“I was being brave,” he said, smiling. And I realized what it was that was different about his voice: he’d lost that little slur that the constant flow of booze had given him.
I gritted my teeth and stepped slowly in. “Oh, God, it’s slimy and mushy and—” I scrunched my face up. “Urgh!”
He gave me a patient smile and waited while I swung the other foot over and in. I started to squat down, the mud at least taking my mind off the embarrassment. I sank lower, lower—
“Ijustfeltsomethingslideovermyfoot!” I said in a strangled voice. “There are living things in here!”
“Try not to think about it,” he said. “Look, do you want to get rescued or don’t you?”
I slowly sank lower. The mud oozed and squelched around my upper thighs. There was an uncomfortable moment when it rose over the level of my panties—the forlorn hope that somehow they’d magically be waterproof and then the slow, cold realization that no, they really weren’t.
“It is impossible,” I said forlornly, “to feel grosser than this.” And then I sat down the rest of the way and felt the mud soak through my bra, and realized I’d been wrong.
Now that I was in, I realized how cold Adam must have been, sitting there waiting for me. The mud was soaking up my body heat, leaving my shivering. He must have the patience of a saint. Or he’d been too busy checking me out to notice.
“We should do our faces,” said Adam.
I looked at the mud and then at him. “You want me to put this stuff on my face?!” I asked incredulously.
He opened his mouth.
“If you say it’s like a mudpack, I will kill you,” I warned.
He closed his mouth. Then he said, “We have to. Your face will burn.”
I sighed, scooped up two handfuls of mud and looked at them. Lifted them slowly to my face….
I couldn’t. There was just something about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how this was basically muddy pond water.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Adam, and smooshed a huge gob of mud against one cheek.
I sat there in horror for a moment and then dived at him, spreading the two handfuls I had across his face. He laughed.
“Don’t,” I said, but it was too late. I could feel the giggles starting. And then we were laughing, scooping up handfuls of mud and plastering each other’s faces and necks and hair, the first time either of us had really relaxed since the storm. I felt the tension draining out of me and, when we finally stepped from the mud, being in my underwear in front of him didn’t seem quite so bad.
Chapter 11
Adam paced out the letters, and they were huge. It wasn’t just that the shapes had to be long. Each part of the letter had to be thick, as well—spindly was no good, if we wanted it to be seen. That meant filling in every part of every letter with something that contrasted with the sand.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of rocks, down by the waterline. Unfortunately, we had to make the letters far enough from the waterline that the tide wouldn’t get to them. That meant that every rock had to be fetched and carried by hand. It was back-breaking work.
“Four hundred and nine,” I said as we crossed paths. “Four hundred and nine rocks. Not that I’m counting.”
We hadn’t even finished the first “S”.
At least the mud seemed to work as promised. It dried on our skin and cracked a little, but it did stop the sun getting through. Given the heat, I was glad I’d stripped out of my dress. Being nearly naked wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, because the mud made it feel a little like I was still wearing clothes. Besides, there was no way Adam was going to be staring at me looking like this, right? It was the least sexy thing imaginable after chef’s whites. I mean, on Adam it looked good, the darkness of the mud enhancing the contours of his muscles. Especially on his abs, where I could now see every ridge and valley. But I was pretty sure I just looked a muddy mess.
At noon, we had to take a break and get out of the sun. We lay under a tree, sharing a bamboo pot of boiled water.
“They’ve got to have planes up there by now,” said Adam, gazing up at the sky. “All we need is for one pilot to see the sign. We’ll be back in civilization in twenty-four hours.”
“What do you miss most?” I asked.
“Air conditioning. You?”
“A faucet. Being able to just turn on a faucet and have a drink of water without having to schlep through the jungle. Or being able to have a shower. Running water in general.”
He thought for a moment. “Ice.”
“Ohhh, yeah. Ice is a good one.” I sighed. “Just think: tomorrow, we could be looking back on this. It’ll all be over.”
He went quiet
“What?” I asked.
He sighed. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“You’re covered in mud. We’re half-naked, trying to build SOS out of rocks. We’re both crazy. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m having fun,” he said slowly. “More fun than if I was back home.”
I twisted around to look at him. “You’re right.”
His eyes lit up. “You’re the same?”
“No, I do think you’re crazy.” I gave him a thump on the arm and a rush of heat went through me. That bicep was so thick and solid, and warm….
He looked around. “This is…better,” he said slowly.
I coughed. “Of course. I get it. We’re living on steamed fish and bananas, sleeping on the ground. How could a billionaire rock star lifestyle possibly compare?”
He looked out to the horizon again and, when he looked back, I caught my breath because there was something different in his eyes. Pain. Real pain. Not pain like mine, fresh and raw even after two years. More like a slow, agonizing death. I’d seen it before, somewhere. “There’s lots of people,” he said. “Lots of stuff. Houses and cars and people kissing up to you.” The words were coming up from deep inside, and it sounded as if dragging out each one was like pulling jagged glass from his wounds. “But it doesn’t—It’s not—It’s just bullshit, luv. It doesn’t matter. And that’s alright, because I never did it for all that stuff. I did it for the music. To be with the rest of the lads.”
“But you still have that, right?” I asked quietly. “I mean, you could forget all the rest of it and still just write great songs and—”
“Let’s get back to it,” he said. “Do you want the ‘O’ or the ‘S’?”
He tried to look away, but I managed to catch his eyes one more time. I felt as if we were on the verge of something. He still had that look, and suddenly I knew where I’d seen it before. It was a photo of a tiger, locked up in a tiny cage in a zoo.
“The ‘O’,” he said, standing. “You can take the ‘O’.” He walked off.
***
We worked all afternoon. I silently cursed him for giving me the ‘O’ when clearly, clearly, the ‘S’ had less surface area. I thought about what I’d seen, that glimpse of the real Adam. It didn’t appear again—in fact, the few times we did speak, he seemed to go out of his way to be as loud and jokey as possible.
When we eventually stopped, there was only an hour of sunlight left. We’d somehow skipped lunch, both too stubborn to stop work until it was done.
But we had our sign. Our “SOS” was stark and unmissable, even from miles in the sky. I felt ridiculously proud of it.
“We can wash off, now,” Adam said. “Sun’s almost down. We might as well feel clean for a few hours.” And he ran into the sea.
I was only a few steps behind him.
We both whooped as we hit the water. It was sun-warm and perfect, and we both dived beneath the surface, the mud washing off in seconds. When we surfaced, just a few feet from each other, it was a shock. I’d gotten so used to seeing him plastered in mud, that to see him clean and perfect was a jolt. Those heavy, brooding brows. The elegantly-sculpted nose. The full lower lip that I wanted to nibble on. Drops of saltwater beaded on his cheeks and I wanted to kiss each one of them away, slowly
and carefully. His stubble had grown darker and thicker over the last few days and, if anything, it looked even better that way.
I pushed a lock of wet hair out of my face and trod water, staring at him. It was only then that it hit me that he was staring back at me.
I didn’t glance down at myself—I couldn’t, I felt almost hypnotized by his gaze. But I was aware of the water lapping around the tops of my breasts, of the way they were bouncing softly with the waves. His eyes didn’t seem to be on them, though. They were on my face, locked on my eyes, full of fire once more….
I dived beneath the surface and kicked for the shore again, before something happened. When I surfaced, I shouted over my shoulder, “Last one back has to kill the fish.”
***
As I emerged from the sea, I realized I had a problem. My wet bra and panties were basically translucent. They’d dry quickly in the sun, but until then, everything was on show. I could put my dress on, but then it would be wet.
The hell with it. He’d just have to be a gentleman and avert his eyes.
Yes, that’s what I told myself.
Even without the transparency issue, I was also in my underwear. The mud, I realized, had made a big difference. I hadn’t felt naked. Now I did...and yet, weirdly, I didn’t feel as uncomfortable as when I’d stripped down to go in the mud. In fact, alongside the embarrassment, there was just a hint of….
My mind went back to the yacht, and the night of Adam’s birthday, and the stripper. And the fantasy I’d had, back in my cabin. I felt myself flush.
When Adam caught up with me, I was kneeling by the fire, getting it going again. My thighs were demurely pressed together, although I couldn’t do anything about the see-through bra. He probably won’t even notice, I told myself. He probably won’t even—
He stood over me, and I felt his eyes burning straight into my breasts, fixed on the circles of pink revealed by the wet fabric. I swallowed.
“I’ll go and catch dinner,” he said. And completely failed to move away.
“Yes,” I said. “You go do that.”
He stayed where he was.
“Go fish,” I said pointedly.
With a last, lingering look, he moved away. Outrageous, I thought. How dare he! But it was a weak sort of outrage, lying limply on top of the heat that was building within.
***
Dinner was a sizable fish each, followed by bananas. “The first thing I’m eating, when we get home,” I said. “Is steak. A good, big, juicy steak.”
“And a cold beer,” said Adam.
I looked pityingly at him. “With wine,” I corrected. “Maybe a Malbec from Argentina.” I shifted position, getting comfortable, and suddenly let out a yelp of pain. “Oww! My shoulders have seized up.”
“I know,” he said. “Mine are the same. This is what a day’s hard labor does to us. I could give you a back rub, if you’ll do mine.”
It went very quiet. I tried to think of a reasonable excuse to say no, and couldn’t think of one. “Okay,” I said slowly. “Y—”
“You first,” he cut in, getting there a millisecond ahead of me. I scooted around to sit in front of him and he stretched out his legs on either side of me, his thighs warm around my hips. Was it me, or had he sounded...eager?
Then his hands descended on my shoulders and I forgot all my protests. My muscles were like rubber bands that had gone tough and rigid as old shoe leather. But he had exactly the right sort of hands for massage, powerful yet tender. I gritted my teeth against the grinding tension, but at the same time it felt wonderful.
“Ughhh,” I managed.
“Bad ughhh or good ughhh?” he asked.
“Good ughhh.” I arched my back as he hit a tender spot. And then, because I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d glimpsed earlier, “Why did Eddie pack you off on a yacht anyway?”
His fingers slowed, but didn’t stop. “I had an...episode.”
“Like a breakdown?”
“No,” he said tersely. “Not a breakdown. I was in New York with Magnus and Midnight, trying out a few new tunes. And it went…wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I stormed out. And got in my car and just sort of drove…”
“Drove?” Then I remembered what I’d seen on the internet and put two and two together. “Wait, you drove to Mexico? You drove all the way from New York to Mexico?!”
He nodded.
“That would have taken you days!”
“Less than two. I put my foot down. Also, I didn’t sleep.”
“You didn’t sleep for two days? How did you stay awake? Wait—I don’t want to know.”
He hung his head. “Yeah, it was…a bit stupid.”
“A bit stupid?! You were doing a hundred and forty when they caught you! You could have killed somebody!”
He looked shamefaced. “I know. But do you know what the bad part is? I had fun. That drive, breaking the rules…I had fun. Because it was real. Get it?”
I shook my head “No.”
“Everything’s plastic, Hannah! It’s all bullshit designer fucking glossed over, sanitized, made-up bullshit, like I’m trapped in a little box where I can’t touch anything anymore. Everyone’s kissing up to us and nodding and smiling and telling us we’re great. No one tells us the truth anymore.” He sighed. “It’s not like it was at the start. Reg always used to be honest with us.”
“Reg?”
“Our first manager, before Eddie. I—we had a falling out.”
“But you’ve still got the music, right? You’re still great at what you do.”
He said nothing.
“Right?” I pressed. “You’ve still—”
“I can’t write,” he cut in.
“You can’t…what?!”
“I haven’t written anything new in a year. I’m dried up. Finished. We’ve used up all the old material we have. The rest of the band’s all looking to me and I’ve got nothing to give them.”
I pressed my lips together. “Maybe you just need a holiday. Is that part of why Eddie sent you away on your own? To rest up and be…inspired?”
Adam nodded sadly. “But it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I don’t need yachts and fancy food—no offense, luv—and all that stuff. None of it’s…real. I wrote all my best stuff back when it was just us guys in the back of a van, playing pubs in Britain. That was real. Life felt real.” And then he looked at me, very intensely, and suddenly my heart was in my mouth. “And back then, if I met someone….”
I swallowed.
A rumble of thunder, huge and majestic in the open sky. We both looked up into the darkening sky; I couldn’t see it at first—that was how it had crept up on us. But then there was a flash of lightning and I saw the dark storm clouds.
Adam jumped up. “If it rains, the fire’ll go out. We need to be ready to light another one, in case a plane flies over in the night. We need to keep some stuff dry.”
No! I thought. Finish what you were going to say! But he was already gathering wood, his back turned. I was left staring at him, thinking hard. Was that what it was all about—the booze and the drugs and the being packed off on vacation on his own? Had he really just lost his edge, and he was trying to find it again? And how the hell was I going to help him?
Because that’s one thing I was sure about. I wanted to help him. That fluttering in my chest that kept starting up, now, whenever he gave me one of those looks—that was becoming a permanent feature. When I’d first met him, I thought he was a jerk. Now I knew he was in pain, I wanted to help…but what could I offer him? I flushed. Me? Starting something with him would be the worst idea ever. He didn’t know how broken I was inside. He’d want a nice, simple, one-off thing, and then I’d feel used and blame him and it wouldn’t even be his fault. It’d be my fault for keeping those wounds Nathan had left for so long, instead of letting them heal.
I knew the best thing—the safest thing—was to keep on how we were: at arm’s length. But I was starting to feel that that w
asn’t an option, either. It felt as if we were careening towards something, out of control.
I took a deep breath and went to help him gather wood.
Chapter 12
We built a big pile well under the trees, where it wouldn’t get wet. Then Adam used one of my knives to scrape kindling from the fluffy interior of a broken branch. When he had a good handful of fluffy scrapings, he dug a shallow hole under the trees and filled it with kindling, then covered it with a rock.
And then he carefully lifted his guitar from the lifeboat, wrapped it in the tarpaulin and placed it lovingly on a rock. I shook my head, bemused.
“That’s a million quid guitar,” he told me.
“You paid a million dollars for a guitar?”
“Pounds, not dollars. No, I paid about fifty quid for it, ten years ago. But it’s been with me ever since. I take it everywhere. I don’t even use it on stage, to keep it safe, I just use it to strum on and think with. Adam Sykes’s personal guitar. That’d easily be worth a million quid at auction.”
An hour after sunset, the storm was on top of us. The rain came down at first with a gentle patter and then with a brutal hiss, slamming into the sand hard and fast enough that the surface ran with water. A fierce wind whipped the rain sideways, making it impossible to find shelter anywhere—we got wet even under the trees. The temperature dropped steadily, until I started to get goose bumps. All of a sudden, I felt an arm wrap around my shoulders, a warm hand cup my shoulder.
I glanced sideways at him, about to ask him what he was doing. But the hand felt so good—not just the warmth, but feeling someone there in the gathering darkness. I stayed quiet.
It went on for hours, the cold wind chilling us and enough of the rain making it through the tree cover to soak us. I was aware that my dress was plastered to my body, and the white bra and panties I had on underneath didn’t provide much modesty, either. Luckily, the darkness threw me mostly into shadow. But the darkness brought its own problems. I could feel myself tensing up, my breathing getting labored and panicky. I started glancing over my shoulder into the jungle every few moments. With the white noise of the rain confusing my ears and the darkness all around, my mind started playing tricks on me. I was in a featureless black void, with no way out—
Shipwrecked with the Billionaire Rock Star Page 8
