AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m saying that our health will suffer. And then, you know, one of us will get a cut or something, and it’ll get infected, and our immune systems won’t be robust.”
I held up my hands. She was painting quite a picture here. “I hear you,” I said.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be defeatist about it.”
“You’re not. It makes sense to worry about it…” I raked my fingers through my hair. The truth was, without admitting it to myself or to her, I’d been counting on the idea that we would be rescued by now, and the more time passed, the more anxious I was about it. We would be able to survive here for a while, but she was right to think that it would be hard to survive for alongtime.
“I wish there was something we could do about it,” Olivia said. “But I don’t know what that would be.”
“We’re going to have to wait until they come looking for us.”
“Yeah, I guess…”
“It can’t be too much longer now. You know how Michael is. He can’t stand it when anything unpredictable happens. He’ll be going mad about the fact that two people are missing from his shoot. He’s probably had to shut production down because of us. I’m sure he has planes combing the Pacific searching for us.
And that’s not to mention the fact that if the pilot was found, he could probably tell them where we are within a fifteen-mile radius.”
“Ifthe pilot was found,” Olivia said.
She looked so sad that it made me want to do something to cheer her up, to distract her from her melancholy thoughts. I thought for a moment about initiating sex again—but as sad as she was, I thought it would be hard to get her out of her own head enough to enjoy it.
I looked around the beach. Having tasks had helped in the past… but anything I could think of for us to do now would have led to more brooding about the fact that we were setting ourselves up for an extended stay, and that was what had gotten both of us in this mood in the first place.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket again, just in case.
She was watching me. “Still no bars?”
“Nope. No signal at all. And it’s about to die.”
Olivia sighed. “I’m going to take a walk, okay?”
“A walk where? I’ll come with you.”
“No, don’t. I want some time to myself.”
“I really don’t like the idea of us splitting up,” I said.
“I won’t go very far.”
“You’ll be back before dark?”
“That’s hours from now.”
“I know it is. But I don’t want you to lose track of time out there and realize you can’t get back.”
“I won’t be gone long,” Olivia promised.
I nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” I appreciated that she wasn’t putting up a fight about it. The combativeness that had existed between us in the past seemed to have finally died down. I would have thought the stress of the situation might make tempers flare again, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect, which made me very happy.
Even though it was hard to feel happy at the moment.
I watched as Olivia wandered down the beach in the direction of the crashed plane. As I lost sight of her, a thought came to me.
The plane.
It wasn’t impossible to believe that we might still be able to fly it out of here.
It was a long shot, of course. I wasn’t a mechanic, but I had had some training in it during my SEAL days. Ordinarily, I’d have said you should never have trusted me to fix your downed aircraft, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances.
