Chapter Fourteen
To say that Savannah was torn would be an understatement.
Half of her was panicking that they’d completely fucked up their chances of winning this game with the whole note thing.
Not that she regretted hoarding the reward for just the two of them, just that she wished she’d fed that damn piece of paper to the fire.
The other half of her wished she could be airlifted from this island this very minute.
After last night, Savannah couldn’t look at Amy without feeling a ridiculous, mushy, feather-floating-through-the-air kind of airy flutter in her chest. She wanted to hold Amy’s hand.
She wanted to drag Amy around her favorite corner of West Village and grab oat milk lattes from Buvette before they ducked into Three Lives she knew how to build a fantasy that would charm a woman right out of her heels.
She could write slow-burn, bone-deep scenes that would make readers fall in love with the characters and make the characters fall in love with each other.
She could spin raw vulnerability into pure electric heat just with a few words, and she could break hearts doing it just to find inspiration.
This wasn’t Amy’s first rodeo. Savannah had read Amy’s interview in Life’s Good magazine after she’d won the Sapphire Quill Award and all the comments that had come with it, including one from Maeve Utton.
Apparently, Amy had traveled all the way to Texas, made Maeve fall in love with her, and after three weeks of learning to lasso, getting spun dizzy at the local honky-tonk, and stealing kisses on a mattress in the back of a pickup under a sky full of stars, she’d left poor Maeve heartbroken.
Then she’d written a novel where Lee, the sharp-tongued lawyer from Manhattan, was forced to share a failing ranch in Montana with Chrissy, the stoic ranch hand, after they’d both inherited it.
At one point, Lee had dragged Chrissy into a dusty barn by her belt loops.
Savannah tried not to think about the possibility that Amy had done that exact same thing on her visit and tamed the cowgirl’s wild streak.
It was the perfect recipe for a delicious novel, but Savannah hadn’t been able to bring herself to review it.
She didn’t like the idea of an author writing happy endings, but in the real world, acting like a wrecking ball just to get there.
And now, well, Savannah’s heart had found itself right in the danger zone.
“So,” Naomi said, standing tall in an olive-green zip-up ribbed tennis dress layered under a crisp denim jacket.
Her Adidas Sambas were perfectly white, perfectly clean.
Savannah looked at her with envy. Nothing about Savannah was clean or crisp.
“Before we get into the votes, I think it’s best we address the elephant in the room. ”
Savannah had expected as much. After Luna’s outrage this morning over that simple little note, Savannah would be delusional to think it wouldn’t be mentioned in The Sending.
The more drama, the better, and what better way to keep the viewers watching than to turn this morning’s incident into a full-blown witch hunt.
Luna nodded solemnly, and before Naomi could even give her permission to speak, she spoke in a tone so grave that Savannah rolled her eyes. “A crime was committed.”
“A crime?” Naomi asked, raising an amused eyebrow.
“Yes,” Luna said plainly. “A crime. Savannah and Amy had the opportunity to include one other pair in their reward yesterday, and instead, they chose gluttony.” Then she snapped her head toward Savannah and added, “It’s one of the seven deadly sins. You should be ashamed.”
Kate suddenly cleared her throat. “You’re being dramatic, Luna,” she said, shaking her head. Her auburn hair was slicked back with a concoction of rice water and wild agave soap that Ezra had come up with that morning. Who knew? “And I don’t agree with you.”
“You don’t?” Luna asked, shocked. She looked as if Kate had literally pulled the rug right out from under her feet. “What do you mean you don’t? You were literally seething about it this morning.”
Kate folded her hands in her lap. “I understand why they did what they did, and if I were in their position, I would’ve done the same thing. You would’ve too.”
Luna looked personally offended. “I would not,” she gasped. “I would’ve shared every single scrap. It’s called being a decent human being.”
Kate snorted. “Really?” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Because whenever we’ve watched Outlast Her together, and a pair has gotten the chance to choose another pair to join them for a reward, you’ve always said that you wouldn’t wish that on anybody and certainly not yourself.”
Luna huffed, looking beaten. Savannah would’ve smirked if she wasn’t so aware of Amy sitting listlessly beside her. She had shifted so many times it was a wonder there weren’t fire ants on her seat. “But it still doesn’t exempt them from making hard decisions,” Luna said.
The second the words left her mouth, Amy’s knee started bouncing hard enough to shake the bench.
Savannah nearly reached over to still it, but one touch would be dangerous.
Her heart rate was already sitting up there with a couch potato halfway through a marathon.
The last thing she wanted was to keel over as Sloan had done.
Instead, she risked a glance sideways and hoped to catch Amy’s eye.
But if Amy had any situational awareness, she wasn’t showing it; she was staring straight ahead, lost in her own head.
“They did give us a few pieces of croissant,” Avery pointed out from the second row.
“Yeah,” Jade said. “They fed it to us like we were stray dogs.”
“But each of us got something,” Maya Lin said.
“And some of us got more than others.” She eyed Luna, whose mouth snapped shut in an instant.
It was true. Amy had offered Luna not just one sliver of French toast but two.
“I didn’t hear you complaining when you were licking syrup off your fingers, Luna.
You seemed pretty satisfied with their crime then. ”
Luna turned a furious shade of red. “Fine,” she huffed, her cheeks puffing out. “I guess their crime wasn’t so bad after all.”
“Is there something you’d like to say?” Naomi turned toward Amy, who was practically leaning so far forward she could topple over. “You look like you’re about to burst.”
“Yes,” Amy said quickly. Then she cleared her throat and addressed everyone on the benches.
“I know this won’t make anyone feel any better, but I was up all night tossing and turning in bed.
I feel so guilty about not including another pair in the reward.
We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to offend anyone. ”
Amy had been up last night, yes, but guilt hadn’t had anything to do with it. Why even mention it?
“Thank you,” Avery and Wyn said at the same time. Then Wyn added, “I understand, and just like Kate, we probably would’ve done the same...”
But Savannah stopped listening. She couldn’t help it because her eyes caught sight of Amy’s lower lip and that tiny dry flake on it from where she’d been nervously biting it all afternoon.
Savannah imagined smoothing her thumb over it.
Then she caught sight of three wavy curls dangling over Amy’s shoulder, and her fingers itched to sweep them away.
Even the backs of Amy’s upper arms, which were a little flushed from the sun, looked so kissable that Savannah wanted to press her lips to them.
What the hell was happening to her? Ugh! Savannah hated these thoughts swirling in her mind. Why couldn’t she just fall for someone the normal way, after six appropriate dates? Why did it always have to be so hard, so fast, so overwhelming?
Just stop it, she thought, literally shaking her head to clear the static from her brain.
“Savannah, is there something you’d like to add?” Naomi asked, her eyes snapping over to her. Her smile was gleaming, and her dark hair was sleek and shiny. She looked at Savannah as if she were trying to see right into her mind.
But Savannah didn’t have anything to add.
Well, except that she was falling hard for Amy, and the more time they were going to spend together, the worse the damage was going to be.
By the end of the game, she would be free-falling at twelve thousand feet without a parachute.
The landing would be catastrophic. It had to stop now.
“Savannah?” Naomi asked, her smile disappearing as a frown settled in its place. “Did you hear what Wyn said?”
“I did,” Savannah lied, nodding. What on earth had Wyn said? “And I think Amy spoke for both of us when she apologized. At the time, it seemed the easier route. In hindsight, it wasn’t.”
Naomi seemed perfectly satisfied with the response. She nodded, then stepped closer toward the pedestal just as Amy leaned close enough for her shoulder to brush against Savannah’s shoulder. The heat seared almost painfully at that spot.
No, she didn’t want to stop. In fact, maybe it was time she told Amy that she liked her. Maybe it was finally time to admit she had feel—
“Alright, contestants,” Naomi announced, her voice cutting through Savannah’s thoughts once again. She placed a flat palm on the closest cup and added, “Time to vote.”