Chapter Sixteen
Four days had come and gone, and unlike every other minute of Savannah’s life—which was packed wall-to-wall with tennis at the country club, reading advanced proofs, scrawling critiques in the margins, power lunches with literary agents pitching their newest lead titles at Via Carota, and endless dinners with editors at Don Angie—they had dragged by excruciatingly slowly.
It didn’t help that Maya Lin and Wyn had won the last reward challenge by completing the obstacle first, or that they’d come back smelling like lavender and their skin glowing from a tea-tree body scrub.
Their shoulders were visibly unknotted from a deep-tissue massage.
Or that they’d voted off Jade and Erica in a brutal three-to-two blindside, followed by Avery, who had stepped on too many toes when she’d implied that half the cast of Velvet Coast was on Ozempic.
Or that Savannah and Amy were basically just pawns in the lake ladies’ alliance.
Savannah could hardly care. She didn’t even blink when Ezra had wrestled a crab out of the mangroves with her bare hands and turned it into an incredibly delicious broth using wild sea salt and native lime, then paired it with cassava root that tasted surprisingly close to gnocchi.
She was way too hung up on Amy.
The lying low, no touching, no kissing under the cover of darkness was shredding her from the inside out. She felt like a soda bottle that had been dropped down three flights of stairs, just waiting for someone to crack the cap and let her explode.
Maybe if there had been actual physical distance between them, things would have been better, but no.
Two nights ago, when Amy had shifted in her sleep, she’d thrown a bare, warm leg over Savannah’s legs, leaving Savannah staring wide-eyed and completely paralyzed at the palm frond roof.
Then yesterday afternoon, Amy had stumbled over a hidden root barely two feet from the fire pit, which no one had ever tripped on before, and Savannah, who by her luck, or more so lack of luck, had found herself in proximity.
She’d swung her arm around Amy’s middle just in time and then nearly leaned in to nuzzle her nose in Amy’s neck. Could you imagine?
Even this morning, while Amy was washing the sand off her glistening shoulders in the shallow surf, Savannah, who had been delegated to cleaning out the pot, had to avert her eyes.
She kept imagining sinking her teeth into Amy’s skin, trailing the tip of her tongue along her lovely breasts.
Savannah was literally beside herself with frustration, and at the same time, deeply disappointed.
This was exactly why she didn’t have one-night stands, and the very reason she kept her heart locked up in her chest. In the end, wanting someone this badly, especially when they didn’t want her back, was literally hell.
She huffed out a breath and turned onto her side. Then she snapped open her eyes just as Amy let out a soft whistling purr beside her, and all Savannah could think was that her faint snores were the perfect white noise.
UGH!
Savannah couldn’t take it anymore. It was killing her to be so close, and yet they were separated by that stupid invisible wall Amy had put up.
A wall that wasn’t just physical. They hadn’t had a serious conversation in almost four days.
It wasn’t that Amy didn’t try; she did, but it was all Savannah could do to keep her distance.
One conversation and Savannah would surely spill her feelings like a knocked-over can of paint.
If she had to be honest, she’d thrown that challenge.
Exhaling, Savannah sat up. She needed air, and there wasn’t enough in the lean-to.
Careful not to snag the woven palm-leaf mat, she shuffled out feet-first and found her flip-flops, thankfully right where she’d left them.
The moon was bright enough not to render her completely blind, but she didn’t need the light because she took the same path she always took down to the beach.
She was just about to let the waves curl around her ankles when something overcame her. Instead of standing in the shallows and letting the foam wash away her misery, she pivoted left.
“Literally a week ago, she was trying to get inspiration,” Savannah muttered under her breath. She air-quoted inspiration because, seriously, what a ridiculous thing to do. “And now she’s telling me that we should lie low, as if I started it.”
Her feet were sinking deeper into the sand because she wasn’t walking; she was stomping, and lividly at that.
“I just don’t get it. What the hell changed? She’s literally a romance writer; surely two people lying about sleeping with each other behind everyone’s back is her bread and butter.”
The faint moonlight snapped off like a flipped switch.
Savannah’s entire world was immediately plunged into darkness.
“Fuck,” Savannah muttered under her breath. Had a cloud just drifted over the moon? Or had she stepped into the forest without noticing? Either way, she couldn’t fucking see. Her eyes didn’t adjust like a normal person’s eyes, and even worse than that, they weren’t going to.
“Ugh,” she moaned as she shot her hands out in front of her.
An image suddenly swished into her head: that scene from The Silence of the Lambs where Buffalo Bill stalked Clarice in the dark using green night-vision goggles.
What if someone were watching her right now?
What if one of the production crew members was actually a serial killer, and she’d literally just given him or her the perfect opening they’d been waiting for all season?
Savannah hated horror movies, but Stella had made her watch The Silence of the Lambs anyway.
For two weeks, she’d kept every light on in her apartment until sunrise.
She was suddenly desperate to get back to camp. But how? And where the hell was camp?
She turned one-eighty, hoping to backtrack toward the beach.
But was that even one-eighty, or had she just turned herself around in a full, stupid circle and was about to walk deeper into the dark?
“Why didn’t you just go sit on the beach like a normal night-blind person? ” she huffed. “This is your—”
Her words cut off just as her right foot sank into something wet and squishy. She quickly yanked it out, but no, it was thicker and stickier than mud. It pulled at her flip-flop with a sickening shluck. Savannah stumbled backward just as the thong snapped.
Then something warm brushed against her arm.
A hand.
A fucking hand.
Outlast Her’s version of Buffalo Bill was going to wear her skin as a jacket.
Savannah screamed.
Then two arms snatched around her waist, hauling her backward against a soft chest, and all she could think about was the headline: Outlast Her Contestant Abducted On Set. Body Washed Up On The Shore The Next Day. Serial Killer Pretending To Be Camera Crew.
“It’s just me,” a soft voice hissed directly into her ear. Warm breath fanned across Savannah’s neck, which made the goosebumps on her skin have goosebumps. “It’s Amy. Stop screaming, you’re going to wake everyone up.”
For a second, Savannah wasn’t sure if an actual murderer would have been better. At least a murderer offered a quick, merciful end. Hopefully. Whereas Amy was torturing her slowly. Death by distance. Death by lying low.
“What the hell are you doing?” Savannah spat, her mouth cottony dry.
She was hit by a wave of nostalgia. Hadn’t they lived this exact scenario once before?
Dark night? On the beach? Amy scaring the crap out of Savannah before she promised she wasn’t following her like a stalker. “Why are you following me?”
But the question hung in the air like ghost breath.
Amy didn’t say a single thing, and considering Savannah couldn’t see anything, she got a sickening stomach-drop sensation at the thought of Amy turning around and walking away.
Then, finally, Amy cleared her throat. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Savannah was hit harder by those six words than a slap in the face.
It didn’t matter that she had been dying to hear Amy say something similar.
In fact, Savannah had fantasized about Amy saying that under a dreamlike sky, a sunset bathed in blush pink, soft honey, and coral, and they would kiss while the world turned golden.
Savannah didn’t even care that it was a cliché, that after reading and critiquing hundreds of books, she had started rolling her eyes every time an author used golden hour as an excuse to force two stubborn idiots into admitting their feelings.
Amy’s fingertips brushed lightly against Savannah’s arm. The touch was almost ghostlike, yet heat streaked across her bare skin in its wake. Darkness always sharpened Savannah’s other senses, making even the slightest contact feel startlingly intense.
“Did you hear me?” Amy asked.
Savannah wondered how long she’d been spaced out thinking about sunsets and the golden hour.
For one reckless second, she considered cracking open her own ribs and letting every humiliating feeling spill into the dirt.
She fell for people too fast, and somehow falling for Amy had happened even faster and hit even harder.
Instead, her defense mechanisms snapped into place, and when she spoke, her tone came out icy cold. “Are you only saying that because you’ve run out of inspiration?” Amy sighed, and then there was the crunch of a stick.
Shit. Savannah had come off too defensive, too sharp.
But instead of Amy moving further away, she was edging closer. Heat wafted off her skin like a radiator. “No,” she said softly. “I don’t care about inspiration anymore. I...I—”
“What?” Savannah interrupted. “What do you care about?”
“I care about you, Savannah,” Amy said, her voice soft and breathy.
“I panicked when I thought Luna found out what we did. I saw my career as an author flash before my eyes. I was worried that if I wrote a book after the show, you’d tell everyone that I used you for inspiration. But I don’t care about any—”