“So what’s first on the to-do list?” I asked, looking up at the sky, visible now, in the clearing. It had taken us a good chunk of the day to find the waterfall. A huge part of me wanted to dive right into those cerulean waters, but I knew there were more important things we should be doing right now than bathing.
“I’d love to start looking for food,” Jake said, tearing his gaze from the water to look at me, “but we should start on the shelter. I’d like some sort of protection before night falls.”
I nodded in agreement, then stepped back into the shade of the forest with him. Here was where we’d make camp, under the canopy of the towering trees.
Like we’d done this a million times before, Jake and I started collecting palm fronds and small branches. Jake frowned as we were working, then told me, “I’d love to cut down some of these smaller trees, use them as floorboards, but . . . no tools. Not even a pocketknife. I feel so incredibly unprepared. It’s a new feeling for me, and I can’t say I like it.”
I gave him a soft smile, loving that little detail about him. I hadn’t realized he had the heart of a Boy Scout. “It’s okay. There’s no way you could have been prepared for . . . what happened.”
There was no way any of us could have been prepared for the intensity of the storm. Flashes of all the people who hadn’t made it off the boat flickered through my mind. So many had died. I wondered how many of them had family who would be mourning them, just as our family would mourn us. God . . . Mom, Dad . . . Kylie.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I froze in place, hands still full of palm fronds. Jake noticed. “Hey,” he said, his voice soft. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” I asked, tears rolling off my skin.
“Replay their deaths. Think about the people they left behind. Think about the people we’ve left behind. Whatever it is that you’re doing that’s making you emotional. That won’t help us right now, okay?”
Exhaling all the air in my lungs, I nodded, then wiped my cheeks dry. He was right; it still wasn’t time to mourn. We had too much to do. It was beginning to feel like we always would.
It took us the rest of the remaining daylight, but eventually we had enough leaves and moss that we were able to make a floor big enough for two. We placed all the greenery under a tree that had fallen during a storm and landed in the crook of another nearby tree, forming a natural ridgepole. We searched the jungle for broken branches and were lucky enough to find a dozen or so that we could use as supports for the sides of our lean-to. We drove two sturdy ones into the ground at the opening of our shelter, then used small vines to secure the other poles parallel to the inclined fallen tree. After that, we began tying on the palm fronds. When we were done, I was shocked at how cozy our new home was, and as I lay down inside it, exhaustion immediately overtook me.
Jake sat beside me. The light was fading as the day came to a close, and what remained of the sun was hidden from us by the canopy of trees and the tight packing of our palm-frond ceiling. Even still, there was enough light that I could make out his features. He was gorgeous in the twilight, and the fact that we were essentially in a bed together made nervous anticipation radiate through me. My pulse quickened as I watched him. He, however, seemed . . . pensive.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s not the shelter, is it? Because this place is amazing, all things considered.”
He nodded, but he still looked displeased. “It will do for now, but eventually we’ll need something more . . . permanent.”
Right. Permanent. Because we could be here a very long time. Maybe for the rest of our lives.
Jake sighed as he lay down on our grassy bed. “I’ll have to work on building some tools soon. Breaking rocks until they’re sharp, tying them to branches . . . really primitive stuff. God, that’s gonna suck. I miss my power tools already.”
His comment made me smile, but it quickly fell off my face as my stomach seized in hunger. “I would give anything for some food right about now.”
Jake turned his head to look at me, his eyebrows bunched in concern. “Me too. Tomorrow. We’ll go scrounging for food tomorrow. Tonight, let’s just try to rest . . . and not think about it.”
“Sure, no problem.” I’d never been this hungry in all my life, so naturally, all I could think about was food. But honestly, the physical pain—the cracked lips, the sunburned skin, the bugbites and scratches, the hollow stomach and fatigued muscles—it was all nothing compared to the emotional and psychological damage I was dealing with. “Did you ever in your life picture this happening?” I quietly asked.
Jake gave me a crooked grin. It was oddly playful, considering what I’d just asked him. “Barely surviving a shipwreck and being stranded on an island for who knows how long? No, never crossed my mind. What about you? Ever imagine this happening?”
I shook my head, then sighed. “Maybe once or twice. I’ve always had a bit of an irrational fear about boats.” Looking over at him, I shrugged. “I might have lied about being comfortable on them. And not getting sick. I was tripling up on Dramamine, just to make it through.”
Jake smiled at my admission, making butterflies dance around my stomach. “Why did you take the job, then?”
“Like you said when you told me, it was too good of an experience to miss. Sometimes you have to leap in, no matter how scared you are.” I frowned at my analogy. Probably not the most appropriate one to be making right now, considering what had just happened to us. Jake only smiled at me, though, understanding what I’d meant, even if I’d said it awkwardly.
Silence blanketed us, broken only by the sound of croaking frogs and singing crickets.
“Do you think anyone will come looking for us?” I whispered.
Jake sighed as he stared off into the night. “I don’t know. I’m sure they’ll look for Mr. Thomas, but once they find the wreckage, I don’t know that they’ll comb the islands looking for survivors. They’ll assume we died along with everyone else, and we’ll be chalked up to two more people swept away by the current. With all the evidence pointing to us being dead, why would they endlessly search for our bodies?”
The reality of our situation began weighing me down. He was right. We could have drifted hundreds of miles away from the wreck site, and this part of the ocean was teeming with small islands. Even if someone wanted to—and why would they if they believed we were dead?—they wouldn’t be able to search every island. “Kylie . . . she’s going to think . . .” That we were both dead.
Jake let out a weary exhale, and his expression turned grim. “Yeah . . . I know.”
How long would she mourn Jake before she moved on? God, here I was worried about my sister, but it was Jake who was truly going to suffer. I would never lose Kylie, no matter how long we were stuck here, but Jake . . . eventually Kylie would accept that he was gone and find someone else. He had a limited amount of time to return to her. Assuming we ever got off this rock.
“We’re doomed, aren’t we?” I murmured, feeling utterly defeated.
Jake gave me a half grin that he often used when he was trying to be optimistic. “No . . . not doomed. Maybe we’re within sight of the shipping lanes. Maybe we’ll get lucky and catch the eye of someone close enough to see us.”
“And how do we do that?” I asked, incredulous. “Wave our arms?”
His small grin turned into a wide one. “No, we do it the same way people have been doing it for centuries. Fire and smoke. Tomorrow we’ll go down to the beach and search for a good place to set up a bonfire beacon; then every day we’ll light it . . . and hopefully we’ll get lucky.”
His sanguinity was adorable, but I was having a hard time sharing in it at the moment. “There’s an awful lot of luck and hope involved in your strategy.”
“Because that’s how we’ll get out of here. Luck, hope . . . and maybe a little faith.”
Feeling weary for multiple reasons, I turned my head to stare at the underside of the tree branch extending over our heads. “I don’t know that I b
elieve in any of those things right now.”
“You will. One day.”
“And we’ll probably still be here when I do believe again.” Where his voice was soft and hopeful, mine was bleak and sarcastic.
Refusing to let my pessimism daunt him, he cheerily said, “At least we’ll be together.”
“That might not be a blessing either,” I said, twisting to face him again. Every day my feelings for him were going to become stronger, more tangled around my heart. Resisting him was going to be torture. “You know how things are between us. How . . . weird . . . we can get.”
Jake shook his head. “Whatever happened between us before doesn’t matter now. It’s a blessing we’re together, Valerie. A miracle. And I’m so glad that I was able to save you. I can’t imagine doing all of this alone. I can’t imagine the thought of you being . . . gone.” His smile slipped as that bleak thought filled him, and his eyes shimmered with pain.
Reaching out, I grabbed his hand; he wrapped his fingers around mine, holding me just as tightly as I held him. “Yeah . . . and it goes without saying, but I’m glad you saved me too. I honestly thought I was going to die down there.”
His eyes flicked between mine. Grief on his face, he said, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save Chef. I swear I wanted to, but I knew he was . . .”
“I know,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “And I understand why you didn’t. It’s okay.”
His eyes drifted to the ceiling of our makeshift tent. “Letting someone die will never be okay with me.”
The pain on his face hurt my soul. While I’d had to watch Chef die, Jake had had to make the terrible choice of not helping him. “Maybe not,” I said, my voice soft and soothing. “But if you’d stopped to try and save him, we’d both be dead with him right now. It’s a hard truth, but it’s still the truth. You made the right call.”
He shifted his eyes to look at me again; they were torn with pain and guilt. As much hope and faith as Jake was holding on to, he was holding on to a lot of baggage too. My hope was that he’d somehow find a way to release it and forgive himself. And that I could keep denying the urge to kiss away his guilt.
I woke up the next morning feeling so hungry I was nauseous. In fact, I was so sick to my stomach that food no longer sounded appetizing. It was similar to being so tired I couldn’t sleep, only worse: I was so starved I couldn’t eat. But unlike being overexhausted, I could force food down my throat, and I would if it came to that. Eating was too important. Of course, eating at all depended on finding food.
The space beside me was vacant when I came to full alertness. The idea of being completely alone here—lost and isolated on a deserted island—made my insides quiver with fear. I could feel panic begin to creep along the edges of my brain, trying to immobilize me, but I forced reason to override the crippling emotion. I wasn’t alone. Jake was here, somewhere.
Sitting up, I listened for him in the camp, and sure enough, I heard branches snapping and leaves rustling. Poking my head out of the shelter of palm fronds, I saw Jake returning to the camp from somewhere deeper in the woods. Feeling aches in places I hadn’t even known could hurt, I climbed out of the shelter to join him in the crisp morning air. He smiled as I reached his side, and a rush of joy and relief coursed through me, comforting me. It took everything I had to resist throwing my arms around him.
“So,” he said, glancing back at where he’d left a clear trail through the underbrush. “I figured things would be a whole lot less awkward if we had our own private bathrooms.”
“Private?” I asked, my lips curling into a mischievous grin. Privacy out here was a misleading idea. Sure, as far as we knew, we were the only ones on this island, but we couldn’t exactly build a restroom with a door. And I really wished we could. This was going to be a misery for me, a hundred times worse than the boat. I kept that fact from my face, though—no reason to make any of this harder than it already was.
Jake chuckled at my question. “As private as I could out here.” Pointing, he indicated the trail. “Follow that path for a bit until it forks. The left side is the ladies’ room, the right side the men’s. I tried to make them far enough apart that we wouldn’t be able to see each other if we . . .” Frowning, he let that thought die.
I was touched that he’d even gone to that extreme, and I had a feeling it was more for my benefit than it was for his. In my experience, most men had no problems when it came to doing their business outside. It was almost a point of pride. “Thank you. That’s actually a huge relief. I was a little stressed about it. Although I was going to play it off and try to be cool, because in the grand scheme of things, we’ve got much bigger problems.”
A sigh escaped me as I examined our poor sunburned, malnourished bodies. There was so much we didn’t have, starting with shoes, ending with any sort of tool. But we’d made it this far and even built a pretty decent shelter. We’d figure out the rest. We had to.
Jake ducked down to look me in the eye. “I’m going to work on tools right now. We’re going to find food today, Valerie. I promise you.”
The sincerity and fierceness in his jade eyes stole my breath, made my heart pound. I completely believed him. He was going to find us something to eat or die trying. I really hoped it didn’t come to that last extreme. His death meant my own; I was sure of it. And just like he couldn’t picture me gone, I couldn’t picture him gone either. I didn’t even want to. Thank God he’d made it off the boat. Thank God he’d come back for me.
After I used the island’s “facilities,” I headed back to camp to help Jake with tools. He wasn’t there, but he’d left an arrow of sticks pointing in the direction of the waterfall. Beside it was a bunch of small rocks forming a smiley face. So cute. Laughing to myself, I followed the trampled brush leading to our plentiful source of water.
I found Jake sitting on a rock at the edge of the waterfall pool. He had a bunch of sticks and rocks around him, and he was staring at them as if willing them to turn themselves into tools he could use to save us.
“Any luck?” I asked, sitting on a rock beside him.
Shaking his head, he looked down at the mess he’d collected around his feet. “I know I’ve said this before, but I’d give anything for a knife.”
I gave him a consolatory half smile, then examined what he’d found. Most of the rocks were just standard round rocks, but there was one that looked to have had some recent trouble. It had a deep split on the side, and a chunk looked like it was a hairsbreadth from snapping off. “What about this? If you get that edge off, it might be sharp enough to cut.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said.
He grabbed the rock and went to work on breaking it into two pieces. Leaving him to his task, I headed over to the waterfall to soothe my parched throat. I couldn’t stop watching him, though; the way his body moved was mesmerizing. Jake was lean in a fit, healthy way. His arms were clearly defined, like he used them often.
I studied Jake’s form until finally the rock came apart in his hands. He stared at the pieces, a little dumbfounded, then thrust both hands into the air in victory. “Yes! Finally!”
His glee was contagious, and I giggled as he twisted to look at me, still standing in the water. Our eyes met, and some of the joy I felt began twisting into something else. Something a lot more primal. It didn’t help anything that Jake was breathing more heavily from the exertion of breaking the rock. He was slightly sweaty, and as he wiped his brow, I suddenly wanted him to join me in the water.
I was picturing him dropping the rocks, stripping off his shirt, exposing his glorious set of abs, then walking out to the water, gripping me tight, and drawing me in for a kiss that would leave me weak in the knees. My breath hitched in anticipation as my fantasy escalated, and I was a little shocked at how badly I wanted it to happen.
That was when I finally noticed that the real-life Jake was eyeing me with a strange expression on his face. “What?” he asked, brows bunched in confusion.
Not wanting to admi
t just how steamy my thoughts had gotten, I averted my eyes and shrugged. “Nothing, just wondering . . . what now?” I asked, peeking back at him.
While Jake frowned and looked at his rocks, I tried to set my body straight. Not him. He was Kylie’s, and once we left here, they would continue being together. They would get married, have children, build a life together . . . because that was what Kylie deserved. I needed to stop thinking about him romantically and focus on what really mattered—finding food. Actual physical sustenance.
Still examining his broken rock, Jake sat back down on his stone seat. “I think I can make this work,” Jake said, glancing over his shoulder. “Thank you for the idea.”
Smiling, hoping I didn’t look flushed, I walked out of the water to help him with the next step, whatever that might be.
As it turned out, the next step was making multipronged spears. Jake was able to use the sharp stone to saw off some bamboo branches. Then he made cuts in the top, which I made wider by shoving twigs deep into the cracks and then tying them into place with long leaves. Within no time at all, we had four of the pointy spears.
“Ready to go fishing?” Jake asked, a pleased smile on his face.
“Hell yes,” I answered.
Jake helped me to my feet, and then the two of us made our way to the ocean. We didn’t take the same route we’d used when we’d first arrived. Instead, we traveled up to the top of the waterfall to see if we could get the lay of the land. Once we were at a much higher vantage point, we could see that the island was longer than it was wide, and the southerly route we’d taken to get up here was about three times as far as the beach to the west. That excited me. We were much closer to the ocean than I’d realized.
When we got down to the water, we saw that the beach here was an isolated cove. It was idyllic, like something taken right out of a travel magazine. High green hills on either side sheltered a bay of water that was the perfect shade of clean turquoise; it was so pure that I could clearly see the ocean floor for hundreds of feet around me. The beach itself was a sheet of pristine white sand, devoid of rocks and driftwood. A vacationer’s dream location, and it was right in our backyard. A part of me couldn’t believe that this picture-perfect beauty was ours—and only ours—for the foreseeable future. It was so flawless it was almost unreal. This was definitely my new favorite spot.
Something Like Perfect Page 9
