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I looked at her and forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“You seem distant.”
“It’s just been a lot, being out here. I don’t know what will happen, and that’s stressful.”
“It is,” Celine said. She glanced at me. “We’re okay, though, right?”
I nodded. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Fuck, now I was lying to her, too. The thing was, I couldn’t tell her what was going on. Not until I was sure we were okay. If I upset her now, rejected her, I risked getting her down, and I needed her to be in high spirits so we could get through this. It wasn’t just a matter of physically surviving—we had to be strong mentally, too.
Besides, if I told her now what was going on, we fought, and we decided to call the whole thing off, it was going to be awkward as fuck between us since we had no choice but to stick together.
It was better to hold on to this bubble we were existing in, to stick together and to get through this before I said anything serious or made any big decisions.
“We’re okay,” I said.
Celine nodded. She still looked unsure. Maybe she didn’t believe me. I just needed her to stay strong.
“Do you think the others are okay?” Celine asked.
“I have no idea. I hope so.”
“Would the tents have given them enough shelter?” she asked.
I nodded. “They’re waterproof, and unless something serious went wrong, they would have been fine. I hope they got out of there after the first storm let up.”
For a moment I wondered if something had happened to all of them, and they were all lost out there, with no one letting the authorities know we were missing. What if no one was looking for us because they just didn’t know?
My heart raced and my chest tightened. My stomach twisted into a knot of pure dread.
Stop it,I scolded myself. I couldn’t think that way. I had to focus on the positive and do what made sense. We had to keep moving until we found something that would help us—cell phone signal, another shelter, a trail.
Civilization.
I took deep breaths, in through my nose, held it in for three counts, and out through my mouth. I did it a couple of times.
I became aware of Celine watching me. She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask me if I was okay. She could see that I wasn’t. I tried to stay positive for her all the time, but it wasn’t always that easy.
She didn’t panic when I did, she didn’t freak out. Instead, she slipped her hand into mine and squeezed, giving me comfort, giving me support.
“We’ll be fine, Lorenzo,” she said. “We’ll get through this. It’s not raining right now, we have full stomachs and two days’ rest behind us. We have an abundance of water with all this rain.”
I smiled. She was doing for me what I’d been doing for her. She was being strong for me when I couldn’t be.
That was the quality I wanted in a partner, someone who would be there through the good times and the bad, who would laugh together but also be okay crying together.
Why was Celine so fucking amazing? How had I ended up in this mess?
“We’re just going to take this one step at a time, okay?” Celine added.
I nodded and put my arm around her, pulling her close for a second.
That was exactly how we were going to do it until we were forced to do it differently.
Right now, in this moment, we were together, alive, and making a point of staying that way. That was all that mattered. I’d think about the rest again when we got there.
21
CELINE
