Chapter 32 Charlie
CHARLIE
Watching Bennett work was my new favorite hobby. Watching him work without a shirt? Let’s just say it was a good thing I didn’t have any of my journals with me, because I’d be tempted to go back to my drawing phase, and no one wanted that.
Well, Bennett would probably love it, but only because I think one of his favorite hobbies was teasing me. His arms glistened with dew and sweat, and I could only imagine how many new fans he’d have after this episode aired.
“Do you want to try?” Bennett looked up from where he was scraping the sides of a log so we could make a bear stand to keep bears away from any food we might get and store. Now that fall had arrived, along with lower temperatures, we had to look ahead if we were going to stay out here.
“Try scraping a log down?” I asked. “Aren’t you almost done?”
“With this one. I’ll let you finish it, and then we’ll go find another.”
I hesitated. I wanted to try it, but what if I messed it up or got it wrong?
Then Bennett will show you how to do it again, and it’ll be okay.
Which was… exactly right. I wouldn’t be belittled or blamed in front of the cameras. We’d just try it again. Even if I somehow wrecked the entire log, Bennett would chalk it up to inexperience and not hold it against me.
With a baby shoot of confidence, I stood, excited to try. “What do I do?”
“Take the ax and slide it down the length of the log away from you.”
“Like this?” I did a short jab, and the ax stuck into the meat of the log. “Shoot. Not like this, I assume.”
He chuckled, and then his arms went around me from behind.
I shivered as he enfolded me in his embrace, one hand over the top of each of mine.
“Like this.” He guided me to scrape the ax blade across the surface, but at an angle.
It was satisfying to watch the bark peel off, leaving behind a smooth core.
He ran his nose along my cheek, his warm breath wreaking havoc on my pulse. He playfully nipped my earlobe with his teeth. “Got this?”
“Mhmm,” I said, my voice high pitched and strained.
He backed away from me, and I almost whimpered. I wanted him back. It was less efficient to have two of us do the same task, but so much more fun.
I struggled the first couple of times, but then finally, the ax slid down and took off a chunk of bark, smooth as could be.
“I did it!” I said to him as I did another slice, and then another. He grinned.
The work was exhausting, and it would have been a better use of our time for one of us to rest while the other worked, and then trade off, but I didn’t want to give up this time with him.
Time sped by, and the shadows in the grove of birch trees began to lengthen as the sun went down. Bennett put his shirt and sweater back on when the wind picked back up. “This should be our last one tonight,” Bennett said. “Then we can shelter down.”
“I can’t wait.” I loved our nightly ritual of chatting in front of the fire about everything from what animal we’d be if we could shape-shift, to what our greatest fear was.
I didn’t quite know what to do with the info that Ben would be a quokka, but I understood his fear of losing his family.
He’d lost so much already. Tonight, I wanted to ask him about his most embarrassing moment.
Since he’d been present for most of mine, I felt like it was only fair I be given this information as well.
“I think I can carry this one on my own,” Bennett said after we finished scraping it clean.
“Bennett Hunter Forrester. You will let me help you carry this,” I said firmly.
He bit back a smile. “Oh, so we’re at the point in our relationship where you’re weaponizing my middle name.”
“It’s better than being called buddy.” Which, come to think of it, I hadn’t heard him say in a while. Good riddance to that nickname.
“I’d forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder.”
“If you call me that …”
“I was thinking something more along the lines of baby.” He stepped toward me. “Sweetheart.” Another step closer. “Honey.” Right in front of me, his chest close enough to touch mine, his eyes ablaze. “Irresistible.”
I gulped and forced myself not to step back. To not let my fear overtake me. “All good options.”
“What would you call me?” His voice was gravelly as he slipped his hand against mine and interlocked our fingers.
Did he have any idea how vulnerable I was feeling?
“Sexy.” I brought our clasped hands up between us and kissed his knuckles. “Tempting.” My heart nearly jumped out of my chest at the action. “Mine.”
His eyes were alight with a heat that blazed all the way through me. “Charlie,” he rasped as if coming up for air, before he lowered his mouth, a breath from kissing me. And this time, this time, I was going to lean into him, open up, take a risk—
Crash!
Something loudly clattered in the distance, and we sprang apart, my heart racing for a different reason. A loud sound like that out here never meant anything good.
“Did that come from our camp?” I asked.
“It sounded like it,” he said grimly.
I followed closely on Bennett’s heels as we raced to camp, still trying to recalibrate my brain from our almost kiss to whatever this was. Our energy was so low from not eating enough that our run was more of a springy walk.
We came around a thick copse of birch trees. I skidded to a stop and reached out to grab the back of Bennett’s sweater when he went to barge forward.
The walls of our shelter vibrated as something bounced against them, testing their solidity. We heard a snuffing sound, and then the clatter of things being tossed around.
“It sounds like a bear,” Bennett said.
“What are we going to do?” We weren’t allowed to kill or hurt the bears. They were protected out here, which meant we had to find a way to get it out of our campsite without getting hurt, and without hurting it.
“See what kind of bear it is and go from there.”
“And how are we going to do that?” My grip tightened on his sweater, as if I could hold him in place.
“If that bear ruins our shelter, I don’t think we could recover fast enough to stay. We don’t have the energy to build a new one.”
“I’d rather go home than have you get hurt.”
He kissed me gently. Sweetly. Too quickly. “I’m not ready to go home either.”
Before I could say anything more, he sneaked toward the shelter, making as little noise as possible.
Our campsite looked ransacked—pots upended and dented, our fire pit crushed flat, the clothesline torn down and splintered. The door had been ripped off and lay in scattered pieces on the ground.
The bear couldn’t be that big if it managed to get in our shelter—which was a good sign that it was a black bear, and we could scare it off. Hopefully.
Bennett edged closer, near enough to peer through the chinks in the logs. “Hey!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”
A loud clatter sounded, and the entire wall of our shelter shook.
“Bennett!” I yelled as one side of it began to tilt. “It’s going to fall!”
He braced his shoulder against it, but the other side was pulling apart as well.
The bear was probably in a panic and going to take our shelter down with it.
I raced to hold up the other side, but the bear continued to throw its body against it, like it was going to push itself out through the sides.
“Go!” Bennett yelled again at the bear, and its movements increased.
I stuck my hand through the opening. “This way!” I said, trying to sound friendly and calm, like with my dogs.
“Are you trying to be bait?” Bennett said, incredulous.
“No. I’m guiding him out!”
“With your body!”
“I have nothing else!” I defended.
He began to clap near the back of the shelter, and after another scramble, an adorable black head popped out of the opening.
If this bear weren’t dangerous with the potential to hurt or really kill me, or also risk everything we were doing out here by ripping through our shelter, I would have melted. It was fluffy and about my height.
Okay, I was melting anyway.
Why were black bears so cute? Why? What evolutionary purpose did that fill?
“Charlie, move back!” Bennett clapped and whistled in his efforts to scare the bear off.
“If I move, this wall will come down.”
“I don’t want you near him. A scared bear is unpredictable.”
“But our shelter!”
“Please,” he said, and the pleading in his tone made me pause. He didn’t want me to get hurt—sounded terrified by the idea.
“Okay.” I backed up and moved quickly toward the trees. As soon as I did, the wall I was holding up buckled and fell outward. The bear pushed even harder against it, and it collapsed to the side.
In a blind panic, the bear lumbered toward me. It wasn’t quite as cute when I felt like I was going to be its next meal. I screamed, and Bennett raced toward me, vaulting over fallen logs, trying to get between me and the bear. He tripped over a log and fell, landing with a heap and a grunt.
“Make yourself big. Yell!” Bennett said through panting breaths as he went to stand up.
I could do this. I had to. I threw my hands up and started to scream at the bear. “Go away! Find your family! Be free! I taste like garbage! The bad kind bears don’t like!”
The bear skirted past me and darted into the forest. I wouldn’t be surprised if its heart was racing as fast as mine.
“I think he’s gone,” Bennett said.
We surveyed the destruction of our shelter. Only one wall remained upright, and it was listing dangerously forward. The tarp we were using as a roof was shredded in the corners. Bennett’s duffel bag had been ripped open, his clothes strewn everywhere.
In all the seasons I’d been watching In the Wild, I’d never seen anything like this happen before.
“Did that all get filmed?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Bennett said, still sounding winded.
“Oh. Good.”
“Yeah. People will like that.”
“Maybe not my mom,” I said, my voice still sounding distant as I looked at our fallen shelter.
“No, probably not her.” Bennett sounded as stunned as I felt.
“I wish I could hug a bear.”
That seemed to snap Bennett out of his shock. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“They look fluffy and soft.”
“Why don’t you hug me instead?”
“I guess it’ll do.” I stepped willingly into his open arms and rested my head on his shoulder. What were we going to do? His fast heart rate was comforting to me, and I listened to it slow down beat by beat, his chest expanding and contracting with steady breaths against my ear.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” I said.
Bennett sighed and dropped his arms. “I guess we should start pulling the walls back up before it gets much darker.” Already, the sun had fallen completely behind the trees, and we were going to be working long into the night.
Neither of us had the energy for it, after spending the entire day gathering logs.
But what else could we do? It was starting to get misty with oncoming rain, and it wouldn’t be safe to be out in the weather like this tonight. We had to dig deep and rebuild, even when all we wanted to do was lie down and wish we were already past the hard part.
I guess life was like that, though. How many times did I wish I could teleport past the hard things and go right to where it was easy and calm?
But I wouldn’t want to miss the good experiences that were folded in with the bad.
The Bennetts and the Rosies and even the cute (but destructive) black bears.
“I’ll help,” I said.
We headed toward the shelter, but I paused. Bennett’s gait was off. He wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg.
“Bennett. You’re hurt.”
He kept walking toward the logs. “I’m fine. Just a little sore from when I fell.”
“We should look at it.”
“Let’s get these walls up before it rains, and then we can look at it.”
I wanted to argue, but a gust of wind that sliced cold right through me shut my mouth. Bennett was right. We didn’t have the luxury of resting, even if he was hurt.
We did the best we could to brace up the logs from the fallen side of the shelter, but neither of us had the energy to lift more than a couple. Splinters cut into my hands, but I ignored the pain as we rushed to finish the job.
Bennett winced when he went to grab another log, and I stopped him with a hand on his arm. His lips were pale, and worry clawed at me. If he were to faint, I’d have a hard time dragging him into the shelter.
“What if we tie the tarp down to the edges of this log?”
“Okay,” he said, his voice subdued. He handed down the paracord edge of the tarp so I could tie a new knot. Then we did a few more ties across the side and edges. There was nothing we could do about the door, so our shelter was going to be open, like a triangle tent, on one side.
It was going to be tight—no space to do more than lie beside each other.
But since that was all I wanted to do anyway, I was fine with that.
Bennett went inside and collapsed on top of the sleeping bag while I put together a fire with the scattered wooden pieces.
I got a small flame started, and the warmth was like a sigh of relief against my skin.
Bennett hissed, and I turned to see him taking off his boot and sock. His ankle was swollen, and it looked stiff when he tried to rotate the joint.
“Is it broken?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Just sore. I landed on it wrong.”
“Can I look at it?” The only medical experience I had was with animals, but I still wanted to get a sense for how bad it was. I wouldn’t put it past Bennett to downplay an injury to not worry me. Well, too bad for him—I was already worried.
“Yeah.”
The skin around his ankle was puffy, but it wasn’t bruised yet, and it seemed like a good sign that it had full rotation.
Bennett had a restless night, and I wondered if the pain kept him awake. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable. I tried scooting away from him to give him space. I tried turning my back to him so I didn’t inadvertently breathe on him and disturb him.
What would Bennett do if I was the one hurting?
He’d comfort me.
I turned toward him in the sleeping bag and ran my hands gently through his hair. He let out a long sigh, and his shoulders relaxed. “That feels really nice,” he murmured.
I didn’t say anything, but I continued to draw my fingers through his long strands until his breathing deepened, and he was finally asleep.
I understood, now, how he’d felt when I’d been injured during our first challenge.
Bennett was hurt, and it didn’t matter that we hadn’t won yet.
Or that we’d made it this far. Nothing mattered but getting through the night so we could go home tomorrow.
Nothing would stand in the way of making sure Bennett got help.