Chapter Seven
Now
Allie must be going crazy with worry. At this very moment, they should be indulging in mani-pedis at the resort spa before
getting dressed for the rehearsal dinner. When had everyone realized their plane was missing? How many phone calls must her
father have made by now to anyone with influence? How formidable had her mom been demanding a rescue team comb the Caribbean
for her only daughter? She had to figure out a way to get off this island.
Springing into action, Piper stood too hastily, dizziness washing over her. Like a shadow, Wyatt hopped up and reached an
arm out to steady her.
“Whoa, take it easy.”
“I’m fine.” Piper waved him off, willing her balance to return, no longer sure if her unsteadiness stemmed from her head injury
or Wyatt’s proximity. “You mentioned some of our stuff survived the crash? Is there anything that can help us?” Anything for me to wear besides your T-shirt?
“Come see for yourself.” Wyatt led her to a thicker patch of trees bordering the beach. “I think our luggage from the back
of the plane is long gone, but I pulled a few things out of the wreckage.”
Piper spotted the tan stripes of her beach tote propped against the trunk of a gnarled tree. Next to it, Wyatt had laid out an as sortment of items—a couple of tiny water bottles, some blankets, and a first aid kit. She knelt in the sand and inspected her belongings. The tote’s handles were burned, but the inside, where she’d stored her toiletry bag, remained intact. Most of her makeup and shower bottles were smashed beyond repair, but her toothbrush and toothpaste looked usable. She ran a tongue over her teeth, tasting the slimy film that covered them. That would be her first order of business.
At the bottom of her tote sat the teal bikini and flowy white cover-up dress she’d thrown in with plans of heading straight
to the pool, along with a pair of socks, white tennis shoes, and the book she’d bought at the airport. She dug further, hoping
to unearth one of the granola bars she’d tucked away.
“I pooled our snacks and stuck them in my backpack,” Wyatt explained. “I’m not sure what animals around here might think we’re
hosting a picnic.”
Her iPhone, tucked into a side pocket, had somehow survived without a crack but had no charge left. It might as well be a
paperweight now.
“Is your phone dead, too?” Piper asked.
Wyatt nodded. “I tried both our phones yesterday before they died, but I couldn’t get a signal. And the location and communication
equipment on the plane is completely fried.”
“So, we don’t have any way of letting someone know where we are?”
“The first aid kit included a handheld radio, but I think it’s busted.”
A bubble of hope floated inside her. “A radio! Wyatt, why didn’t you lead with that?”
He shrugged. “It’s useless. I tried making contact all day yesterday and got nothing.”
She squinted at him. “Did the badass army guy doze off during Radio 101?”
“Says Miss Halfway Done with Medical School but Scared of Blood.”
Piper bit her tongue to keep from falling back into the easy banter of their past. “Let me see it.”
Wyatt opened the metal first aid kit and handed Piper the black radio. It wasn’t all that different from the radios they’d
used in Girl Scouts when geocaching in the woods. In college, Piper had gone through a phase of being obsessed with all things
from the 1930s and ’40s, including black-and-white films and old-time radio shows. She’d joined the university’s radio station
club, where she’d produced a thirty-minute broadcast show every Thursday night for a year and had even reassembled an old
radio to learn the inner workings. It was all the best parts of medicine: sitting with a complicated problem and patiently
working to understand it until the solution revealed itself—but without the blood. She may not know how to forage for food,
but she could handle a radio.
Piper carried the radio back to the shady grove of palm trees and settled into the sand. Tuning to different channels, she
tested for a signal and listened to the static coming through the speakers. Like most people, radios took a minute to warm
up and reveal their answers.
Wyatt continued arranging piles of driftwood as the sun dropped low in the sky, bathing the narrow strip of beach in a dusty
rose glow. Soon it would be dark, and she’d be alone with Wyatt on this island for another night. A shiver ran down her spine
at the thought.
After an hour of patiently scanning through channel after channel, something other than static poured through the speakers.
A connection.
“Yes!” Piper cheered. “I knew I could make this work.”
Wyatt rushed to her side as Piper clicked the talk button and stated their names and situation in a clear, steady voice.
“This is Piper Adams and Wyatt Brooks. Our plane crashed somewhere in the Caribbean on the way to the Bahamas. We need rescue. I repeat, we need rescue.”
She listened, waiting for a response, but only silence answered. Speaking louder, she repeated herself. Still nothing.
Wyatt leaned forward and gripped Piper’s shoulder, encouraging her to try again. Tingling warmth spread through Piper’s body
at his casual touch and she forced herself to focus. Holding the radio between them, she spoke the same words for the third
time. They both held their breath and waited.
A voice broke through the silence. “This is Rosie Sanchez. I’m with the Coast Guard Search and Rescue team. Do you copy?”
Relief washed over Piper like a cold shower. “Yes! Copy!” She shared a wild grin with Wyatt. “This is Piper Adams, I’m with
Wyatt Brooks, and our plane crashed. We need rescue.”
“Is anyone hurt?” Rosie asked.
“We’re okay. A little banged up, but otherwise fine.”
“Okay, good. I’m glad you could contact us. Here’s the situation: There’s already a rescue effort underway, but it may take
a bit of time to find your exact location. Do you have water? Food?”
Piper knew she should be relieved to hear rescue was coming, but she’d been hoping they’d be located this evening. She hesitated
long enough for Wyatt to take the radio from her.
“Copy that,” Wyatt spoke confidently into the radio. “Yes, we have a few bottles of water and some snacks.”
“Great. I need you to make that last and sit tight. Can you do that?”
Piper snatched the radio from Wyatt. “Sit tight for how long?” She could hear the desperation in her voice and wanted to add
that being trapped here with her ex was like staring at an open wound, one that hurt far worse than the cut on her head. Somehow,
she doubted the rescue workers would prioritize who they helped according to personal history complications.
A beat of silence followed before Rosie came back on the line. “We’ll get to you as fast as we can. In the meantime, try to preserve your batteries by only reaching out if it’s necessary. You can check in for an update if more than two days pass. My recommendation would be to find some shelter and hunker down until we can get there. And stick together.”
Wyatt took the radio from Piper and thanked Rosie, assuring her they would be okay for a few days. He exuded excitement and
renewed energy, a sharp contrast to Piper’s internal freefall. Despite the deep relief that help was on the way, dread pooled
in her stomach at Rosie’s “stick together” comment. Wyatt may be strong and capable and somehow more handsome than she remembered,
but she wasn’t sure she could survive another day with him and walk away with her heart intact.
With a darkening sky and no rescue on the near horizon, Piper slunk to the opposite side of their sandy base camp and sat
against a tree looking skyward. Above the swaying palms, the stars blinked on one by one, marking the end of the longest day
of her life so far.
At home, Piper needed a sound machine to quell her ever-racing mind at night, so she hadn’t expected sleep to come easily,
but the ocean waves and warm breeze had swiftly lulled her into dreamland. After watching Wyatt pull together a few leafy
green palm fronds to sleep on, she’d done the same, curling up on the warm sand a healthy distance away from him. She may
have slept well, but there was no hiding from the sun in the morning. It blazed through the slats of the palm trees, too dazzling
and too hot, forcing her awake earlier than she’d have liked.
When she opened her eyes, she immediately knew three things to be true: they were still stranded on this island, her stomach
ached with hunger, and Wyatt’s arms were wrapped around her like they’d spent the past ten years falling asleep nestled together.
Her back fit perfectly against his chest, her head resting on the crook of Wyatt’s arm, while his other arm lay possessively
over her side, his hand pressed against her stomach. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from gasping out loud at the
rush of electricity flowing up and down her body from his sleeping touch. Eight years ago, they’d woken up curled in this
same position, and the similarity of the moment brought back a wave of nostalgia. Wyatt stirred, and his arm around her tightened,
hitching between her breasts and pulling her closer.
She relaxed against him, relishing the sweet comfort of his embrace. She’d missed this, missed him for so long. And now he was here, his arms around her, his sleepy, warm body pressed against hers, hot breath against her
ear. Every part of her wanted to turn and wrap her arms around his neck and cling to him, bury her head in his neck, and never
let him go. But she was terrified of how much she’d miss it when he woke up and realized his mistake.
No, she couldn’t board this train of thought destined to dead-end in disaster. She needed to keep her wits about her if she
was going to make it through another few days on this island—and another few days with Wyatt.
So she pretended to be asleep until Wyatt woke with a stretch, then padded away down the beach. Despite the growing heat of
the sun, she missed the warmth of his body, the weight of his arm around her. Missed it more than she should.
After enough time to feel believable, Piper wiped the sleep from her eyes, rolled over, and scanned the beach for Wyatt. Several yards away, Wyatt sat on some driftwood he’d placed around a large flattened rock, flanked by similar sized pieces of wood rescued from the ocean. The arrangement gave Piper the impression of a table with benches—if she squinted hard and used a lot of imagination. She used her rescued toiletries to brush her teeth and tame her hair into a braid, then walked over and plunked down across the rock “table” from Wyatt on a driftwood “bench,” determined to wipe their sleepy morning snuggle from her memory.
On the rock lay strips of something green and slimy.
Piper scrunched her nose. “What’s this?”
“It’s seaweed.” He popped a strip into his mouth. “I let it dry out in the sun all day yesterday. Help yourself.”
“Are there any other options?” She was more of a fries with ranch dressing than a side salad kind of girl.
He held out a tiny bag of almonds and shook a few into her hand. The nuts were gone too soon, but she knew better than to
ask for more.
“I’m glad you’re up,” Wyatt said like Piper was a teenager who’d overslept. “We should explore, find food, and figure out
the best place to set up a camp like Rosie suggested on the radio.”
Piper’s temple throbbed with the beginning of a headache. “I don’t know who you were listening to, but I heard Rosie clearly
say we should hunker down and sit tight.”
“And I heard her say we might be here for longer than we’d like. We should check things out before it gets much hotter. Come
on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Somewhere over the Atlantic would be my guess,” Piper mused with a frown, the glow of waking up in Wyatt’s arms fading by
the second. “You may think this is all some fun escapade. But I didn’t sign up to spend my vacation eating bugs with you.
In fact, I didn’t plan on you being on my vacation at all.”
Her harsh words stopped him, but only barely. “I’m sorry. When I’m stressed out, I make dumb jokes—you know that. And I’m
not suggesting we go foraging for insects.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Wyatt pointed to the cliffside down the beach. “We need to get a new perspective. Maybe if we get a better lay of the land, we can give the Coast Guard a better idea of where to find us.” He popped another piece of seaweed into his mouth.
Annoyingly, he had a decent point. The almonds had barely satisfied her hunger, so she tore off a piece of the dried green
substance and took a tentative bite. It tasted like dirty grass, which she guessed it technically was, but it helped calm
her appetite.
“Not bad, right?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had, but it’s not getting a five-star Yelp review.”
He passed her a half-full water bottle, and though she could have guzzled the whole thing down in seconds, she took only a
small sip.
“If you go exploring with me, we might find something better,” he pointed out.
Piper knew what a lost battle looked like, so she gave in. “Fine. Let me change into something else first.”
Wyatt took in the oversize T-shirt she still wore, gave her a crooked smile, and turned his back to offer her some privacy.
Desperate for some sense of normalcy, Piper “bathed” with a few makeup remover wipes and changed into her clean bathing suit
and beach cover-up. Pouring a dollop of sunscreen into her hand, she rubbed it onto her face and shoulders. No sense in getting
skin cancer while waiting to be rescued. After lacing her tennis shoes, she sucked in a breath of salty air and joined Wyatt
by the water.
Here went nothing.