Page 72 of The Unfluencer

“Yeah?” Her voice comes out shaky, low.

With seatbelts cutting off circulation to our lower halves, white-knuckled grips, and bright yellow oxygen masks now dangling between us, I lean in. So does she. Almost like curiosity’s gotten the best of her, because what could I possibly say in this moment? What tender last words could I come up with? I’m so sorry this is the way it ends? Sorry about your life? Or I know I said two days, but actually, I meant eternal damnation?

No, no, maybe only in proximity to impending doom am I ready to tell her that she’s exactly who I’d have chosen for my second chance at once-in-a-lifetime love.

Figures.

Only, it doesn’t.

Because I don’t say anything.

The inches between us dissolve. And then we touch. With only our lips. Brushing lightly, at first. But the spark catches quickly, sudden and fierce, like tinder scraping on the surface, and I can’t hold back. Her mouth is warm and eager, so intense, setting off a fuse in me that surges over my skin, singeing every vein and vessel, until I’m overheating from the inside out.

She moans softly, her full, pillowy lips against my low growls as we fall into hungry, open-mouthed kisses, so desperately insatiable, like we can’t get enough.

The way she’s so breathlessly devouring me, tongue searching, tasting, exploring… My body’s distress-signaling.

Mayday, mayday. Brace for impact!

She steals my air, leaving me spent and lit up from the inside with something dangerously close to… feelings.

How hard can two days on this island be?

Apparently, the universe took that as a challenge. Twenty-four hours later, Whitney and I are somehow alive on Clover Cay to tell the tale—just, apparently, not to each other.

Somewhere between lodging my tongue in Whitney’s throat and the great belly landing, my fight-or-flight instincts sent me into hiding. Because, really, what’s there to say to explain my end-of-the-line thought process? I thought I was dying, sorry?

Absolutely not.

As it stands, my plan, day one of the wager, all of it, has basically gone to hell in a handbasket. She stayed holed up in her first-floor guest room through lunch and dinner yesterday, and I’ve been avoiding that entire wing of the estate.

Which is why it’s semi-bright and early Saturday morning that I’m hiding on the second floor of the library, pacing and, once again, trying to figure out how to deal with the consequences of my unhinged actions to get this trip back on track.

Or, at least, that’s what I was trying to work out when my estate manager, Nacheline, found me near the collector’s editions shelves, and proceeded to pry the whole story out of me.

Fine. She asked once, and instead of sparing her the info dump and calling the tele-therapist I pay for sound advice—because I’m too embarrassed to admit I started this stupid hit-it-and-quit-it wager with Cord—I word-vomited everything.

So, yeah… here I am.

“Lord, and then what happened?” She’s all ears and hush-hush whispers, peeking into the hallway, taking her lookout duties seriously.

So far, I’ve brought Nacheline up to speed on the Artery’s interest in Sherry’s collection, the Restroom Rendezvous—which, unsurprisingly, the way clickbait journalism works these days, she already knew about—all the way up until the moment the captain announced we’d be sliding into home, and Whitney and I were knocking on death’s door. And she’s regaled me with three childhood stories, shared two memes, and interrupted me a minimum twenty times.

We’re getting there, though.

I really need more guy friends to unpack my life disasters without judgment.

But for now, she’ll have to do, since she’s the only person around that I didn’t accidentally kiss in a near-death panic.

What the hell were you thinking, Warner?

“Honestly, I thought that was it.” I clasp my fingers behind my head, looking at her, even though my mind’s back on that terrifying flight. When did my life turn into a knockoff Indiana Jones movie? “You know how people always talk about an out-of-body experience? It was kind of like that, only…”

I breathe in a lungful of air.

Everything’s still so vivid. The panic. The fear, in slow motion, prickling over my ice-cold skin. That strange calm I felt, grappling with my demise.

I actually accepted my fate.