Chapter 12
12
JACOB
C atherine cries for what I would consider to be an unusually long time.
I can feel her tears, and her fingers digging into my back, and the sheets, so I’m not dead. I just feel exceptionally weird. All my limbs feel heavy and oddly light simultaneously. I’m not hungry at all, though I have the sense that a long time has gone by.
Well. I’m alive, and Catherine is upset, so once I’m sure I won’t pass out or throw up again, I maneuver myself out of her lap and take her in my arms.
This makes her cry harder.
I shush her and rub her back and try to figure out what the hell happened.
My memories are a mess. Bettencourt died in front of me at least once but probably closer to a hundred times. I spent an eternity watching the burned body of James Hill attempt to play a card game with bloodied cards. You’ve always known what it means to remain above reproach. The hallway at school. Gabriel, looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.
“Was there a dog here?”
More hot tears spill onto my shoulder, but then Catherine jerks her head up and wipes her eyes with the back of her arm. “There was no dog. I mean—I don’t know, Jacob, there might have been a dog, but I don’t think people have dogs here. I don’t think there are other people here. There was something at the door, scratching. Probably it was, like, a forest creature. But I don’t know what it was. I never looked out the window.”
More things come back to me. Carol of the Bells, echoing and echoing in my car, making itself loud and endless and haunted. Catherine saying I know. Catherine saying we’ll go home soon. Catherine saying?—
“You love me?”
She pulls back so she can stare at me with the full force of her honey eyes and her auburn hair and the unbelievable gorgeousness of every inch of her. “What?”
“You said you loved me.”
Catherine blinks, and big, silent tears run down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. “Of—of course I said I love you.”
“It isn’t, though. Is it? We never say that. We’ve never said it. I’m willing to accept responsibility for the oversight, kitten. I’m willing to admit it was my fault.”
She blinks again. It’s the slowest, most disbelieving blink I have ever witnessed. “ What ?”
“I didn’t tell you first. I didn’t even tell you on our wedding day. I didn’t want to say it at the time, but I thought we’d probably die when the plane hit the ground, and I completely neglected the opportunity.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You said you loved me enough to want to save me.”
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.” I wrap my fingers around Catherine’s nape and let my thumb rest on her cheeks. She leans into my touch, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut, and it’s miraculous. My wife is miraculous. The sight of her, the feel of her, is an honest-to-fucking-God miracle. “I love you.”
“I know,” Catherine huffs, her cheeks flushing a deeper red. “I know you love me. You don’t have to be so weird about it. You can just love me instead of feeling bad about it and keeping it a secret. Because I’m so in love with you. I don’t care if you feel guilty. I’m in love with you. I love you.”
I don’t kiss her. My mouth tastes dryly horrible, and I don’t entirely trust my balance. I do gather her in again.
“I’m sorry for…” Catherine’s voice is fairly clear in my mind, but my own voice is a blank. “Anything I said. How long was I sleeping?”
“Like, part of a day. You were awake the rest of the time. It was so scary.”
Catherine keeps her face in my shoulder, so I can only feel her tense up.
“What did I say, kitten? I probably didn’t mean it, whatever it was. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“ You didn’t. The—the fever scared me. And we should put more stuff on your scratches.”
“They don’t hurt.”
“I don’t care! We have to put the cream on. That could be the only thing protecting you from the wilderness.”
“We’re not touching the wilderness.”
“You never know.” Catherine lifts her head, then, and looks me in the eyes. “You were sick for—it felt like a million years. We have no idea what Raymond Harris was doing all that time. He could be waiting outside the door right now.”
“I’ll check.”
Catherine lunges, pinning me down on the bed. “Don’t. Move. ”
She’s a beautiful, menacing thing, deadly serious, determined. Catherine might even be dangerous. I’ve been absent, in some kind of dream world, and it would be fitting if she discovered she had claws in the interval.
And behind that ferocity—the one lighting her eyes and turning her mouth into a flawless scowl— I can feel her fear. She’s pushed it down deep, hidden it as much as she can, but it’s still trembling, still making her heart race, just there, just under the surface.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I stroke her hair back from her face. She had it in a bun, I think. Most of it’s come loose from the elastic, and it falls like a curtain. When I tuck it behind her ear, more sunlight kisses her cheek. “I won’t, kitten. I’m staying here. With you. I love you.”
It catches her off-guard despite our very recent discussion. Catherine’s smile is huge and bright and uninhibited, wrinkling her nose and almost— almost —creating a dimple.
I love her. I’m so fucking in love with her. I’m not confident in my ability to walk across the cabin without losing my balance and falling over, but I’m absolutely confident that I’d do it for her. I’d try until I was successful. I’d have to be dead to stop trying.
She leans down and nuzzles my cheek with her nose, then follows it with a sweet, soft kiss.
I love that, too.
Catherine lays her head on my shoulder and we stay like that, quiet together, for some amount of time. It’s more than I thought we’d have when the plane was going down and less than I want.
It’s less than forever.
It’s always going to be less than forever as long as we’re on this island, but I have just survived another ordeal, and I can’t think that far ahead yet.
Catherine sighs. “Maybe…”
“What is it, kitten?”
“Maybe you should look out the window. Just in case.”
I kiss the top of her head. “All right. Help me up.”
“I should come in with you.” Catherine keeps her arm around my waist while we stand at the window, looking out. There’s nobody there. I haven’t heard any other scratching sounds. We seem to be alone in the clearing. “You were, like, really sick. I don’t want you to fall and crack your head open.”
“There’s not enough room to crack my head open in that shower. Or fall, for that matter.”
“I should stand outside, then.”
“I’ll be fine in the shower, kitten.”
Catherine groans. “Are you trying to impress me with your strength or something? You don’t have to. I’m already impressed, okay?”
“I’m finding it increasingly difficult to fathom how anyone could walk the earth and not want to impress you.”
“Oh my God. That’s—stop.”
“I won’t. You should see how stunning you are when you—no, I take that back. I don’t want to set conditions. It doesn’t matter if you’re smiling. You’re fucking breathtaking, Catherine Bettencourt.”
“Chambers.”
For a foolish heartbeat or two, I think she’s calling me Chambers like Evans does when she’s irritated with me or when she’s out of patience or when she’s having a good day. All the time, really.
Catherine doesn’t call me that. She never calls me that. Maybe once or twice as a joke, but never seriously.
“Were you, like, not looking when I signed the marriage license? There was a line for me to put my new name. So now I have yours.”
“I was watching.”
“You were not. If you were paying attention, you wouldn’t look so shocked.”
“I was watching your face. I might’ve glanced down at your hand a time or two, but not for long enough to see that you’d—” I had no idea. None. We’d gone to the reception, and I’d been split into two people—the man who memorized every second I had with my wife, and the man who was getting ready to leave her behind. We never talked about the license. “I assumed you’d keep your name.”
“Ugh. Why would I want to keep my father’s name? He was the worst. And you’re my favorite person in the world. It was an easy choice. And don’t say you’re not any better. You are.”
I want to believe it so badly.
I don’t know if I do.
“Well, Catherine Chambers.” It has a lovely ring to it. Personally, I think she made the more beautiful choice. “There’s no one outside the window. Are you going to let me shower unsupervised, or?—”
“No.” She pulls me gently away from the window, staying close. “I mean—absolutely not. You’ll just have to deal.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
It’s a pleasure to get clean. It’s not as much of a pleasure to be on my feet for the length of a shower. I’m exhausted by the time I get out. I promise Catherine I’ll only sleep for an hour.
When I wake up again, it’s afternoon, so I’ve failed to keep my promise.
From the way Catherine smiles at me, it doesn’t matter at all.
Sometime in the night, the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof of the cabin wakes me up. I don’t know what I’m hearing at first. It can’t be anything scratching at the door. It resolves into rain after a few minutes. I lie in the bed next to Catherine, who sleeps with one hand over my heart, and listen to her breathing until the rain gets so loud I can’t hear her anymore.
It’s still raining the next morning. The sound makes both of us tired. Catherine naps on and off until noon, then asks me if I want any soup, which Catherine found in the cabin. She’s eaten some already, and it was fine.
“I’m not hungry. I’ll eat as soon as I’m hungry.”
Catherine looks like she wants to argue, but she doesn’t.
It keeps raining. Catherine gets a booklet out of one of the cabinets and shows it to me.
“There are codes in here.” She shrugs, then shuffles closer to my side. “I don’t know what any of them mean. The cabin is on the map, though. See? There’s the waterfall. There’s an X and a ladder, too.”
I take the book out of her hands and study the map. It tells us where north is. There’s the X on the beach—buried treasure? And there are faint lines, roughly matching the shape of the island, forming rings?—
“I think these are elevation lines.” The smallest ring is around the ladder shape Catherine saw. I tap my finger on the ladder. “Maybe this isn’t a ladder. Maybe it’s a radio tower.”
Catherine sits up, her eyes wide. “For the radio.”
“What radio?”
“ This radio.” She races to the cabinets, opens the third one, and pulls out a black case. Catherine has it on the bed and open like she’s a kid at Christmas and this is the biggest wrapped gift. “This. See? I turned it on while you were—while you were asleep, but nobody answered.” She cranes her neck to look at the map. “I bet those codes are, like, radio channels. I bet we could use them to get help.”
I flip to the horoscope page in the laminated booklet. The second column is made up of two-digit numbers, so Catherine’s probably right about the radio channels. The code words are just bizarre.
“What if they don’t mean help? What if we get to the radio tower and go to channel 21 for Gemini and say keystone and it means attack the island ? Do we know who we’d be getting?”
Catherine narrows her eyes. “What do you mean, who we’d be getting ?”
“Would we be getting Castor or Pollux in this metaphor?”
She gazes at the ceiling of the cabin. “I don’t know. Maybe Gemini doesn’t mean, like, literal twins. If they are, and if I had a choice, I guess I’d pick the one who does the murder instead of the one who gets murdered.”
“Kitten! I never knew you were into Greek myths.”
“I had to do something after Egyptology. And I went to an all-girl’s school. Everyone was into Greek myths when we weren’t trying to get boyfriends.”
“You’d really choose Pollux if it came down to it?”
“I’d pick whoever can get rid of Raymond Harris. And whoever had a boat so we could leave this island and go home.”
“What, and cut our luxurious honeymoon short?”
“You’re not very funny, Jacob.”
“I make up for it by being incredibly handsome.”
Catherine laughs at me, her cheeks going prettily pink. Until I knew Raymond Harris was our pilot, I’d never imagined we’d be trapped on an island together with a murderer out for revenge. If I had imagined it, I’d have been so wrong. Catherine Bettencourt—excuse me, Catherine Chambers, my fucking wife —is the most resilient person I have ever met.
The delight on her face sharpens. Catherine looks out at the driving rain. Water droplets on the window reflect in her eyes.
“I need to get to that tower.”
I take her hand and kiss her knuckles. “ We need to get to that tower.”
“You can’t.” Her honey eyes lock on mine. “You can’t, Jacob. You’re not strong enough. You need to stay here, where it’s safe. I’ll go see if our theory about the radio tower is right. If I get someone on the radio, then I’ll come back and tell you. If I don’t, same plan. We should at least see if it works.”
“I’m not letting you go out into this weather by yourself when Raymond Harris is out there, too.”
Catherine lifts a hand like she’s offering me the idea of a lifetime. “Wouldn’t it be safer in this weather?”
A distant roll of thunder echoes down into our clearing. “No.”
“I’m serious. He’d have a harder time seeing me. And storms like this never last very long. It’ll probably be over by the time I get to the tower, and then I can use the radio, and we’ll be home in time for tea.”
The idea of drinking tea turns my stomach. So does the idea of eating a biscuit.
“See?” Catherine strokes the corner of my mouth with a fingertip. “You don’t feel well. If something happens while we’re out there, I won’t be able to carry you back, and we need, like, shelter. I need you to be in the shelter while I go see what’s up with that tower.”
“You are not going to see what’s up with the tower.”
She draws herself up tall, eyes flashing. “I’m your wife, not your property. You can’t actually stop me from going.”
“I can come with you.”
“No, you can’t!”
We have the worst fight of our marriage over the excursion to the radio tower. Catherine argues with a quiet voice that cuts to the bone. I argue with a quiet voice that I inject more and more charm into until we’re both wielding razor-sharp words. She dresses me down for thinking she’s incapable of walking to a radio tower. I remind her there’s a murderer stalking the island and at least one creature with claws to scratch at the doors. We fight for so long that the day ends and the long, rainy night begins, and then we fight in faux-candlelight. My eyes hurt horrendously. If I had anything in my stomach to throw up, I’d have no choice but to eject it.
It’s after midnight when Catherine stalks away and shuts herself in the bathroom for several minutes.
Then she comes out with her chin up and goes to the sink. She gets a cup. Water. A packet out of the first-aid kit
“Drink that,” she orders.
I don’t want to, which I know is irrational. I also know she won’t stand for it. I manage a sip at a time.
Catherine watches me, her arms crossed over her chest. “Being married means doing things for each other.”
“It doesn’t mean letting your wife die for you.”
“We’re going to die anyway. Do you realize that? If we run out of food, or if that asshole finds us first, or if, like, a lion breaks the door down?—”
“I don’t think this island is large enough to support a lion.”
“Oh, now you have deep knowledge about wildlife? The point is not the lion! The point is that I am tired of waiting around to see if I live or die. I’ve had enough of that in my life, Jacob.” Catherine’s eyes well. “I’ve had enough of waiting around to see if people I love are going to live or die. I wasn’t brave when I was younger, and I should have—whatever! I can’t go back in time, so I have to be brave now, and you have to let me, because I can’t sit here and do nothing and hope someone comes to save us. I love you too much.”
Jesus. She breaks my heart. “I couldn’t bear it. If I let you—if you left and didn’t come back. I would never forgive myself.”
“You left. And you were never going to come back.”
We stare at each other in the imitation candlelight.
I’m not willing to lose her. I’m simply not willing to lose her.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, Catherine. It was foolish, and cruel, and if I could take it back, I would. I’d do anything to?—”
She stabs a finger at me. “You’d do anything. Anything . That’s what you’re about to say, isn’t it? You’d do anything for me.”
“I would.”
Catherine drops her hands to her sides. “Do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it, kitten.” That was the promise embedded in all the vows I made to her on our wedding day.
“Then you’ll stay here while I go to the tower.”
“I—”
“That’s part of anything. Unless you just made up fake limits in your head.”
“There are some limits. I won’t let you drink my blood.”
Catherine makes a retching sound.
“Come to bed.”
“I can’t.” She rubs her eyes. “I have to go to the tower. It’ll be better in the dark.”
“Come to bed, sleep for a little while, and we’ll make a real plan.”
Catherine meets my eyes, longing absolutely clear on her face, and a fire lights in my chest, fierce, hot, blazing—though thankfully not feverishly this time.
She turns off the candle and comes to bed. I wrap her in my arms and kiss her temple and memorize the pattern of her heartbeat.
“Anything?” Catherine asks.
I feel the question through her skin more than I hear it. A deluge of rain crashes down on the roof. I wish the rain was a shield. I wish we could stay here, protected by the dark, forever. I wish we could wake up at home in the morning, all of this fading into a dream.
“Anything, kitten.” She curls into me and holds on tight. “Anything. For as long as we both shall live.”