Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
SCARLETT
W hat the fuck was happening?
James hadn’t looked great this morning, pale and shirtless, but I had just chalked it up to the stress of the day before. I doubted any of us got any decent amount of sleep.
But was he so sleep deprived he really thought we hooked up last night? Surely I would remember having sex with someone.
The only alternative was that he had convinced himself a dream was real. I pressed my lips together as I made my way toward the wheelhouse. If he really was sick, I probably shouldn’t have left him. I should’ve felt his forehead, checked his pulse, anything . Instead I’d run away, unsure what to do with this newfound knowledge that James wanted his dream to be real.
“Earth to Scarlett.”
Nash waved his hand in front of my eyes, a goofy grin on his face.
“Good morning, darling. Glad to see you up and at ‘em this morning. I’m going to get the Carpe Diem running in just a moment here, and we’ll be off.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I’m sorry. Apparently, I’m still half asleep. I was on my way to come and ask if you needed help and instead I’m on a different planet altogether.”
Nash caught my wrist in his hands, pulling me close for an embrace. “Hey. Shush. It’s all good. I don’t need any help running this old thing, so long as she decides she likes me today. I’m more concerned you’re okay. If our conversation last night was too much for you, I’m not worried. We don’t have to do anything about it. We move at your pace, whatever you’re comfortable with.”
I shook my head, trying to find solace in Nash’s warm gaze. “It’s not that. It’s…” I trailed off. It really wasn’t my place to talk about James. He’d told me about his dream in confidence. It was personal for him, and telling Nash felt like a violation of his privacy. But if something was wrong with him, shouldn’t I speak up?
Nash frowned. “Tell me. Don’t keep secrets from me. Not here. Not now.”
Just like that I was thrown back into the realization that we shouldn’t be here, just outside the city we couldn’t wait to leave behind. Me dragging my feet was keeping us here for longer than we needed to be.
I took in a deep breath, and hoped James would forgive me. “I think James might be sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. But we just had a really weird conversation, and I’m worried.”
“What kind of conversation?” Nash’s frown didn’t lift as he pulled me with him into the wheelhouse, directing me to sit in the small chair while he started flipping switches. “Was he aggressive? Did he hurt you?”
“No! Nothing like that.” The motor beneath us began to churn, chugging along with a fair bit of metal on metal. “He was insistent something happened last night that didn’t actually happen. A false memory. Maybe even a hallucination. To him, it was real. He didn’t look good though, Nash. He was pale, and sweaty, and his eyes were unfocused.”
“And you’re sure whatever it was never happened?” Nash rubbed the back of his neck as he flipped the switches off, and the motor chugged to a halt.
“Well, it involved me, and I have no recollection of it, so…”
Nash fell back on his heels, staring up at me from the floor. “Are you telling me James had a sex dream about you, but thinks it was real?”
“Errr…yes. I think so.” I could feel my cheeks flushing, having no idea how Nash would take this information. He and James weren’t on the greatest of terms, and I didn’t want to be the reason their foundation shattered completely. “It’s not like he did anything, though. He just thought it was real, and…”
Nash held up a hand, shaking his curls out of his eyes. “James. Had a sex dream. About you. And told you about it?”
I glared at him, while a sly grin spread across his face. “Nash, if you laugh at a sick man, I’m going to smother you in your sleep.”
The laugh he was trying so hard to contain bubbled out. “I’m sorry, darling, I really am. It’s just the idea of James, first of all even having a sex dream, and then being so certain it was real is just a lot for me to wrap my brain around. It’s just not very James-like.”
“No shit!” I rolled my eyes. “Do you think something is wrong with him though? Should we be worried?”
Nash sobered immediately. “Something being wrong with him is definitely a possibility. I can show you where I keep the first aid stuff, and if you’re comfortable, you can take his temperature and the like. If he’s running a fever, we should probably bypass the cave and head right into the village, get him to a doctor. Let me get the engine warmed up first. She’s giving me some trouble this morning.”
I nodded, crossing my arms across my chest. Nash disappeared back under the panel of knobs and switches. “What do you think could be wrong with him?”
“Could be any number of things this time of year.” Nash’s voice was muffled from beneath the console. “Dengue. Yellow Fever. Malaria. Lots of nasty stuff goes around in the rainy season.”
None of those sounded pleasant. I didn’t think any of them were contagious, but I was suddenly all too aware of the chill racing down my back, even in the heat. A mind game. That’s all it was. A trick of the mind. That’s all this entire goddamn trip seemed to be.
Nash stuck his hand out, head still under the panel. “Hey, can you do me a favor and hand me the orange screwdriver next to the wheel?”
I leaned over, grabbing the screwdriver and passing it over. Nash started using it as a hammer, banging against something with a fury.
“I’m not sure screwdrivers are meant to be used as hammers.”
Nash crawled out from beneath the dash, hair mussed, giving me the crooked grin I’d become all too fond of. “Darling, it’s the rainforest. Anything goes.”
“As I’m learning,” I murmured. A headache sprouted behind my temple, pulsing furiously as I pressed my fingertips into my eyelids, willing it to go away. “Is everything okay with the boat?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she be okay?” Nash rushed around the panel again, flipping the switches, and giving the key a turn. The motor groaned to life.
“Well, you were just hitting something pretty hard with a screwdriver, so it’s a fair question.”
“She’s fine. She’s just an old girl with a few quirks, no different than anyone else.”
Considering the way he tapped on the wheel, I didn’t quite believe him. I believed him even less when the motor began to make that awful metal on metal sound again. “Nash?”
“Give her a second.” The drumming of his fingers intensified. “Come on, baby. Don’t do this to me now. Not today. Gimme one more good run. One more.”
For a moment, I thought the boat had actually heard him. The shuddering and smashing stopped, and Nash breathed a sigh of relief.
Only to follow up with the worst sound I’d ever heard. The boat beneath us bellowed like the world was being torn in two, ripping itself apart between my feet. A thousand nails scraped on a thousand chalkboards, and I clapped my hands over my ears to make it stop.
Silence fell. Silence made even more painful by Nash’s lack of breathing, and his quick stream of cursing. “Mother-fucking-shit-fucking-luck-piece-of-shit-boat-crapping-out-on-me-today-of-all-fucking-days-mother-fucker!”
The chill was back, racing down my spine, twice as fast, twice as cold. “Nash?”
He looked over to me with wild eyes, running a hand through his hair that just made it stand up in an even worse way. “So, uh, we might have a small problem.”
My blood froze along with my chill. “What kind of problem?”
I didn’t need to ask, but I did. I already knew what kind of problem. Nothing mechanical made that kind of sound without something being horribly wrong. Yet, I still needed to hear it spoken aloud, to confirm my suspicions were true.
Nash’s words came as no surprise to me. “The engine just died. Kaput. Done-zo. Fuck !” He grabbed a fistful of his hair, tugging it, as if doing so could fix all the problems with the engine. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Nash’s personality wasn’t the kind that lent itself to anger, so watching him throw a similar fit to the one James threw during the trek would’ve been humorous, had the situation not been so dire.
I did my best to focus on my breathing. In and out. In and out. Steady. Easy. Problems had solutions. Problems were fixable. You just had to figure out the solution.
“What can we do?” I asked. “There has to be a quick fix, right? Something to at least get us down the river?”
He coughed out a laugh. “I mean…there’s a possibility…” Nash paced the small room, muttering to himself, something about crankshafts and pistons. I let him talk it out before he paused. “Let’s go tell the others what’s going on.”
Luckily, we didn’t have to go far. James still stood in the cabin hallway, looking even paler than when I’d left him. He blinked when he saw me, wiping any expression from his face. A ping of disappointment rocketed through me.
I wanted whatever he had dreamed to be real for him. I really did. I couldn’t lie to him, but watching him put his careful mask back in place hurt more than I expected.
“Have you seen Camp?” Nash asked.
James shook his head. “Is everything okay? That noise didn’t exactly sound great.”
“Let’s get Camp first.” Nash rapped on the door, until Camp swung it open, still half asleep.
“Um, ‘sup?” He pushed his messy hair away from his face, and I could see the moment everything clicked for him, seeing all of us standing around. “Shit. What’s wrong?”
Nash sighed. “The engine temporarily died on us just now. I tried all my normal tricks, but I can’t get her to turn over. Something’s wrong down below.”
“What do you mean temporarily ?” James snapped, color rushing back to his face. “How does something break temporarily? It’s either broken or it’s not broken, Nash. Don’t fuck us around. Speak it straight.”
Nash whipped his head around to glare at James. “Fine. It’s broken, okay? It happened once before this season, and I was able to jerry-rig something together and finish the tour. There’s a possibility I might be able to do it again, but it’s less likely this time. A fix of a fix isn’t exactly the most reliable.”
“Wait, are you saying you knew something was wrong before we left the dock?” I paused. “You knew there was a problem that needed fixing, and you still took our money and loaded us up on this deathtrap of a boat?”
He glared at me. “It’s not exactly like I’m rolling in the dough, okay? I needed the money James offered me to get the repairs done.”
“So, what I’m hearing is, we’re now dead in the water, not even a mile away from a creepy-ass city I want nothing to do with ever again, and you don’t know if you can fix it?” Camp pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me you’re kidding. This is a bad joke, right? I’m being set up for a punchline?”
Camp put the situation into an almost humorous light, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “This is insane. Absolutely insane. This is what I get for wanting an adventure, right?”
Nash held up a hand. “I just need some time. I’ll have to open up the engine hatch and see what the problem is first. I just wanted to let everyone know that it may take a while. I might be able to fix it. I did before”
“There’s a lot resting on a might , Nash.” James’ voice was quiet, laced with a cold that sent a shiver right through me. “This entire trip has apparently been hanging on a hope and a wish, and maybe a touch of luck. What’s your plan if you don’t fix it?”
“We hike out of here.” Nash held up a hand again as soon as we all started speaking at once. “I know it’s not the ideal situation, but it is something I’ve trained for. I have tents and hiking gear stored away. We leave the Carpe Diem where she’s at, and we hike out.”
“How far of a hike is it to the closest village that could help?” I chanced a glance at James under my lashes, wondering how sick he really was, or if I was just overreacting.
“A couple days, give or take, depending on where we are exactly. But it might not even come to that. Give me today, let me see what I can swing with the old girl here, and maybe we’ll be out of here in a few hours.”
I wanted to believe Nash. I really did. But as his normally confident demeanor dimmed, the words didn’t feel true. I didn’t think he believed he could fix this either.
Like it or not, we didn’t have a choice.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s see if you can fix it.”
Nash shot me a grateful look.
Camp sighed. “It’s not like we have a better option. I really don’t like being so close to that weird-ass city, though. Something was wrong about that place.”
“For once, we don’t disagree.” James and Camp met each other’s eyes, and something unspoken flashed between them, something I wished I could decipher.
“Alright. I’m going to head down below, and come dinner time tonight we’ll know our game plan. Just hang out, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll get this fixed. I always do.” Nash clapped his hands together with a smile, a weak impression of his normal self.
James returned to his cabin without another word. Camp faced me, cocking his head. “You wanna come hang out with me?”
I nodded. A distraction wouldn’t be the worst thing. “Yeah. Give me a second and I’ll be right there.”
He stepped back into his room, closing the door behind him. I turned to Nash.
“How sure are you that you can fix this?”
“Can a donkey eat strawberries?” Nash grinned, but his smile fell when he looked at my face. “I’m going to give it my best shot, I swear. I’ve been in worse situations than this, and I’m sure I’ll be in worse yet.”
“I trust you. I’m just worried about James.” I glanced toward the cabin door, hoping I wasn’t speaking too loudly.
“I know.” Nash stroked my cheek, drawing my attention back to him. “Keep an eye on him while I’m down below, and get me if anything goes wrong, okay? I’m going to do my best to fix my mess.”
“You better.” I offered him the only smile I could, weak as it was.
Nash placed a light kiss on my forehead. “Thank you for believing in me. I love you. I swear it.”
I stood and watched him sprint down the stairs, hoping my faith wasn’t misplaced. I hoped he’d be able to fix it. I hoped James would be okay.
Camp’s door swung open once more, and he stood there with open arms, the reassurance I needed right now more than anything. As I stepped into his embrace I realized that James was right.
This entire trip hung on a hope and a prayer, but at some point, good vibes were going to run out. Luck only went so far.
At some point, we’d be on our own.