Chapter 8 #2
Looking down at the woman in his arms made Flash feel crazy protective. She’d done an amazing job of staying calm. Other than her one moment of weakness when she’d cried in his arms, she’d held up remarkably well.
He could still picture the way her face flushed when she admitted that she had to pee before they’d fallen asleep.
They’d decided the opposite corner of the bus would be the best place to relieve themselves, because the whole thing was just slightly tilted down in that direction, and their waste wouldn’t flow toward where they sat now.
It wasn’t ideal, but Flash hoped they’d be out of here before the smell became an issue.
They’d settled into the slight indentation where the bus driver’s seat once sat. Flash was getting used to holding Kelli in his lap. She felt right there, fit against him as if she was made for him.
Once she let down her guard, she’d immediately fallen into a deep sleep. The metal of the bus wasn’t comfortable in the least, but Flash wasn’t about to move. He’d act as Kelli’s pillow, because keeping her comfortable and upbeat was vitally important.
It struck him that this must be how his friends felt about their girlfriends and wives. He’d always been protective, but with this woman, those feelings were in overdrive.
Kelli shifted in his arms, and Flash waited for her eyes to open.
Her hair was tangled and matted in the back where her head wound had bled.
She had dark circles under her eyes, and her face was filthy from whatever crud was down here in this damn bus, but honestly, he’d never seen anything as beautiful as her big brown eyes when they opened and immediately locked onto him.
“I thought it was a dream. A bad one,” she said softly.
“What? Waking up in my arms?” Flash quipped.
That earned him a smile. Each and every time he could get her to laugh or smile felt like a victory.
“No. That’s the best thing about this. Being with you. The candle’s still lit,” she said, changing subjects abruptly.
“Yup. And one more thing to add to the positive pile. It’s burning evenly and slowly. Heckle and Jeckle left us the perfect long-lasting candle. Idiots.”
The giggle that left her lips made Flash mentally put another tick mark in the “I made her smile” list he was compiling.
“You need to use the facilities?”
She frowned and shook her head.
Flash didn’t like that. Not peeing meant she was dehydrated.
“Right. I don’t know about you, but my stomach is eating itself. How about we check out those cans?”
“With our luck it really will be dog food,” Kelli murmured, but she shifted off his lap.
Flash held her hand until she had her balance, then they both walked the few steps to where they’d left the box.
He reached for the bottle of water and handed it to her.
“Small sips,” he warned. They’d already cracked the seal the day before—at least, by now, he assumed it was the day before—and they’d each taken one large swallow.
It wasn’t enough, but even with water dripping into the bus, he didn’t want to take the chance of them running out.
Besides, at least he knew the water in the bottle was clean; the last thing he wanted was either of them getting diarrhea after drinking from an unknown water source.
He was also a little suspicious that there was water dripping inside the bus in the first place.
Upon inspection, he guessed their kidnappers might have set it up somehow, to make sure they didn’t die before they’d gotten their money.
The water just looked too clean to be leakage of rain or some other naturally occurring source through the soil .
If they were in the bus long enough, they’d have to drink the dripping water…but he wanted to put it off for as long as possible.
The possibility that the water was tainted…some other way for their kidnappers to torture them…wasn’t something he was going to bring up at the moment. He needed to be nothing but positive for Kelli. There was no use scaring her with scenarios that might not even happen.
She nodded and closed her eyes as she took a single swig of the water.
He accepted the bottle and took his own drink, before replacing the cap and putting the water aside.
He urged Kelli to sit and made himself comfortable next to her.
He said a little prayer that whatever was in the unknown cans was edible.
He definitely hoped what they had wasn’t dog food either, but he could eat it if it was.
It would totally suck, but nutrients were nutrients.
Both cans in the box had their labels stripped off, and he balanced them in his hands, trying to decide which to open first.
“Eeny meeny miny moe?” Kelli asked with a smile.
“How about you just pick a hand?” Flash countered.
“Right.”
He waited. When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Are you gonna pick?”
She chuckled—Flash ticked off another line on his mental chart—and said, “I just did.”
“Oh! I thought you were agreeing with me,” Flash said, returning her smile. “Right it is.”
He put the cans down and reached for the spoon.
“I think I told you yesterday that the lid’s thinner than the actual can itself.
So if you use the tip of the spoon to rub over and over in the same spot, making a groove, eventually you can break through the thinner tin.
” He demonstrated by gripping the spoon firmly, holding the can still, then carefully putting force on the spoon as he rubbed the tip over and over at the edge of the lid.
Before too long, the spoon punctured the surface.
“Voilà!” he exclaimed happily.
“It worked! You did that fast!” she said.
“I’ll let you do the next one.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“Nope, you need to learn how to do it too. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t as fast as I am. I’ve had more practice. Besides…what else do we have to do?”
“True,” she said. “What is it? What do we have?”
“After you make the hole, use the spoon to cut all the way around the top. You can fold the top back when you get far enough around. But the lid is super sharp with the jagged edges, so you have to be careful not to touch it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…what’s in it?” Kelli asked, leaning forward eagerly.
Flash carefully peeled the lid back, then picked up the candle and held it closer.
“Is that…spinach?” Kelli asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably canned callaloo.”
Kelli looked at him with both brows furrowed. “What’s that?”
“A Jamaican vegetable that’s rich in iron, calcium, and B2. It’s in the spinach family.”
“So…it’s spinach,” Kelli said, licking her lips. “Can we eat it raw? ”
“Yes.” Spinach wasn’t Flash’s favorite food, but right now, his mouth was watering and he couldn’t think of anything more delicious than the leafy vegetable in the can.
He dipped the spoon in and held it up to Kelli.
Her gaze came up to his, then she leaned forward. Without taking her gaze away, she opened her mouth and let Flash feed her…then moaned as the vegetables hit her taste buds.
The sound went straight to Flash’s cock.
He was embarrassed by his reaction. This was the absolute last time he should be thinking about anything other than survival. But this woman did something to him. Turned him inside out. In a good way.
“Go on,” she urged. “Try it.”
Flash did, and it was all he could do not to moan himself when he chewed.
“We need to make this last,” Kelli said, her gaze fixed on the can now.
It was obvious how hungry she was, how badly she wanted to shovel the food into her mouth.
But she knew they needed to prolong their meal.
“How about we tell each other something about ourselves between each bite. Wait? Are we eating it all right now? Or should we save it?”
Flash’s first inclination was to hoard the food.
He had no idea how long it would take Heckle and Jeckle to get a hold of someone back home with the ransom demand.
And then how long it would take for whoever was contacted to believe the threat was real and not some joke.
Then his team would have to be notified, probably Tex, and then they’d have to get approval to come to Jamaica? —
He cut off his thoughts. They were most likely still days away from being rescued.
“I’m thinking we should finish this. The last thing we want is to let it go bad,” he told her.
“Besides, it would be stupid to be rescued with uneaten food. There’s a show I found on TV called Alone .
It’s a reality show, but not like most. Men and women are dropped into remote locations, and they have to be the last one of the group to call it quits…
or to be taken out of the game for medical reasons.
They have no contact with anyone else and they have to film themselves, so there’s no fake drama or alcohol used to make things more, quote, ‘interesting.’” He held up his hand, making quotation marks as he said that last word.
“Anyway, this one guy, he caught a ton of fish. I think it was fish. Anyway, he had a ton of food that he smoked and was hoarding in his shelter. He lost a gazillion pounds but was more worried about having food for the future than eating it in the moment. He ended up being medically evacuated because he’d gotten too skinny.
He had all that food, but still lost because he just didn’t eat it. ”
Kelli nodded. “I’ll have to look up the show when we get home.”
“We’ll watch it together,” Flash said impulsively.
“I’d like that,” she told him with a shy smile.
And just like that, Flash realized they’d decided to see each other again when they got back to California. He liked that too. A hell of a lot. “So…I think we should eat this entire can now.”
“I’m not going to disagree with you,” Kelli said. “But we should still make it last.”
“Agreed. Okay…let’s see…my favorite color is…black. ”
“Why am I not surprised?” Kelli said with a grin. “Mine is pink.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Flash repeated.