AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t expect the guys to be celibate forever, they’re still in their thirties. Colin a little older than Brad, but the point is, they’re young. They have their whole lives still ahead of them. I get it. But I’ve had forty-eight years to decide what I know about life and women and Mari was as good as it gets. She didn’t deserve the way her life was ripped from her. The thought alone makes my stomach turn as I pull the lines in from the ocean. It’s not much, but there’s a few King Fish on the line that’ll do us for the night.
Unhooking the catch, I slide the fish onto a pointed stick and set the lines back into the ocean. The wind has picked up considerably in the past few hours and there’s a heavy humidity building that tells me a storm is on the way, but I don’t put too much thought into it. We have a fire, shelter, and now we have food. We all knew being out here was going to be rough. Well, most of us did anyway. I suppose Sara was thrown into the creek without a paddle. Parts of me feels bad for her. She’s out here all alone with a bunch of guys she doesn’t know, and the poor girl was already having some sort of mental breakdown when we found her. All even more reason to steer clear of any romantic involvement, as if the million dollars on the line wasn’t enough.
A loud rumble shakes my stomach, and a growling noise ensues. It’s only been a day, but with all this physical labor, I’m starving. Thankfully, the sun has sunken into the ocean and the temperature has cooled significantly so the walk back up into camp isn’t as laborious, but when I see that Colin and Brad are missing and Sara is sitting alone at camp my shoulders tense and my neck stiffens. I’ve done well at avoiding alone time with her and I’d have preferred to keep it that way. She seems nice enough, but I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t attracted to her. Everything about her is as damsel in distress as they come and that’s long since been my downfall. When I first met Mari, she was struggling with an abusive relationship. I beat the shit out of the guy that laid hands on her and never let her out of my sight again.
As I move into camp, Sara stays sat at the edge of the fire braiding together long strings of leaves, talking to the cameraman. I’d guess she were putting the moves on him too, but he seems like the stable married type that wouldn’t be swayed by one pretty girl.
“Is it weird that I feel for them both?” she asks him, her voice low.
I want to laugh and roll my eyes all at once. She’s so young, so naïve, so unsure of everything. The thought of being out here another twenty-nine days with someone so clueless is just about as exhausting as the physical labor.
The man catches my shadow moving up into camp and clams up as though the conversation were private. I can’t help but laugh to myself at her candid conversation with a man she barely knows. This girl has issues. I knew it from the start.
Nodding in their direction, I step into camp and lean the fish up against the tree before stoking the fire. I don’t want to notice Sara more than a passing glance, but I can’t help myself. The setting sun is illuminating her like an angel. Her dark hair splashes down over her shoulders and onto her back. The flesh of her tight round breasts peek from beneath the bandana I gave her earlier. I see why the guys find her attractive. It’s difficult to miss, but that doesn’t mean I need to rub my hands all over her.
“They finally gave you a second alone?” I say, pushing a stick into the fire.
She smiles. “You caught all these?” Her eyes are wide. “I’m starving!”
“Well, that’s good,” I grumble, pushing at the embers. “We have plenty tonight. I assume you’ve weaved that grass for me?”
She nods and hands me a small stack she’s already finished. I can wrap them around the fish to keep it from charring and we can use it later to wrap the dried stuff. I’m thankful for her effort on this. Maybe she isn’t as helpless as I thought, which would be a relief.
“I’m sorry for what you saw earlier,” she blurts softly. “I didn’t… I mean, I don’t…”
I look away as she struggles with her words, hoping she comes to her senses and quits talking to me about something I’m clearly going to have an opinion about.
“Anyway,” she continues. “I just… I don’t know what’s happening. With Brad and Colin I mean. And I—”
“I hear that, seems you’re talking to everyone on the island about it.” I nod back to Dean who’s standing far enough away from us that he can’t hear what I’m saying.
“You heard?” Her face turns pink. “I just don’t know what to do, it’s so—”
“Have you tried nothing?” I smile, but she doesn’t mirror my expression. In fact, she looks a little pissed.
“Never mind, I don’t know why I assumed you would want to know.” She says the words so innocently that an involuntary emotion tugs at my heart as her gaze catches mine over top the fire.
Is she some sort of seductress? A witch maybe? A second ago I was ready to send her packing without regret.
I run my hand down over my beard. “Why’d you run out of the bar last night?”
She lets out a long, heavy sigh. “His name is Kemp. I think he followed me to Antigua. I saw him for the first time last night but—”
“Followed you?” My heart is tight. “Why the fuck would he follow you?”
She looks around at the cameras and shakes her head, her voice low. “I can’t talk about it now.”
My throat burns as I think about some guy preying on her, and every protective instinct I have comes roaring to the surface, welcoming home the beast I’ve been trying to subdue.
“Seeing that you’re making out with my friends,” I sneer, “I think I deserve to know. I mean, there’s a million dollars on the lin—”
“Is that some kind of threat?” She stands from the fire and hitches her palm up onto her hip.
“I don’t do threats. I’m more an action kind of guy.” I stand with her, staring down at her small frame, the flames crackling between us.
“So then what’s your action here? You want to tell Brad that I kissed Colin? I’ll tell him myself. I didn’t think… I didn’t… I… this whole thing is complicated.”
I’ve been here before, with Mari. We’d spent years together in love, just the two of us when she told me she’d met Colin. At first, I didn’t know what to think. I was in love with a woman that felt something for another man. I was enraged, angry, and possessive. But when I saw how happy he made her, I couldn’t deny reality. She loved both of us and eventually, she loved Brad as well. I didn’t want to lose her, none of us did. So we bent and learned to love each other. Still though, to the general public that’s a stretch of the mind that’s beyond comprehension.
