp, a wave of dizziness hit me so hard I dropped to my hands and knees.

“What’s wrong?” Archer asked, kneeling by my side.

“I think I just stood up too fast. I’m okay.”

He stood and bent slightly, picking me up. I squealed as I was swept off my feet and into his arms.

“Archer, I’m fine,” I protested. “You don’t need to carry me.”

The dizziness was back, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn’t fine, and we both knew it. Archer carried me to the shelter and set me down on the bamboo slats.

“I need to fill the canteens,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Don’t try to get up.”

I moved to rest on my side and curled into a ball, not remotely tempted to get up. All I wanted was to try to sleep off whatever illness I had. That was our only hope, because if it didn’t pass by our next challenge, we were sunk.