by Ella James
I lean down and refill the bottle from the stream. When I cast my gaze over my shoulder, I see my “partner” spreading the bags out. I turn slowly around, scarcely breathing as I watch him from the shadows.
I glean nothing from his movements and his mannerisms—nothing but athleticism and perhaps a sort of masculine elegance. I can almost see him jumping four feet off the ground, his arm flung above his head to catch a fly ball. He looks like someone in one of Gammy’s dog-eared travel magazines: a breathing mannequin with sinewy, deep-tanned limbs and freakishly squared shoulders. Of course, he’s bigger than all that. Despite being lean, I’d say he’s what you might call burly. More the chest and shoulders. He’s built like a bull.
I feel nothing as I watch him move the bags about, spreading the green one out, with its top beside the cave’s right wall and bottom pointing at the middle of the burrow. As I walk slowly over, he spreads the purple bag about three feet from that one.
Without ado, I sit on it, glancing at the rubble pile, which sounds as if it’s dripping.
Not stuck, I remind myself. Not if rain is getting in. We can get out. If we’re not out soon, most of the village will descend upon us. We’ll be dug out in no time at all.
The Carnegie sits beside me on the green bag, and I can feel his gaze move over my face. I drop my gaze to my hands, now folded around the water bottle, then dart a glance back up to him.
I hate him. I hate it that I can’t stop looking at him. I hate that when I do, I feel off-balance. It’s the same unsteady feeling I get in nightmares, when I’m forever trapped inside the bottom of a boat.
Thunder booms above us. As his gaze flies to the rubble pile, I find mine hung up on the contours of his face. Truly, I’ve never seen a man that looks like him. His cheekbones seem a bit feline…
“You okay?”
I jump. Cover my face with my hand. “Fine.” I hear the blood whoosh in between my ears and hate him, hate him, hate him.
“I…uh…thought I saw some clothes in your bag,” he says quietly. “Want me to turn around and you can change?”
I shake my head, running my nails along the plastic bottle’s grooves. I won’t be here long enough to need dry clothes, and even if I did…
I stand slowly and look up at the ceiling, curved a mere two feet or so above my head. I walk to the rubble pile, where raindrops and faint splotches of moonlight play over the cave’s floor.
“Careful,” he calls. “You don’t want to touch that.”
I swallow, refusing to look back as I hear him move toward me. I run my fingers over the rocks, my touch feather-light. They’re mostly large stones, plus or minus the dimensions of a football—though near the bottom of the pile, one’s more boulder, perhaps half a meter long. My gaze rests on a jagged piece of dark rock near the top. I run a fingertip over it. It looks like part of the archway we just climbed atop. I believe it is.
“Finley.” His fingers wrap around my wrist.
I snatch it back.
“You move something wrong, the whole thing falls.”
“Oh, is that how that works? What a pity. We could climb out.”
He’s quiet for a long time. I refuse to look at him as tension thickens between us.
“We could crawl out,” he says quietly, “or we could get crushed.” I turn my head in time to see him catch his lower lip between his teeth. “No way to tell.”
Tears fill my eyes, and my cheeks and neck burn as I feel my pulse race. “You’re saying we’re trapped here.”
I swing my hand out toward the rubble pile—the impulse born of panic and terror.
Nothing can prepare me for his hands snatching me by the waist, for the ease with which he drags me toward the sleeping bags.
I buck against him, kicking my legs into the air. “Put me down!”
He sets me on my sleeping bag, and my heart beats so hard and fast my head spins. “Don’t touch me!” My voice is plaintive. “Don’t touch me again—so help me!”
He peers down at me, his face barren until I realize his cheek is sucked in on one side; he’s bit down on it. “You can’t take risks like that, Finley. Now is not the time to be impulsive. Trust me.”
“Do you know when I would trust you?”
He blinks at me.
“Never. I would never trust you, never in a billion years would I trust you, Declan Carnegie. You are not the hero; you’re the villain! I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to be trapped here with you! I want you to disappear, but if we’re here come morning, you will dig us out and if you don’t, then I will do whatever I please—do you understand?”
His jaw tightens, and I can see I’ve raised his hackles.
I lie down on my side, putting my back to him. “By the way—I’ve got a tracker in my pack, so someone will come find us soon. If you can’t dig us out, my village will.”
So don’t you think of touching me again.
Nine
Declan
I grind my teeth against the square of gum, relishing the hit of flavor and slight burn. Eclipse Polar Ice. Had a sleeve of eight that I found in my pocket. I’ve chewed three since she told me to fuck off.
That was coming up on two hours ago. I know because I can’t stop looking at my phone. Fucker’s got ninety percent battery, and I’ve got it on the power-saver mode, but still, I need to leave it face-down and forget about it.
Eighteen minutes after midnight.
Sun will rise at seven.
On the list of my worst fuckups, where does this one rank, I wonder as I sit beside the stream. Way below the biggest one, a cruel voice whispers. I inhale slowly and rub my aching eyes. I can’t think about that shit now.
I’d say this probably ranks below the time I was ninety feet under the ocean in the Maldives and lost my scuba tank. Earned myself a helicopter ride to a hyperbaric chamber. Below that…but probably above the Encierro three years ago, when I tried to jump up on a fountain in Pamplona to dodge a bull and ended up with nineteen stitches in my calf. Spent the Barcelona portion of that trip laid up, but being stuck inside a fucking cave is definitely worse. Siren’s right—it’s not even a cave; it’s like a fucking rabbit burrow.
I blow my breath out slowly, inhale through my nose.
Never been a fan of being stuck places. Not since…I shake my head.
Once, when I was fourteen, the mast broke off of a sailboat Nate and I had taken out on Lake Constance. The motors blew a fuse, so we drifted around for half a day before another boater came up on us. I’m not sure if this is worse than that. Too soon to say.
I look over my shoulder at the lump of Finley’s body in her sleeping bag. I’m pretty sure she’s bullshitting about the “tracker.” First, what is a tracker? She’d have to mean something with GPS, and that shit doesn’t work out here.
I splash some water on my face and turn around to face her. Before she went to sleep, she disappeared behind the rock pile with her dry clothes, and I came here to sit beside the stream, hoping it might make her feel more comfortable. When she came back around the pile, she stood and stared at me a minute before sliding back into the bag.
I walked over to her, wanting to reassure her somehow, but woman seemed to read my mind. She said, “Just don’t.”
I think of her somber face as I scrub my own, rubbing my temples before heading back to the bags. I don’t think she’s awake. Hasn’t moved in a while. She’s curled on her side so tightly she looks almost kid-sized. I can’t see her face, just a bunch of penny-red hair spread over a blow-up pillow.
What’s this do to her, I wonder. How does she feel about being trapped? I don’t know all that much about what happened while my dad and I were here last time; I was just six, and right after we left Tristan, he took me to Carogue, the boarding school where I grew up—so we didn’t really ever talk about it. But I know when we arrived, she was lost at sea in a small boat she’d been in with her parents. When they found her, near the end of our visit, she was alone.
I shak
e my head, wondering why we didn’t stay here longer that time. Normally, most visits last a few months because the ship that brought you doesn’t come back by until then. I think Dad and I left on a different ship than the one we came in on. I don’t know.
I knead my aching shoulder and slide into my bag. I don’t sleep with my back to anyone, not even pint-sized redheaded sirens, so I’m on my side, facing her. I’m looking at her hair, watching her shoulders rise and fall under the sleeping bag as she breathes. I can’t be sure, but I think maybe I can smell her. Something floral…roses, maybe.
Her hair looks soft. I lie there staring at it, thinking about touching it for what feels like eternity. I close my eyes and inhale the rose scent and let my mind drift, taking care to steer away from last time I was trapped somewhere. At what turns out to be 5:11, I break down and check my phone. After that, I set it down beside me, and Finley’s hips shift in her bag. I lay my hand out on the ground between us, and finally, I fall asleep.
Finley
I don’t want to laugh. In fact, I refuse to. But the Carnegie doesn’t make it easy.
I awoke sweaty and breathless, my fists clenched—because in the dream, I couldn’t reach the boat’s sides from under the bench, where I was huddled, and I needed something to hold onto. For the first few moments, that sensation—up and down, of being tossed by the waves—was so potent, I didn’t notice where I was. Then I sat up, and I saw him.
The Carnegie has pulled off his shirt, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s it tied about his head. And underneath it, smooshed against his dark hair, boots. He’s set his boots atop his head and tied his shirt around them. He looks like some sort of clothes bin monster, though not really; with his physique, he can look like nothing except what he is—a sort of living, breathing David. Edit that: an arse whose flawless body is a temple, for baseball, I suppose. Deep grooves line his bare back. Shadows flit about his muscles. As he moves, poking something long and stick-like into the top of the rock pile, muscles in his shoulders ripple.
I divert my eyes, and that’s when I notice my pack is open near the foot of the sleeping bags, and most of my belongings are strewn out.
“What the devil?”
He turns to me, and I straighten my spine. My gaze locks onto his hand. “I suppose you robbed my tent of one of its joints?”
He wipes at his forehead. “Poking through the rocks to see if I can get an idea of—”
“You didn’t think to ask me?”
He blinks. “You were sleeping.”
“You could have woken me.”
“You’re right. I could have.”
“And?”
“I didn’t.”
I draw a deep breath. Press my lips together. Grit my molars. Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. Very soon we will be out of here, and nothing about him will be relevant to me ever again. In a few weeks, he’ll sail away, and that will be the end of him.
“Well, then. What have you found?”
“Just poking around.”
“And?”
He lifts a shoulder in a sort of shrug. “I just want to mess around a little, see if I can get this joint through to a spot where it’s not touching anything.”
The tent’s joint is near half a meter long. If he can’t manage to poke it through…I inhale deeply.
He reaches into his pocket, tossing something my way. “Catch.”
I scramble to snatch something small and flat before it hits the ground.
“My phone,” he says. “You can turn it on with the button on the right side. It’ll want a password. Put in one, one, one, nine, one, seven. Swipe your thumb across the screen until you see an app—a square that’ll say ‘Kindle.’ There are books there. Find something to read and don’t be worried. I won’t move the rocks around unless I’m sure there’s not much else on top of them.” He taps his head, flashing me a grin. “And I’ve got a helmet.”
A retort slams through my head—“Do you think I care?” But it’s too much, even for me in my present agitated state. Instead I say, “You’re absurd.”
“If absurd means genius.”
“Most certainly not.”
He laughs, holding the joint up. “I’m not looking like a genius over here? You sure?”
“I am absolutely certain.”
He chuckles. “Go on, turn the phone on.”
He feels he needs to distract me? Between glaring daggers at him, I feel around the side of the small, flat thing and press a button. Its screen lights up, revealing a picture that’s so pristine, I can’t help gaping at it. It’s a sailboat in a harbor, and it’s stunning.
“There’s a circle at the bottom of the phone’s front. Press the circle button.” I do, and at the bottom of the screen appears a message: “Slide to unlock.”
“Slide your thumb across the lock screen.”
I try, but nothing happens.
“Ever used a touch screen?” He steps slightly toward me.
What’s a touch screen?
“If you haven’t, you want to drag the tip of your thumb over the screen. Not too hard, but hard enough.”
I try again, and the phone reads: “Enter Passcode.”
“Passcode is one, one, one, nine, one, seven.”
I punch in the numbers, and I see another picture: this one of a group of grinning kids in Red Sox T-shirts.
“You got it?”
“Of course.”
“If you don’t see the Kindle square, swipe your thumb again and it’ll be on the next page of the menu options.”
I tilt the phone toward my face and peer down at it. The children pictured look so real. As if they’re right here next to me. How very odd. What makes the photos so lifelike? I cast my gaze back up to the Carnegie, who’s turned away from me with one hand outstretched toward the rubble pile.
“Warn me before you move things,” I murmur.
“Will do.”
I swallow and look back at the screen. One of the squares says “Photos.” I want to press that and see what happens, but he didn’t tell me to. I drag my thumb across the screen again, and all the boxes change. Now there’s one that says “Kindle.” I press it and look up again, in time to see him step to his left, pull the tent joint out, and poke around the rocks with it again.
“What are you finding?”
“What are you reading?” His voice is slightly strained. I watch the lantern light play on his back, making shadows as his muscles flex. I press my lips together.
Be careful.
“Why don’t I help?” I murmur, chewing at my lip.
“Stay there. If something did fall, I’d need you to doctor me, yeah?”
I rub my lips together again, noticing they sting. I take some gloss from my pack and spread it over them, and then, when I look up to find him standing in the same place, I return to the phone. It asks for the passcode in again, but that’s okay; I have a memory for numbers.
He moves around a bit, but I pay him no mind. I wonder why this little square is called “Kindle.” Does it feature forbidden books, the sort of books one might burn?
I press a small, square cover that says The Art of Power, and then glance up because I think he murmured something.
“Everything all right then?” I call.
“Fine.” He’s got his arms raised to the ceiling right beside the rubble pile. As I look at him, I realize he’s straining.
I jump up.
“Stay back!”
His arms are clearly braced against the ceiling right beside the rubble pile. “What happened?” I dash closer.
“Get back!”
As I step closer still, the ceiling caves in. It’s a blur, a shout from him, and then he’s lunging at me, dark rocks bouncing off his shoulders. I glimpse his face—wide-eyed and open-mouthed—before he sweeps me off my feet. I’m spirited away, my body pressed against his hard one as he tucks me to his chest and doesn’t let me go until we’re near the stream. When I look up, his head is down. Low panting fills my ears
. He looks up, blinking through a streak of blood that’s streaming from his forehead.
“You okay?” His eyes are intent on my face.
“You touched me.” It’s half laughed—hysteric-laughed—and in the darkness, I can see the strange look on his face. It’s not a smile and not a frown, but something in between. I realize I can’t tell for sure…because it’s pitch black dark.
Ten
Declan
Her mouth lolls open and her eyes bug out like a deer in headlights. Except of course, there’s no light here. I don’t know her well enough to know her tells, but I’m pretty sure she’s close to crying. Something she does with her mouth after she closes it…
“Hey…” My hand’s on her shoulder before I remember she said don’t touch her. I move it off her and step back a little. “The lantern must have gotten hit. We’re still okay.”
She shakes her head once, covering her face with both hands.
“I stuck that joint into a spot it didn’t fit, and that made things shift.” I pop my jaw as I look down on her bowed head. “Listen, I’m still gonna dig us out. You want to sit down, get the lantern up and running again, and you can watch me?”
“I lied!”
“What?”
She lifts her head, her face a twisted mess. “I lied about the tracker. No one knows where we are!”
I let out a slow breath. “I knew that.”
“You did?”
“There’s no GPS out here, Siren.”
She covers her face again, shaking her head. Then she looks up at me, her brows drawn together. “I was scared. Of being stuck in here with you.” Her voice cracks on the word, and I feel something tighten at the base of my throat.
“Fuck.” I blow a breath out. “I’m an ass, all right? Look—I know I was. I’m an ass sometimes—I try to be a nice guy—but that night, I was an ass. Nothing to do with you, just bullshit you walked in on. That shit’s over now, though. Asshole’s not my normal MO, like I said, and even if it was, you and me—this isn’t normal stuff. We’re stuck together in a fucking cave. What’s good for you is good for me. We need each other.”
