Chapter Twelve
Now
Piper didn’t care if Wyatt spotted a McDonald’s in the jungle; nothing would coax her from her stakeout on the beach today.
Okay, maybe she’d leave for a McFlurry, but nothing less. Otherwise, she’d sit here under her trusty palm tree, eyes trained
on the ocean horizon, ears tuned toward the sky until rescue came. And they were coming today. She just knew it.
Wyatt, who’d missed the memo to relax, bustled about the beach, creating a giant SOS signal with stones, dragging driftwood
into piles, and putting the finishing touches on their shelter. He never went far, always hovering nearby like a deranged
helicopter parent. Every thirty minutes or so, he’d plop down next to her, swig some water, share survival facts, or give
her an update.
“Remember the rule of threes,” he quizzed her. “We learned it in basic training. Humans can live for three weeks without food,
three days without water, and three minutes without air, but hopefully that last one won’t be an issue.”
“Nothing but sand, rocks, and a snake hanging out in a tree,” he told her after trekking up the beach toward the other side
of the island.
The Wyatt of her youth had never been so chatty, but she chalked it up to nerves. A feeling she fully understood. Wait ing for rescue felt like having a boa constrictor coil around her body, every passing hour tightening its hold and draining her of hope.
By the time the sun passed its peak in the sky, Piper had finished her book, taken a nap, and eaten her allotment of fruit
for the day. In the water, Wyatt attempted fishing with a wire he’d procured from somewhere, but the fish weren’t biting.
It seemed they shared Piper’s lack of enthusiasm for eating the island bugs he used for bait. Giving up on his mahi ambitions,
Wyatt waded back to the shore and hovered over her, dripping water on her legs in tiny, methodical splashes.
“Hey, do you want to play a game with me?” He sounded as hopeful as a kid asking to join a four-square tournament at recess.
She squinted up at him. “Did you pack a deck of cards or something?”
“It’s more of a game I made up. Will you please try it? I know you must be as bored as me.”
He wasn’t wrong. Before he’d stepped out of the ocean, she’d been chatting with one of the crabs peeking out from its dark
hole in the sand, trying to coax it closer. Not a great sign of her mental health at the moment. She needed a distraction.
“Okay, I’m in.” Piper stood and stretched her stagnant legs, gesturing for Wyatt to lead the way to whatever game he’d devised.
A few yards down the beach, he’d drawn a series of large circles, all of them sharing the same top point by a sprightly palm
tree, each one enclosed within the other from large to small, the smallest only two handprints wide. He handed Piper something
soft and heavy. A homemade sandbag.
She recognized the Moroccan trellis pattern of her sand-filled Bombas. “What am I looking at? Are these my socks?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, you have at least five more clean pairs stuffed in your pillow.”
Her socks made her think about her underwear—and the brand-new underwire bra she’d packed for the trip. “Wait a second. Where
did you get your fishing wire?”
Wyatt winced. “You won’t like the answer to that question, but I promise it will be worth it if I catch a fish.”
Piper rubbed her temples, careful to avoid her bandage. Maybe she could use Wyatt as fish bait after she finished murdering
him.
Wyatt, sensing he was losing Piper’s good favor, hurried to tell her the rules. “So, you get three tosses on each turn, and
the goal is to get twenty-five points first. Landing in the biggest circle gets you one point, and it goes up to seven if
you hit the smallest one. But you have to go in order. You can’t hit the bull’s-eye until you’ve hit all the other circles.
Make sense?”
Piper crossed her arms. “No, this sounds complicated.”
“Think of it as a mix between bocce ball and darts. You’ll get it if we play.” He picked up one of the socks and nudged her
with his shoulder. “You can go first.”
By the third round, neither of them could remember how many points they’d scored or who was winning, but for once, Piper wasn’t
thinking about her hunger or the lack of rescue. Wyatt hollered every time he hit a bull’s-eye and cheered even harder when
Piper did. It was impossible not to smile around him, and she was having fun despite their surroundings. In fact, she hadn’t
experienced this kind of joy in far too long.
With Tag, Piper checked her posture and paid close attention to her vocabulary, like a kid trying to be on her best behavior around adults, acting sophisticated and well mannered. Playing the part of a serious medical student on the path to great success to match his ambitions. And the ambitions of her parents. While Tag clearly liked her, he didn’t find her jokes funny, and she rarely understood the dry references only he laughed at. Their dates usually consisted of a steakhouse dinner with red wine or using Tag’s parents’ box seats at the symphony. All things that required fancy footwear. She couldn’t picture him willingly throwing dirty socks into the hot sand, wearing day-old clothes drenched in sweat—or imagine him smiling from ear to ear while doing so, like Wyatt.
Guilt swooped in like a seagull snatching up leftover bread—she’d barely thought about Tag since they’d crashed. Did he even
know she was missing? She’d intentionally not made things official with him, and they often went days without talking. They’d
built their situationship on convenience more than conventional romance. Neither had time to meet anyone new, so a suitable
nonserious dating partner had been the perfect arrangement, but it was strange she hadn’t thought of him until now. Right?
Comparing Tag to Wyatt wasn’t fair. She and Wyatt were estranged friends at best, while Tag reliably took her on dates and
always returned her phone calls. Not to mention, Tag had never broken her heart beyond repair. So why was she unspeakably
grateful to be stuck on this island with Wyatt and not Tag? Playing this made-up game on the beach showed her what she’d been
missing: silly fun, uninhibited laughter, and an undercurrent of deep friendship.
It also made her wonder—who was missing Wyatt right now? Undoubtedly, he had someone special back home. Besides the whole
heartbreak-history-and-crashing-them-on-the-island-in-the-first-place details, he’d been an exceptional survival partner.
Always making sure she had enough to eat before he had a bite of food, handling her reluctance to open up to him with positivity
and grace, and doing his best to take care of them both.
All traits of an ideal boyfriend.
There was no way someone in Colorado hadn’t noticed that, too. Not to mention his army-shredded body and dimpled smile. And
those soul-drowning eyes.
Wyatt nailed a bull’s-eye and performed an elaborate touchdown dance, rescuing her from her pesky, spiraling thoughts. “Eat my dust, Adams.”
“No way!” she protested. “This is the beginning of a new round. You can’t get a bull’s-eye until you hit the bigger circles!”
“No. That was me winning the end of a round.”
Piper pursed her lips. “This reminds me of that summer you got everyone in the neighborhood to play a real-life game of Quidditch.
A spectacular failure.”
Wyatt huffed. “It’s not my fault nobody paid attention to the rules.”
“Yeah, that was the problem. Not that your rules were overly complex.”
“Don’t lie. You loved every second.”
“Maybe.” She grinned at him. “Mostly because you took it so seriously. I’m getting strong déjà vu vibes now.”
Wyatt chuckled. “That was the summer you broke your arm, right?”
Piper nodded. She’d broken her arm playing kickball during an end-of-school game in front of the entire ninth-grade class.
“Yeah, and I couldn’t go to the pool because my mom worried my cast would get wet even though it was waterproof. Allie was
a junior lifeguard, and Ethan was away at soccer camp and totally ditched me.”
“Ditched us ,” he clarified. “Who came and hung out with you almost every single day? That was the summer you got really into Harry Potter,
if I recall.”
“I remember I wasn’t the only one.”
“You’re right. I’d give anything to be sitting on my couch eating popcorn, watching The Prisoner of Azkaban right now,” Wyatt said, scrunching his mouth to one side.
“I’d give anything to have a Portkey back home.”
“Or a Nimbus two thousand,” Wyatt added, not to be outdone.
“Too bad we’re a couple of muggles stranded on an island.”
Wyatt threw back his head and laughed, the lines by his eyes carving deep grooves.
Piper laughed along with him. “God, we were such dorks.”
“Some things never change.”
Was it her imagination, or did she detect a catch in his voice? A surge of fondness for her old friend rushed through her.
They’d once been so close, their lives and stories intertwined like vines of ivy knotting together as they grew. Even though
her defenses remained fortress-high around Wyatt, spending time with him was like revisiting all the best parts of her childhood.
Around them, the wind picked up, whipping sand into tiny dunes that rippled along the shore like echoes from a stone dropped
into a glassy lake. So engrossed in their game, they hadn’t noticed the sky darkening overhead until fat raindrops splashed
down around them. At first, only a few juicy drops splattered the sand, but soon water poured from the sky like a faucet pushed
all the way up.
Wyatt pumped his fist in the air. “Yes! An afternoon thunderstorm!”
Back home, Piper would have run for shelter, but she let the rain soak her skin, cleansing her. There was no hairstyle to
ruin or makeup to protect. Here, a rainstorm meant life-sustaining water. She tilted her face upward, tasting the drops on
her tongue. Within minutes they were both drenched. Wyatt’s white T-shirt, made translucent by the rain, molded to his well-defined
pecs like a second skin. His face glowed with unbridled joy as he held his mouth open to the sky, arms wide, water running
from his hair in rivers.
Their gazes met, pure elation buzzing between them. Wyatt’s eyes matched the swirling gray sky, his wide grin hopeful and bright. Impulsively, he grabbed her hands, twirling the two of them in a chaotic circle, the storm enveloping them in a curtain of rain. Her heart crashed into her ribs. It had to be the stormy crackle of electricity in the air making her pulse race.
Dizzy, she dropped his hands to catch her breath as they stopped spinning. “How can we collect it?” she shouted over the rain.
Wyatt held his hand out to her. “Come on. I have an idea!”
Piper hesitated, looking past his hand to his rain-soaked, earnest face. At those eyes shining with renewed hope, and something
else. Love? Her heart thundered faster.
The deluge around them wouldn’t let her overthink the moment, so she locked her hand into his and he took off running, pulling
her toward their shelter. As they raced hand in hand through the rain, she stole a glance at him, her breath catching at the
glow of his smile, the chiseled lines of his face.
It was definitely more than the weather setting her nerve endings on fire.
At the shelter, Wyatt grabbed a handful of clothes from their makeshift mattresses and hung them on a tree limb to absorb
rainwater they could wring out. Piper mirrored his actions, working steadily alongside him. Pulling his drenched shirt over
his head, Wyatt added it to a tree branch. Piper tried not to stare, but the ropy muscles rippling across his strong back
every time he moved transfixed her.
Wyatt was beautiful.
She peeled off her own soaked cover-up, revealing the teal bathing suit underneath. After hanging her cover-up on a limb,
she took a step back and bumped into Wyatt, who’d moved behind her when she wasn’t looking. Turning around only pushed her
closer to him, her bikini-clad body sticking to his wet, bare chest. His gaze flicked down at her swimsuit, and his eyebrows
shot up.
A shiver rippled through her body.
Wyatt grasped her shoulders and took a small step away from her. “Are you cold?”
“No, it’s just the rain. I’m fine,” she whispered.
He brushed a wet piece of hair off her face, his thumb grazing her cheekbone a fraction of a second longer than needed. Piper
ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her cheeks burn.
Escaping the moment, she dropped to the sand and repositioned a group of palm leaves, collecting even more water, distracting herself from the dizzying effect of Wyatt’s presence.
Eventually, the rain lessened to a soft mist, but the wind continued howling like an angry ghost. Judging from the murky clouds,
the storm wasn’t clearing out anytime soon.
Wyatt swiped a hand over his scruffy jawline. “This wind keeps blowing sand into my beard. The army drilled the clean-shaven
look into me. I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without shaving. Do I look like a mountain man?”
Piper regarded his days-old stubble, shielding her eyes from a surge of sand the wind kicked up in their direction. Dark hair
framed his jawline, outlining his full lips, somehow making him even more attractive despite his hollowing cheeks.
“I think you look more beach bum than mountain man. Literally. But the stubble suits you.”
“Did Piper Adams just compliment me?” His lips curved up in a smile.
Piper scrunched her face. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Maybe I’ll keep this look going after we make it home and see if the women come knocking.” Wyatt leaned against a tree trunk.
There was no reason for the jealousy blooming in Piper’s chest, but she couldn’t ignore its sharp pang. “I’m sure you don’t
have any trouble attracting women with or without the facial hair.” She remembered how many girls at their high school had
crushed on him, including her.
“Maybe not,” he admitted. “But so far, no one’s made me want to settle down.”
Piper didn’t know how she was supposed to take that statement. On the one hand, the thought of Wyatt with a serious girlfriend
hurt her stomach. But his comment lumped her into that category of women who hadn’t inspired him to commit.
“Or maybe you haven’t stuck around long enough to give anyone a fair chance.” She hoped he wouldn’t hear the sudden edge to
her voice, but his head snapped in her direction.
He leveled his gaze at her. “It’s possible. But I think it’s more a matter of having a hard time finding anyone who comes
close to you.”
Piper’s eyes widened, and she crossed her arms, protecting herself from the barrage of emotions his confession released. “That’s
a funny thing to say considering you didn’t give me, or us, a fair chance either.”
Wyatt shook his head. “That wasn’t it. It’s more complicated than that. And it doesn’t matter now, anyway.” He dragged a hand
over his cheek, frustrated. “Enough about me; your turn. I bet you’ve got a guy back home losing sleep over your disappearance.”
Piper bit her lip. So they were really having this conversation. “I do. He’s a fellow med student.”
He nodded like he’d been expecting that answer. “I bet your parents love him.” His mouth curved upward, but the sad smile
tugged at her heart.
Before she thought better of it, the truth came tumbling out. “They do, but we’re really more like friends. Otherwise, I would’ve
dragged him to Allie’s wedding, and he’d be trapped here with us.”
Wyatt’s smile brightened ten full notches. “I guess lucky for him, he didn’t sweep you off your feet enough to score an invitation
to Hell Island.” Then with a cheeky wink, “And lucky for me that there’s a chance I could win you back.”
Piper blushed at his boldness, her insides liquefying. “I assure you that will not be happening.” She meant it, but a part of her, a growing part, liked Wyatt’s flirting, liked it a lot, and she couldn’t help but smile.
The careful lines she’d drawn around their relationship or lack thereof blurred like a photo shot out of focus.