Chapter Eleven
Sabine opened her eyes and expected to see the unblemished ceiling of her penthouse apartment back in First Hill: smooth white plaster, recessed lighting, and the faint reflection of the city bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
If she wasn’t sleeping at home, which she often wasn’t, she’d then expect to see the call room ceiling at the hospital with its dropped tiles, single fluorescent panel, and a water stain shaped vaguely like Idaho.
Instead, palm fronds swam into focus above her, their edges frayed, and for exactly one useless second, she had no idea where she was. But then the humidity slapped her in the face like a wet towel, and the sound of the waves crackled in her ears, causing everything to come back at once.
The Philippines. Outlast Her. The bottom two pairs: Her and Talia on the chopping block with Hanna and Monique.
Hanna and Monique saying yes to the re-vote.
Sabine would’ve done the exact same thing.
The complete and utter disappointment on Hanna’s face when Vivian called her name.
And Monique remaining in the game, pairless.
The reality that they’d been one of the bottom two pairs landed like a donkey kick in the gut.
Sabine’s body felt so sore and stiff that she could stretch for hours and still be locked up.
She turned onto her side, hoping for some relief.
Instead, she came face to face with Talia, whom she hadn’t wanted to sleep next to but had no choice.
Sleeping positions were apparently non-negotiable and unchangeable.
Or so Sabine had discovered last night when she’d tried to crawl in between Taye and Shakira.
Talia was asleep. Peaceful. Entirely too close.
And just like that, Sabine was dragged back to two mornings ago when she woke up beside Talia in that bed.
Her long lashes had blinked heavily; her brown eyes had been light, almost golden in the morning sun.
Her hair had been a mess of curls. She’d glowed beautifully. Actually, exotically and tauntingly.
Sabine had wanted to repeat the night all over again. And also refuse to acknowledge that it had ever happened.
Sleeping with Talia was a mistake. A stupid, careless, possibly game-changing mistake. If she could go back in time, she would. She’d slide off that bed and sleep on the beach instead. She’d ignore Talia lying topless under the covers. She would stuff down that feeling in her hips.
Talia stirred.
Sabine’s heart flapped like the wings of a trapped seabird slamming against her ribcage, and before she could convince herself to go back to sleep because it was barely morning, she was off the bamboo mat, crouching on the packed sand searching for her Crocs.
The left one was upside down and filled with sand.
The right one was under the bamboo. She shook both out and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Talia whispered sleepily behind her.
Sabine snapped her head back to see Talia stretching both arms over her head, causing her shirt to ride up just enough to reveal a sliver of skin.
She yawned, dragged a hand through her hair, then glanced down at Charlize, who was sleeping beside her.
The older woman was snoring as if she’d swallowed a whistle.
Amy’s snores were louder and wetter, and beside her, Shakira had covered her entire head with her maroon Yale hoodie.
“To the beach,” Sabine muttered under her breath, already shoving one Croc on and hopping slightly as she fought with the back strap of the other.
“I’ll join you. I love being up before everyone else,” Talia said so quickly Sabine hadn’t had any time to formulate an excuse as to why she shouldn’t.
Sabine didn’t respond. She just turned toward the beach, hoped Talia would take her silence as a hint, and concentrated on the waterline where the tide was pulling back in thin, foamy ribbons.
She had just stepped over a tangle of seaweed threaded with bits of coral and a single cracked shell that had washed up overnight when Talia said, “We should probably talk about the other night.”
It took Sabine a moment to sort out which last night Talia had meant. Did she mean The Sending, or the night before, which she had already mentally labeled as the worst decision of her adult life? When her brain finally landed on the former, her shoulders loosened a fraction.
“It was bad,” Sabine said, reaching the water’s edge where the first real line of sunlight was beginning to break across the surface. “But not unexpected.”
“What do you mean, not unexpected?” Talia asked, stopping beside Sabine.
She had her arms folded across her chest and was frowning at the horizon.
“I thought it was completely unexpected. Honestly, if you hadn’t put the stone in Monique and Hanna’s cup, one of us would’ve gone home. Why’d you choose them?”
Sabine huffed. “Have you seriously not been paying attention?” she muttered, feeling unnecessarily impatient. Or maybe it was necessary. Talia was clearly terrible at the game. “The game is all about alliances, and so far there are two.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Talia chewed on her bottom lip.
“Seriously, Talia?” Sabine said, shaking her head.
She couldn’t believe she had to explain this to her.
“Isla, Taye, Shakira, and Amy make up the Core Four. And then, from what I can gather, Lucia and Marloe were in an alliance with Monique and Hanna. You must’ve noticed they were all wearing French braids at the challenge yesterday. ”
Talia’s face was blank.
Sabine bit back her frustration and added, “And I think the Core Four might’ve swayed Connie and Charlize to their side.
” Sabine had spotted some eye contact between Connie and Isla last night, which could mean only one thing; they were now part of the Core Four.
“Which is why there were three votes on Monique and Hanna, and two on us. We’re the easiest vote at the next Sending.
And honestly, if it’s between the two of us, they’ll probably send you home. ”
Talia’s jaw dropped so low it could’ve hit the sand. She turned to face Sabine with a completely exasperated expression. “Me? Why me?”
“Because they find you...” Annoying blinked in her brain, but she swallowed the rude word down before it charged out. Talia was confident, yes, but she didn’t need that kind of honesty. No one did. “Because you talk a lot.”
“Oh,” Talia said resignedly, as if she’d expected it all along. She flopped back onto the beach and clumped a handful of sand, which she trickled through her fingers. She formed three heaps before smoothing them down with her palm. “Do I really talk that much?”
After The Sending, when everyone had trudged back into camp, mentally wrung and physically wrecked, Talia had launched into a full monologue about how her boss Fat Joe had asked her to fire one of the runners at the bar where she worked because he’d found her screwing the manager in the stockroom.
There had been eye rolls and nondescript whispering, and for reasons Sabine didn’t love examining too closely; it had grated on her more than usual.
More than it should have.
Just because they slept together didn’t mean Sabine had to like her. Or support her. Or listen to her chatter like she was genuinely interested. On the contrary, this was a game, and last night’s Sending made it very clear that it was still every woman for herself.
“No,” Sabine said, flopping down onto the sand beside her. “Or yes, you talk too much.”
“I just can’t stand silence,” Talia said, so dejected that Sabine had nearly leaned over and slid her arm around Talia’s shoulder.
Nearly. Not only was she purposefully sitting too far away to comfort her with her arms, but Sabine didn’t console people.
Not even with her patients. Not even with the families of her dying patients.
“I hate awkward silences,” Talia added, flicking sand with her right big toe. “At the bar, I sometimes see couples coming in on first dates, and they just sit there, trying to figure out what to say. It kills me. I usually send over a drink to break the ice. But some people—”
“Talia, you’re doing it again,” Sabine interrupted, pulling a face.
Talia blew out a breath so loud it competed with the rumble of the ocean. “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to stop talking?”
Sabine ignored the question and stretched her arms above her head, and leaned back onto the beach, earning a satisfying click from her mid-back as her spine unfolded over a lump of sand.
Above, the sky was leaving the pale darkness behind and turning a bright morning blue. The other contestants were probably starting to stir. Now that they had flint, someone would be up to tend to the fire. Someone else would be in charge of getting breakfast ready.
“I want you to make friends with Isla,” Sabine said, before anyone else could wander down to the beach and overhear.
“Everyone thinks Shakira is making the decisions, but she’s not. Isla is.”
Talia frowned. “How do I do that? You literally just told me to talk less. How am I supposed to make friends if I’m not allowed to talk?”
It was a conundrum. But one that could easily be fixed.
“She’s a model,” Sabine said, not feeling nearly as guilty for generalizing as she probably should have. “Talk about her. Compliment her nose, her hair. Ask about the shoots she’s done. Where in Paris she has lived. Places she visited. Make the conversation entirely about her.”
Talia seemed to consider this. She slid her fingers through her hair and tugged the ends loose. Sabine was suddenly reminded of her own fingers curling into Talia’s strands. A reminder she quickly shot down like a clay pigeon with a shotgun.
“Alright, I can do that,” Talia said, wiggling her toes in the sand.
Sabine bent her hip to stretch out her hamstring, which was embarrassingly tight, and exhaled through it. She was just about to straighten her knee when Talia added, “Now we should probably talk about the other night. You’ve been acting distant.”
Sabine dropped her foot back into the sand.
“No,” she said too quickly. “I can’t talk now.
I have to go. I’m on fire duty,” she lied.
A lie Talia would recognize because she was the one on fire duty.
Not that it mattered. Sabine was already on her feet, heading back to camp before Talia could even protest.
Later that morning, while Sabine was down by the shoreline collecting seashells to use as makeshift spoons for rice, she spotted Talia sitting in the shallows with Isla. They were ankle-deep in the water with their backs to the beach. The tide was sliding lazily around their waists.
They hadn’t seen her. Which was good, because Sabine fully intended to eavesdrop.
“I can’t believe you modeled at Paris Fashion Week,” Talia said with genuine awe in her voice. “And don’t take this the wrong way—I’m not flirting, promise—but if I were a fashion designer and had to choose between you and Kendall Jenner to model my clothes, I’d choose you. No question about it.”
Isla laughed and ducked her chin. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m serious,” Talia insisted. “You have better cheekbones.”
Cheekbones? Sabine closed her eyes for half a second. Talia was laying it on thicker than butter. Isla wasn’t an idiot; she would see right through her.
Isla snorted. “Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely,” Talia said, bumping Isla’s shoulder lightly with her own. “I wouldn’t lie about something like that. So, be honest, what was the best part about living in Paris for a year? Did you visit the Eiffel Tower? I’m sure loads of women flirted with you.”
Was Sabine imagining it, or had Isla’s cheeks gone a little pinker than before?
“Not loads,” Isla said. “But I was once invited to a midnight picnic on the steps of Montmartre. Her name was Bella, and she was an artist from Marseille. We drank cheap wine from a paper bag and kissed under the moonlight.” She shrugged as if that happened to her all the time.
“Then there was another time when I ended up on a private boat on the Seine with a guy named Patrick. He didn’t take no for an answer.
But he definitely wasn’t happy when he found me in the boat’s bathroom kissing his sister. ”
“Really?” Talia asked. “His sister?” Then she glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of Sabine near the waterline.
She smiled, conspiratorial, and Sabine almost gave a thumbs up.
Almost. She stopped herself just in time.
Partly because she didn’t want to be obvious, and also because Talia had the straps of her bikini down and the exposed curve of her breasts brought a very vivid image of Talia’s hand on her breast. The image in her mind was deeply inconvenient.
In fact, it was an image she wanted nothing more than to forget.
“She was gorgeous,” Isla said. “She had this long hair that fell all the way to...”
But Sabine didn’t wait to hear what Isla had to say about Patrick’s sister. Instead, she turned and walked briskly back toward camp, clutching her pathetic handful of shells and hoping her face hadn’t gone the same pink as Isla’s had moments ago.