Chapter 10
Steven’s face remained blank. Only when he paused—just a breath too long—did Lucy catch the flicker behind his calm. She leaned forward, voice softer than she intended. “How bad is it?”
He inhaled, then exhaled with deliberate steadiness.
“It hurts,” he admitted, voice low enough that the shelter seemed to lean in.
“Pain is normal. There’s no numbness, no bleeding, and I can move my toes.
” He placed his foot back on his pack, flexing it once, twice.
“If we’re still here tomorrow night, you can start to panic. ”
Lucy closed her eyes a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I began panicking several hours ago, I’m just very good at hiding it,” she whispered, “Tomorrow night I’ll have graduated to a full-blown meltdown.”
Beyond the flimsy walls, the moon vanished beneath another swollen bank of clouds.
Darkness pooled around the shelter, swallowing the edge of the sand.
Their small fire fought back with a flickering halo: a circle of warmth born of charred branches and resolve.
The silver blanket above them caught the wind and snapped like a muted thunder.
Lucy’s gaze flicked to the cove, though she knew without looking that the shoreline lay swallowed by shadow.
Still, every few seconds she found herself staring that way, longing for some indication that beyond the swirl of leaves, rescue might arrive.
“Try to sleep,” Steven said, his voice threadbare with fatigue. He closed the first-aid kit with a soft click. “I’ll keep watch.”
Lucy looked at him, each rib pressing into the thin towel she used like a bed. “You’re the one who’s hurt.”
“I’ve done more dangerous things on midnight shifts,” he replied, shifting to cradle his bandaged foot.
Lucy wanted to argue, but the toll of cold sand, failure, and fear tugged mercilessly at her eyelids.
She lay down on the damp towel, back against the rolled edge of tarpaulin.
Mosquitoes found her exposed ankles in the dark.
Then her thoughts splintered and unraveled, and she drifted into fitful sleep.
She woke when Steven dropped wood onto the fire.
Sparks soared like captured stars. She blinked at the glow, remembered where she was, and drifted off again.
Then something shrieked in the trees—a high, abrupt sound that rattled her teeth—followed by a chorus of thrashing leaves.
She opened her eyes, pulse lurching, but the flame was steady. She exhaled, found sleep again.
The third wake-up came when a sudden gust tore at the canvas. One corner snapped free, the fabric slapping against the beam with a staccato crack. Lucy sat up and rain began to tap a fragile rhythm on the leaf-thatched roof. Her throat tightened. This cannot be happening again.
“How long was I out?” she asked, voice rough.
“Maybe an hour, maybe two,” Steven answered, crouched over the firepit. He shielded the flame with a metal basin, though the rain had already begun to sting the embers. “Looks like the bad weather’s circling back.”
Before she could respond, a fierce gust yanked the emergency blanket, tearing one of Lucy’s knots from the soft material.
The sheet ballooned into the wind, half-attached, flapping like a wounded bird.
Lucy tumbled out of the shelter and chased it into the rain, bare feet sinking into the wet sand.
She snatched it just before a gust could hurl it into the trees.
Steven limped after her, ignoring her shouted protests. Together they wrestled the soggy foil back inside, slamming the flap against the post. He pressed one hand against the shelter wall for balance. “You shouldn’t be standing,” Lucy said, voice hollow with worry.
“You shouldn’t be taming a metallic sail alone.” He braced himself, every movement delicate around his swollen ankle. “We have to lower the tarp before it rips itself free.”
Lightning cracked overhead, a white fissure in the sky. Slashes of electric light allowed Lucy to see: water trickling down the supports, the frayed knot holes in her torn cover-up, Steven’s jaw clenched against pain. Then darkness swallowed everything again. She shivered, heart thundering.
Together, in the downpour, they released one of the upper ropes and Steven let go of the blue cord.
The tarp slid diagonally into place, reducing their dry space to a shard.
But now the wind had less fabric to grip.
Rain slanted through the opening in rhythmic silver lines, hissing when it struck the embers.
Steven prodded in their driest logs, but the fire collapsed into a weak glow.
Only under the warped board did the coals smolder.
They crouched close, shoulders brushing, sharing warmth as thunder rolled like distant artillery.
Rain dripped off his hair into her lap. Every cell in her body seethed with cold.
“If this roof caves,” Lucy yelled against the storm, “we head to the beach.”
He laughed—brief and incredulous. “You’ve got a rule for everything.”
“Eleven seasons of survival shows teaches you a lot about what not to do.” She dropped her voice. “Other people’s mistakes are a gift when you’re the one watching.”
Lightning cut the sky again, revealing the cramped shelter in stark relief: rotting beams, damp tarp, puddles pooling beneath their knees. Lucy’s pulse pounded against her ribs. When darkness returned, her mind filled with images of the roof splintering above them.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Her fear must have radiated because Steven’s voice was softer when he spoke next. “This will be fine. The storm just sounds louder under a canvas sheet.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he said, voice gentle, “but I need you to believe it for five minutes. Because right now you’re the only person who knows what we’re doing.”
Her chest cramped with relief and guilt. He was injured—had been injured since the fall—and yet he worried about her. She let that thought sit, heavy and tender. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “I’m only a reality-tv junkie.”
“That still puts you ahead of me.” He shifted, testing his ankle, and rearranged the board that sheltered the coals. “If you panic, I’ll have to take over. My resume so far: drink the water, cutting my ankle, and be useless in high winds.”
Lucy leaned her forehead against the basin’s rim. She opened her eyes and watched the rafters flex under the next gust. Not a splinter moved. Slowly, she refocused on the dying fire. It took every scrap of wood left to keep the embers alive, and even then the glow was thin.
They kept their vigil until the rain finally slackened again. A few coals remained, glowing faintly beneath a cold, wet board, and the shelter’s floor was a shallow lagoon under their knees.
Gray light crept in from the opening. Dawn had arrived behind the storm clouds.
The black void below the tarp turned to pale gray, then shifting green as leaves edged into view.
Fallen branches and leaves littered the beach.
One of the basins lay overturned, its twin still full of rainwater.
The emergency blanket, torn at one end, nestled in the driest corner.
Lucy crawled outside. The air tasted of wet earth, charred wood, and salt. Low clouds drifted fast over the canopy. St. Lucia was still hidden, but the cove lay revealed from one rocky headland to the other. No boat had come.
Steven limped out behind her, backpack slung over a good leg. His bandaged foot remained exposed, tender to every shifting grain of sand. He left a shallow trail of footprints that washed back almost immediately under the receding tide.
Lucy peered at the horizon, then turned to the basins. “Sit,” she said. “I’ll rebuild the signal before the sun climbs higher.”
“There’s almost nothing dry left,” he warned.
“Coals,” she said. She gathered broken branches, sorting out the driest cores, and bent low to nurse the embers. Her cracked lips pressed close, breath stirring a spark that bloomed into a tiny flicker.
She set the kindling above it. A sickly wisp of smoke rose, then sputtered out. Lucy broke those sticks into narrower pieces, her fingers stiff and clumsy. Hunger hollowed her stomach; fatigue made her arms tremble. But the fire didn’t care about any of it: just fuel, air, and focus.
A flame flared. Her chest tightened with a moment’s triumph before wind snatched it away. She bent closer, blowing through parted lips. Then another ribbon of blue flickered, edged beneath the pine fibers, and walked through the kindling into dry splinters.
Steven emerged, seated himself beside her. He spoke while he worked to pull out coconut fuzz to add to the fire. “You’re going to tarnish every illusion Adam has about you.”
Lucy shifted her weight, heat warming her spine. “He already knows I watch survival shows.”
“He thinks you watch them over cereal in bed,” Steven said.
“Not build a storm shelter from your clothes.” He swept another pile of leaf-strips beside the blaze.
“You kept us hydrated, you treated my leg, you maintained a fire through two storms and stopped me from dying under a falling branch. He’ll be insufferably proud. ”
His certainty knifed into her. She pictured Adam stepping off the launch, picking her up, proud that she survived. He would celebrate her toughness instead of imagining what might have gone wrong. She wanted him anyway, a frantic hunger so strong it was hard to breathe.
“I don’t care if he’s proud,” she said quietly. She laid another shaving across the flame’s edge. “I want to know: when did he notice I was missing? Why didn’t he hold the launch for me—us?”
Steven froze mid-cut. “We don’t even know what happened on the ship,” he said.
His voice carried the same cautious logic he’d brought to every crisis with limited resources.
“Maybe the launch couldn’t head back early.
Maybe the ship changed position. Coast-guard procedures, weather… We have no idea.”