Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Blinking in a dimly lit room, I took a breath, expanding my lungs as much as they would go. I wiggled my toes. The fabric rubbing against my skin brought me great relief. I could move. I could feel. I was alive.
Hunter slept next to me on his back, his left hand rested on his chest, and his right arm stretched out and under my neck.
The light of a nearby lantern on the nightstand cast a serene glow on his dirty-blond hair and days of stubble.
My fingers wanted to trace his face, but I was afraid to wake him, so I allowed my eyes to do it instead.
I’d been in his arms yesterday, but sadly, I hadn’t been able to appreciate the touch of his skin to mine.
Stupid snakes. Well, stupid me. My eyes flickered to the green bag with my dad’s ashes safely stowed on the desk by the window.
Hunter had rescued it. I smiled and nestled my head into the hollow of Hunter’s shoulder and placed my hand on his chest. Night birds cooed, and the wind sang a lullaby, chaos replaced by peace. I was content.
* * *
I stirred, then awoke abruptly, alone in bed.
The sun spilled into the room. Breeze tugged at the journal pages on the desk and played with pink and purple flower petals in an aluminum mug.
This was a déjà vu. Only now I knew where I was, and the enormity of my gratitude for the handsome man who lived here was impossible to encapsulate.
Ignoring the throbbing headache that drummed beneath my temples, I slowly sat up and looked at four small red openings with purple outlines on my ankle.
Hunter had saved my life for the second time.
I had to thank him, but a wave of nausea pushed me back onto the bed.
This could wait. I closed my eyes and tried calming the feeling of sickness by listening to the birds and the ocean.
The porch step creaked, and familiar footsteps approached.
Hunter perched next to the bed, holding a cup. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “How are you feeling?”
“This feels like déjà poo of how we met.” I gave him a weak smile. “How many days have I been out again?”
“One. I brought you some water.” He helped me lift my head and held the mug to my lips.
After a few sips, he lowered me back down.
He placed his hand to my forehead, the cool touch of his palm bringing short-lived comfort, and heat blossomed in my chest like a flower at his attentiveness. “No fever, that’s good.”
“Aren’t you going to lecture me?” I squinted one eye at him.
“Maybe later.”
“Did I dream it or does your boat have a huge…?”
Hunter’s face creased with pity. “Sorry.”
My initial reaction was to jump out of bed and work on the plan of what we could do to get the hell off the island, but a tidal wave of fatigue held me down.
Before my mind whisked me into nothingness, I whispered, “Thank you for saving my ass.”
Hunter was silent for a moment then his hand cupped the side of my face. His calloused thumb gently traced the corner of my mouth, tugging at my bottom lip. His eyes tracked his movement, then he leaned in, saying, “Anytime,” and pressed a kiss to my brow.
For one, two seconds.
At the touch of his warm lips every pressure point in me became a living pulse as if someone poured pop rocks candy into my bloodstreams. When Hunter pulled away, his eyes held shock, like he had done this on impulse, and it had surprised him. It had sure as hell surprised me.
“I…” he said, closed his mouth, and opened it again. I eyed him quizzically, waiting for an explanation. The act was sweet. It was kind. It was sincere. It meant nothing but a friendly gesture. “I was double checking for fever.”
“I understand.”
He backed away and quickly left the room, and as I watched him leave, I couldn’t stop a smile from pulling at my lips.
* * *
Aside from the light discomfort in my ankles the next day, I was back to normal.
At noon, judging by the sun directly above, I found Hunter in the kitchen.
I leaned against the tree and surveyed the soft-spoken man, removing fish wrapped in leaves from the hot coils.
Hunter was a reserved, manly man, yet if he lowered his guard, he could be funny and, at times, flirtatious.
But most of all, he was a kind, gentle man.
The flutter in my chest accelerated at the thought of yesterday’s tender kiss.
My chest expanded with the warmth of appreciation, and then guilt gutted me open, letting out all the warmth.
I shouldn’t have climbed the black rocks and made him worry.
I felt dwarfed by my ignorance. “I’m sorry I went there.”
Hunter looked up. “You should have taken my advice and let the snakes bite you while I was present,” he said calmly, raising his eyebrows as if to say I told you so. “I thought you were going to die.”
“Am I immune now?”
“Immune to what? The snakes or your stupidity?” A smile teetered on the edge of his mouth.
“Hey.” I scowled at him. “Don’t be an asshole. Tell me you never did stupid shit someone warned you not to do?”
“Sorry. You’re right.” Hunter crouched beside me, and his fingers gently glided over my sores, then his hand followed the bruises up my calf and to the back of my knee, making them go weak.
“You are not exactly immune to the venom, but you’ll handle it better next time.
One or two more bites, and you should respond the same as you would to a bee sting.
It will hurt for a while. Luckily, they didn’t strike your heel.
It happened to me once. It didn’t heal properly for a long time.
I limped for weeks.” He stood up and inclined his head toward the table. “Let’s get some food in you.”
Not having eaten anything for two days turned me into a growing teenager. Hunter was halfway done eating white flaky fish with mango salsa when my plate already had no evidence of lunch.
“Do you want some of mine?” He slid his plate to me, the compass on his forearm reminding me of my strange dream.
Without asking for permission, I reached for his arm and rested it on the table between us, peering closely at his tattoo, noticing details on the sundial that I could swear weren’t there before.
“I think I know the answer. Well, not the answer, but I know primers that could help us to find answers.” I gently traced the dial on the tattoo, Hunter’s skin warm and soft under my fingertips.
“This sundial was never meant to be used to tell time. Think of any horizontal sundials you have seen. The numbers are grouped mostly on the top half, with a large gap on the bottom because the shadow never crosses that part during the day. On this compass, the digits are arranged like a regular clock. Notice that each cardinal point is precisely under ‘12’, ‘3’, ‘6’, and ‘9’, and only the ‘2’ in ‘12’ has the same thickness as ‘3’, ‘6’, and ‘9’.”
Hunter peered at his forearm as if seeing the tattoo for the first time. “I’ll be damned.”
The artist he hired did an extraordinary job capturing the tiniest details. If I was right, we could crack all the messages in no time. An hour at most.
“We were too busy overthinking and overlooking details that were right in front of our noses. These are the keys we need to find the placement of letters in the alphabet. Based on these, we’ll know where to shift the rest.”
“If you feel well enough, do you want to try it now?” Hunter asked.
“Yes, but let me take a quick wash first.” I scratched my arm, then my scalp.
In the hut, I grabbed clean clothes and gathered my shampoo, soap, and a towel.
Halfway to the lake, I approached a scene I wasn’t expecting to see.
Hunter had secured the blue drum above three bamboo walls.
Just like I described to him, he’d attached the watering can to the hose and elevated it by a rope that was tied up to a hook screwed into the tree.
My mouth agape, I walked into the outdoor shower with a bamboo floor.
This was better than I’d imagined. This was an Instagram-worthy outdoor shower.
The upsurge in Hunter appreciation hit me so hard a burst of laughter laced with a squeak of sob slipped between my lips.
I didn’t deserve his kindness. More than ever now I wanted to be right about the numbers on the dial and help him crack the message as a thank you.
I set my toiletries on a small shelf nailed to the trunk and stripped off everything, not caring that there wasn’t a door. After days spent alone with Hunter, he’d earned my trust.
Holding my breath, I untied the string and lowered the hose.
Like a gift from God, warm water rained down, pulling a loud sigh out of me.
I stood with my face skywards, soaking in this luxury.
Unhurriedly, I soaped up my body and let my hand travel over my skin.
This was a dream. The dream in which my fingers kept turning into Hunter’s as they were reaching the most sensitive places.
I had to thank Hunter.
Feeling reborn, I walked into the hut with one purpose in mind. Hunter stood by the map on the wall, removing colorful pins from it. Without saying anything, I moved to him, set my stuff on the bookshelf, pulled on his hand until he faced me, and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Thank you for everything,” I said, pressing my face into Hunter’s broad chest. It took everything in me not to burst into tears. His attentive and empathetic personality was too much for me. “Especially for the shower. It is the kindest thing anyone’s done for me in a long, long time.”
Hunter encircled his strong arms around me, his palms engulfing so much of my back. “You’re welcome.” He rested his head on the top of my wet hair. “It was an exceptionally well-designed idea.”
Waves whispered against the shore as we embraced, neither of us taking the first step to let go.
We fit together too well. I was aware of how hot his skin felt against mine, how fast his heart pounded in his ribcage, mimicking mine, how his scent of citrus and sunshine was forever embossed in my mind.
And I’d miss him so much when I had to go home.
I wished there was a way for me to convince Hunter to return to the States.
Because I had to admit I really liked him, and would have loved to take a chance to date him.
But would he want to date me? Hunter was a versatile jack-of-all-trades and resourceful problem-solver who most likely was looking for a partner like him, and not a software nerd who didn’t know how to hard-boil an egg until she turned twenty-seven.
Reluctantly, I relaxed my grip and stepped out of his hug. “Ready to crack these numbers?”
“More than ever.” Hunter went to the table covered with paper and pulled two chairs out.
“All right. Assuming these are four separate number-to-letter encrypted sentences, and the bolder digit is a key number, we need to create four separate tables with twenty-six columns with two rows. Once we have new alphabets, we can replace each number in the message with its corresponding letter.” I took my seat and opened a journal to a new page.
“The first row will be letters. The second row will contain digits.” I drew the first chart, filling the top row with letters A to Z, then scribbling 2 under N because cardinal point North was under twelve with only 2 in bolder font.
“In English, the second letter of the alphabet is ‘B’. In our case, it’s ‘N’.
That makes ‘M’ be the first letter. With this, we consider the alphabet is shifted by twelve. ”
I wrote three under “O”, four under “P”, and continued filling out the rest of the empty boxes, stopping when I penciled in the last number under “Z”, which was fourteen.
Then I returned to the blank cells and wrote twenty-six under “L”, and kept filling them in until I reached the “A” column and scribbled fifteen under it.
Crouched over papers on the table, we created other charts, matching the given keys to numbers: three corresponded to “E”, six matched to “S”, and nine went under “W”. After that, we filled in the remaining empty slots.
Breaking the code wasn’t hard once we knew what to do.
The air around us crackled with excitement and joyful certainty.
Laughing at some of his or my puns and silly suggestions of what it could be, his shoulder bumping mine, my hand landing on his arm more than once.
And, good Lord, his laugh made the thought that we were stranded on an island evaporate into nothingness.
With the first several unraveled words, we high-fived and whooped, the thrill pushing me to write the next one even faster.
Several words went quick—okay, fine, I cheated and mostly guessed them—but the word I had to decode letter by letter, ‘Achilles’, slowed me down.
Hunter’s hand moved as fast as mine. The more words he jotted down the more muttered curses escaped his mouth, indicating that he was just as baffled as I was as we unraveled sentences.
And then, finally, I scribbled down the last word: place.