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“I thought we could use the protein!”
He wrapped his arm around me and squeezed me close to his body. “We definitely could,” he said. “It is so hot that you did this.”
I grinned—I’d thought he was criticizing me. “You think so?”
“I wouldn’t have even thought to try it. You’re amazing.”
“Do you know how to cook it? I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, I can clean a fish,” he said. “Come on, let’s get the fire going.”
Half an hour later, the fire was blazing, and the fish was scaled and steaming on a hot rock. Jake divided the fish in two and pushed half toward me. “Breakfast is served,” he said with a grin.
I grabbed some fish meat and shoved it into my mouth. It was funny, but this was the best-tasting meal I thought I’d ever had in my life.
I tried to eat slowly and savor my food, but I was hungrier than I had realized, and all too soon, the fish was gone. I lay back on the sand and digested, wishing there was more, worrying about how hard it had been to catch that meal and how little food it had provided.
Survival wasn’t going to be easy.
“Hey,” Jake said, looking over at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just… stressed.”
“We’re going to be fine,” he told me. “We’re probably going to be rescued today.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, probably. Why don’t you stay here and get some sun while I go check out the plane?”
“Are you sure you don’t need help with that?”
“Better that I go alone.”
“If you don’t think it’s safe for me, doesn’t that mean it’s not safe for you too?”
“It’s safe,” he said. “It’s just going to be tricky to navigate, and it’ll be harder if I have to worry about making sure we’rebothsafe. Trust me, I’ll do better if I go on my own. I’ll see what I can salvage. You get some rest if you can. You didn’t sleep much last night.”
There was no way I could possibly rest. Once he’d walked off, I got up and went back down to the water.
It would make a decent food source. This morning had been proof of that. And even though the idea of having to hunt for food stressed me out, a big part of me was very proud of what I had accomplished. The way Jake had looked at me when he’d seen that fish…
He had never looked at me like that before.
He’d looked at me dismissively countless times, and lately, he’d been looking at me with desire, but this was different. It was as if he recognized something valuable in me. It felt like he was genuinely impressed with me.
I hadn’t known I could make him feel that way, and I loved that I had.
It made me want to impress him again.
By the time he got back from the plane—he was carrying a disappointingly small amount of stuff, just a few water bottles and some blankets—I’d begun dragging palm fronds into a pile. He watched me for a moment, saying nothing.
I brushed off my hands on the hem of the shirt I wore. “I thought maybe we could build a shelter,” I said.
“You don’t want to spend another night in the cave?”
“I mean, not if we have a choice. It’s like you said. We can’t have a fire in there, and it would be better if we could be out on the beach where it’s warmer. Don’t you think so?”
“Yeah, I agree,” Jake said. “Do you know what you’re doing with those palm fronds?”
