Page 10 of Redemption Island

“I’ll…” I didn’t know what to say, letting my voice falter. I’ll see you around seemed a little blasé for what we’d both just been through.

“Thank you,” she whispered without removing her eyes from the open window. I continued to stare at her after she spoke.

Ask me to stay, I thought, wondering where the question came from. It wasn’t that her place was better than mine, but that I didn’t want to walk away and leave her unprotected. Saving her life had made me feel strangely obsessed with protecting her.

Without further acknowledging me, I left.

By the time I entered my tent, I was irritated. My journal lay open, pages bent on the floor of my flimsy housing and I swiped it up in my agitation.

You ruined my life, I’d written. The statement made me pause. Had she? I wanted to lay blame on Rick, on her. If she hadn’t killed him, the tape would have never been revealed. The video was evidence of what he’d done to her, and I became an accomplice. If she’d kept her mouth shut like she promised, neither of us would be on this island and Rick would be alive. I don’t know why she had to kill him. Threaten him, yes—many women had done that before. Scream at him, definitely. Slap him, like she smacked me. He might have laughed in her face. But kill him? I shook my head. That had been extreme.

I stared at the words I’d written.

Knowing she nearly died from that snake made me think. That reptile acted on instinct. While it was ready to make Juliet his dinner, she was his source of survival. Her fear fueled his desire to have her. Her innocence made her an easy hunt. Rick Fontaine had been a hunter—he preyed on the weak. Hadn’t he done the same thing? He thrived on the capture, but why Juliet? The answer was simple: she refused him, and it drove his desire to conquer. Had Juliet reacted to him in her own sense of survival? Had she killed him before being killed, as is the nature of animals? Was she that base? Was I?

I sat with a thump on my mattress which was covered by a sleeping bag and a sheet. Sleeping on a pallet only inches from the ground was nothing like the luxury of her bed. This was part of my punishment—stepping back to basics and living without things. But Garvey had told me it was deeper than giving up items.

“Circle justice was a way of practice for my people. If you commit a crime, you must make things whole again. If you killed a dog, you might need to adopt a puppy or work at an animal shelter.”

“I didn’t kill a damn dog,” I argued, and he scowled at me like I was an imbecile.

“You must decide why you harmed and then what you plan to do about it to make things better.”

I scoffed at the idea. I didn’t do anything, I argued. I didn’t need to make anything better. This was her fault. She needed to make things better for me.

Everything had been done by Rick, but the judge didn’t see it that way, and I’d taken the deal only to avoid jail time. I didn’t want to become someone’s bitch. But what Garvey said made a bit of sense.

He’d muttered something about what you do to the animals you do to yourself. I didn’t understand his meaning, but witnessing the snake attacking Juliet changed things. Why did it want to harm her? Strangely, I understood Rick. He had a desire to possess, but I didn’t know where the root of that obsession came from. I didn’t know where it came from in me, and because of that, I had no answer as to how I’d make things whole. Did I owe Rick or Juliet? Rick was dead. I couldn’t bring him back. My chest ached at the thought that if the snake killed Juliet, I would not be able to repair her, either.

12

Day 28 - Tack

I opened the flap to my tent to find Juliet sitting on the shore facing out toward the sea. For days, I’d been to her tree house, pacing under the landing like a lovesick Romeo, silently sending out pleas for her to drop the ladder and let me up. Maybe that chick with the long hair was a better analogy. Juliet seemed to lock herself in a tower and was refusing to see me.

Sitting on the white sand outside my tent seemed strangely unnatural as if she didn’t belong here with me. I shook my head. The thought made no sense. I walked to where she sat and plopped down next to her. My feet stretched forward and my hands fell back, giving me the casual appearance of a man at the beach. I stared out at the water, waiting for her to speak.

And I was ready to come out of my skin because it had been four days since I’d seen her. Her silence unnerved me. Taking a side glance, I noticed she looked tired. Deep purple bags hung under her eyes. Her knees were brought upward, but her arms casually wrapped around her shins.

“You have a better view than me.” It wasn’t what I expected her to say, and I chuckled.

“Yeah, well, that’s all that Daddy could get me.”

She huffed. “Must be nice to have a dad who cares.”

“Oh, don’t mistake his insistence for concern for my comfort.” The sarcasm dripped from my lips, but I didn’t want to discuss my father with her.

She nodded, slightly rocking her body with the dip of her head. “You have a tent like a prince on safari,” she teased with a touch of bitterness.

“You’re the one with the condo tree house,” I mocked, allowing the sudden irritation to take over my relief at seeing her on my beach.

“That’s what you get when you have no one.” This brought me up short and I looked directly at her—the curve of her nose, the sleek lines of her neck, and the slope of her shoulders.

“What do you mean no one?”

“What does no one typically mean?” she bit, rolling her neck to face me. Her eyes looked hollow, the irises too bright. I scooped my hand through the fine grains of sand to prevent me from touching her and looked away.

“That sucks,” I muttered. As much as I hated my father and his intrusion into my life, I had to admit he’d been there for me. He provided me with a home. He paid for my education. We had food on our table. I didn’t want for anything. I hadn’t wanted until recently.