CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6
UMMM.” NESS STARED AT THE EMPTY BEACH, TURNING IN A FULL circle as she tried to spot landmarks that might indicate they were in the wrong spot. That the boat was not, in fact, gone.
A misty rain drifted down around them, soaking her anew as she stared out at the choppy sea.
She’d woken up with a start as the gray light of a dreary morning began to trickle in the windows. After failing in her attempt to exit her shared mattress situation without being detected—primarily because there was a heavy, gently snoring man draped over her, which would have been a very acceptable start to her day on almost any other occasion—she left the others dozing and headed down to the beach, a remarkably bedhead-sexy, extremely grumpy Hayes in tow.
“You can’t heave a bucket of water all the way back up here yourself,” he grumbled, rubbing his eyes and trying (and failing) to clean his glasses on the hem of his T-shirt. “Do you even have a bucket?”
She didn’t. But she did have an empty cooler, after picking up the one Ian had abandoned on the trek up the hill the night before.
Before heading down to the beach, Ness had gotten a sense of the island’s layout from the balcony, and it seemed much more benign in the light of day. The chunk of land they’d washed up on was a crescent. The house sat on one of the highest points, along the uppermost curve of the island. An inland lagoon lurked, gray-green and opaque, at the bottom of the hill, visible from the cracked and crumbling hot tub. Also visible was what appeared to be an overgrown strip of runway. A taller hill sat behind the house and blocked their view of whatever was beyond it. There didn’t appear to be any other houses or buildings on their chunk of rock, and the misty rain hid any nearby islands. For all they knew, they could be doggy-paddling distance from salvation.
The walk from the house to the beach had been weird, in the way only making small talk with a former colleague-slash-romantic interest could be. But also, that colleague was now one of the world’s most recognized movie stars. And had been People’s Sexiest Man two years earlier—not that Ness had been paying attention.
And,though it was barely relevant, Ness was twenty years older and looked fantastic, thank you very much, but also . . . she was twenty years older. It was hard not to worry about what Hayes saw when he looked at her. It was harder not to think about the fact that though they had once coexisted in the same flawed ecosystem of glamor and fame and the struggle to Make It, he was now the sun and she was—metaphorically—some dusty, half-blown-up meteor stuck in his orbit.
Luckily, a great way to distract herself was to worry about the apparent disappearance of the Gentleman’s Delight. The thing that was supposed to be whisking them away to civilization right about now.
“Is there another beach? Maybe we’re on the wrong side of the island.” Hayes said it about as convincingly as Ness said things like “Today I’ll do a hill workout” or “That zebra print is so flattering!” He bent down to pick up a piece of driftwood, absently chucking it into the waves. Overhead, a bird squawked in what could have been alarm or disgust at having people on its usually solitary turf.
Ness replayed their route from the night before in her head, feeling very close to throwing up.
“Maybe? But I’m almost certain this is where we came ashore.” Plus, there was a single overgrown path from the front door of the house, and it was the one they’d taken here. To this stunning, boat-free expanse of white sand spotted with broken branches and edged in seaweed and the varied debris that had washed up overnight. The tide was higher now than when they’d arrived, but Ness was nearly certain they were in the right spot.
Beside her, Hayes linked his fingers behind his head and took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ness hoped he wasn’t about to panic, because one of them should stay steady, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be her.
“Let’s stay calm,” he said, sounding anything but.
Ness knew this Hayes, rarely seen by anyone other than close friends and family. He was a real champ in the midst of a crisis, but after the comedown? When he’d had time to reflect and think through all the ways in which it could have gone wrong, could still go wrong in the future? Utter doom spiral. Throw in some interpersonal conflict and she was surprised it had taken this long for him to start fraying around the edges.
She did the only thing she could and called on her business voice. Confident, yet comforting, despite the galloping of her heartbeat and the churning in her stomach.
“Hey, we’re fine. We have food and water. I bet there’s more in the house we can scavenge. It might not even give us botulism.”
He was pacing now. Four steps, about-face, four steps. He’d kicked off his shoes, and his bare, tanned feet were already on their way to creating a trench in the wet sand. Ness envisioned him getting deeper and deeper until only his hair was visible, bopping back and forth.
“I was kidding about the botulism.” She paused. “In that it probably will poison us. But at least we won’t be starving!” She hooked a gung-ho fist through the air in front of her and immediately felt stupid.
Ness ran a hand nervously over her hair. “Erm, rather, what I mean is, we’re okay. This isn’t critical yet. It’s been, what, fifteen hours since we left? And the storm went on half the night. They’re looking for us—they have to be. I bet crews just got out to start searching.” She stubbed her toe on a branch. “Speaking of rescue, we should make a fire. Maybe a big SOS sign with all these branches once the tide goes out.”
Hayes made a sound that seemed to indicate his stress was not decreasing. Ness stepped in front of him, halting his progress mid-pace. She looked up at him, holding a hand out just short of actually touching his arm. It hovered there for a moment before she stuffed it into the back pocket of her still-damp jeans.
“Want to talk about it?” she tried. His anxiety wasn’t new. Needing to know the schedule, having a plan and four backups. He’d once told Ness that part of the reason he gravitated to acting was that, when he was filming, it was like being able to see the future. All the in-between parts were the tricky bits.
He stepped around her and started to wear a new trench perpendicular to the first one. Feeling stung, Ness gave up trying to talk about his emotions. She remembered how they used to be a safe haven for each other, somebody who could see the other at their worst and love them anyway. She knew those days were long gone, but some part of her had hoped he’d still feel some small piece of that security. Though she’d never admit it out loud—hell, she was barely admitting it to herself—she felt it with him.
Ness huffed out a breath of frustration and forced her mental frown upside down, going to work pinpointing which of the large mangroves was the one she’d used as an anchor point. It was somewhere among a stand of them that to the untrained eye—i.e., Ness’s—appeared to be identical.
Except for the one that had a strand of yellow nylon fluttering in the wind where it was stuck in the cracks of the bark.
“Hayes?”
Nothing. Only the sound of toes on sand.
“I know you’re having a hard time right now, and I want to be here for you to get through it. But . . .” She knotted her fingers together and rested them on top of her head, trying to force deep breaths into her lungs. “I think I lost the boat and I’m a little—very—worried about telling the others. They’re going to kill me and say it was necessary for survival. I have very little meat, Hayes. I’m stringy, I’m sure of it. And probably bitter . . .” She was spiraling.
A warm, strong hand closed around hers, pulling her along.
“Breathe,” Hayes ordered, slowing his pace but not stopping. “One, two, three, four, turn.” He counted out their steps. “Breathe in, two, three, four, turn. Out, two, three, four.”
Ness breathed. She paced. She didn’t throw up, though she wouldn’t go so far as to say they were completely past the risk of same.
“This works,” she said a couple of minutes later, surprised to feel her heart rate slowing from frantic runaway horse being pursued by wolves to something more stable.
“Sometimes.”
He stopped and turned to face her, taking both her hands in his and looking her in the eye. He let out a long breath. “Let’s get it over with.”
* * *
Hayes carefully carried the cooler full of seawater back up the hill while Ness gathered a few bottles of water and an assortment of protein and granola bars that had taken a tumble the night before. Despite how nauseated Ness felt at the prospect of confronting the others, her stomach rumbled at the sight of the shiny foil packages.
At the house, they found the rest of their contingent spread throughout the main living space of the open kitchen and living room, looking like reticent teens on day one of a forced family vacation.
Ness stood, arms crossed, shaking with nerves she liked to think the others would mistake for a morning chill despite the rising temperature, and explained their findings. In front of her, Bradley grunted softly as he executed a third set of push-ups. Where Hayes paced silently in times of stress, Bradley turned to intense physical exercise.
“This is horrible.” Tyler was convalescing on a red leather daybed that sat awkwardly between the kitchen and dining room. He cradled his head in his hands and groaned.
“I know this isn’t the situation we would have hoped for, and really, I can’t express how deeply sorry I am, but—”
Libby scoffed. “There’s always a ‘but,’ isn’t there?”
“I was going to say that I have faith in our ability to get through a couple days until someone shows up to get us.”
Daisy was doing some square breathing with vicious-sounding exhales.
“My career is over,” Tyler whined, with his head now flung back over the arm of the couch, arms dangling limply. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Ness looked pleadingly at Coco, who shrugged and went back to flipping through a 1998 issue of Maxim, perched on a decaying pleather stool at the kitchen island.
“Again, I’m sorry. I really thought I’d tied everything securely.” She nervously rubbed her forearm, where bloodsucking miscreants had left a series of raised, itchy bites. “But we have some food and water.” She chose not to add that it was enough for a day and they’d still be hangry by sundown.
“I don’t know why we trusted something like this to you.” Libby’s face was pinched, her skin pale. Ness couldn’t tell if she was more angry or scared.
Ian, forearms braced on the island’s countertop, massaged the bridge of his nose. “Can we all take it down a notch?” he pleaded. “Morning angst really sets a negative tone for the whole day.”
Tyler groaned loudly. Ness wondered if he was going to cry, which would be fine, but then she might start as well. She looked to Hayes, who was sitting on the counter, head resting against the upper cupboards. As far as Ness could tell, he was counting the cracks in the far wall.
“What do you think?” Tyler demanded suddenly, eyes opening to focus on Hayes.
“Me?” Hayes asked, startled back into reality.
Tyler stared at him expectantly.
“Erm, well. It’s a challenging situation, and it’s entirely appropriate to have some strong feelings.”
Ness opened her mouth to leap to her own defense.
“But,” he continued, looking pointedly at Ness, “like Ness said, I think we’ll be fine. They’ll come for us soon. We just have to avoid killing each other until then.” He relaxed back again, apparently satisfied with his answer.
Libby slapped the vegan protein bar she’d been nibbling onto the counter.
“What now?”
Ness shrugged. “I guess we get comfortable.”
Daisy’s curls were loose and she anxiously twisted a strand of hair around her middle finger as she spoke. “We need to search the house again for a way to get in touch with the authorities, let them know where we are.”
“And where are we?” Libby demanded, her grip tightening around her water bottle, making the plastic crackle loudly.
Coco looked up from her magazine, eyebrows raised. “On an island with a goddamn castle on a fucking mountain. How many of those can there be?”
“You might be surprised, actually,” Daisy said.
Libby swallowed some water and glared. “Are you suddenly an expert in Bahamian real estate?”
“Do you know anything about me? Maybe that’s my side hustle.”
Ness’s head jerked up at the sound of Daisy fighting back. It was good to hear.
“Your side hustle is probably waitressing at a low-light strip club masquerading as a burlesque bar.”
“What’s your problem?”
“What’s your problem?”
The two women glared at each other. Ness wasn’t sure who she’d bet on in a fight, but really hoped she wasn’t going to have to launch herself between them.
“Do any of you have any survival experience?” Bradley interrupted, sounding vastly irritated, as if they should have been prepared for this.
“I’m a twenty-three-year-old woman in Hollywood. My entire life is a survival experience.” Daisy’s mouth snapped shut as though she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Coco snorted and scooted her stool a little closer to where Daisy perched, nudging half a granola bar in her direction. “You haven’t eaten,” she said.
Daisy smiled, her cheeks flushing as she mumbled a thank-you.
“Focus!” Bradley snapped, finally giving his pecs a break and joining the conversation. “We need to make a plan.”
Tyler nodded enthusiastically, then winced and held a hand gently to his head. “Exactly,” he agreed, staying carefully still. “I have no doubt the network is doing everything in its power to expedite our rescue, but in the meantime, we need to pull together and take action.” He looked around, then slumped dejectedly. “I lost my clipboard.”
Ness glanced at Hayes, hoping he had a better grasp on the situation than she did. He looked back at her, shrugged, and put his hands in his pockets like “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” except he was a monkey, and they were mid-performance.
“And what do you have to offer,Top Gun?” Coco asked Bradley, her fingertip marking her place in an article about how consuming two gallons of whole milk a day could increase muscle mass.
Bradley’s shoulders squared and he tossed his hair. “I spent two months training with Wolf MacKenzie for Wild Orchids.”
Ian, now pacing the length of the room, snorted.
Ness made a point of not seeing movies with people she knew in them, but she’d caught snippets of the Wild Orchids trailer while scrolling mindlessly. As far as she could tell, it was the sepia-toned story of a man lost in a muddy wilderness eating a bunch of slugs for two hours.
“Is MacKenzie the guy who drank moose blood to stay alive in the Canadian tundra?” Hayes asked.
“He’s widely recognized as one of the foremost wilderness survival specialists and general badasses in—”
Ness chimed in. “Wait, the guy who got bitten by that monkey in Costa Rica and then said he had to have his arm amputated, but it turned out he was hiding it in his shirt for three months?”
“That was obviously a publicity stunt engineered by the producers.” Bradley’s face was turning an interesting shade of red.
“The one who said he was living with a group of tigers in the jungles of Sri Lanka until he was accepted into their hierarchy as Head Tiger, but he was really taking day trips to a zoo?” Daisy asked innocently.
Ness was pretty sure she was hiding a smile behind her hand. Coco snorted a laugh and the two women locked eyes, sharing their mirth and . . . Ness watched them, intrigued. Were they flirting?!
As Coco fluttered her eyelashes at Daisy, Bradley plowed on.
“Again, producers! Drama! None of that changes the fact that I’m going to have to lead our ragtag group for however long we’re stuck on this rock if we’re going to survive. Wolf ’s reputation may have been tarnished—through no fault of his own, I’ll add—but I learned enough during my time with him in the torrid Australian Outback that I think we’ll make it.” He nodded confidently.
Libby crumpled the wrapper from her protein bar and dropped it onto the floor, looking disgusted.
“Honestly, I hadn’t really considered that we wouldn’t make it,” Ness said. She felt her brows drawing together in consternation and quickly relaxed her face into a neutral, wrinkle-free expression. She ran a finger lightly over the space above her nose, feeling for lasting crevices.
Hayes was rummaging in the cupboards. Every so often he’d huff out a breath of disappointment before moving to the next one.
Bradley spun on his leather-sandaled heel to face her, and she raised her hands in a “cool your jets” patting of the air motion, speaking quickly. “But now that you bring it up, I can see how there’s probably some risk. Lord knows what’s lurking here. Like, um, sand fleas,” she finished lamely.
“Or rats!” Daisy offered enthusiastically.
Ness’s nose scrunched as she remembered Hayes bringing up the same thing the night before. “Ugh. Do you really think so?”
Daisy nodded earnestly. “Oh yeah, I read something about a bunch of the islands having rat issues. I think one also had donkeys, but it doesn’t look like it’s this one. Unless they’re, like, scrub donkeys? Particularly adept at hiding?” Her head bobbed side to side, eyes turned upward as she considered. “But, you know, it would actually be really helpful if this was the donkey island. At least we’d know where we are.”
Ian had abandoned his pacing and moved on to sitting on the counter, snapping his fingers while looking around like a useful task would suddenly reveal itself to him.
“Do you know the name of the donkey island?” Libby tried drumming her fingers on the counter as she awaited an answer, but the effect fell short as her remaining two acrylic nails wouldn’t allow the rest to hit the surface. She huffed a frustrated breath, blowing upward to flutter her somehow-not-greasy bangs to the side.
Daisy’s lips pressed together.
Coco thwapped her magazine shut. “For Christ’s sake, Libby, would you take it down seven fucking notches? Go see if there’s a tanning bed you can lock yourself in for a couple hours.”
Daisy leaned back, lips pressed together. Her eyes bounced between the two women, and Ness couldn’t tell if she was alarmed by the potential for a full-on fight, or pleased that Coco was standing up for her.
Libby’s eyes grew large with overdramatized emotion as she raised her hands in mock surrender. “Oh, I’m so sorry if my agitation is causing you discomfort. Maybe you haven’t noticed we’re trapped on an island? I have investor meetings today. Then I have meetings about the meetings. This little side trip is costing me . . .” She trailed off, teeth clenching. “You know what? Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Right. No one wants to be here, Libby.” Ness pushed out the next words. “Maybe Bradley isn’t entirely wrong.” She hated admitting it, but someone had to take charge, and she very much didn’t want it to be her. “We should come up with a plan to get through at least a day or two.”
“Your confidence is astounding, Agnes.” Bradley took a deep breath, collecting himself and, presumably, plumbing the depths of his survival knowledge.
“We need to search the house. Make an inventory. Understand our resources.” Bradley ticked each item off on manicured fingertips.
“Food would be great,” Tyler chimed in from the couch. “We should find some.” He’d fully reclined and draped his forearm over his eyes. His abomination of a shirt had ridden up, exposing a stretch of blindingly white skin.
The mention of food snagged Ian’s attention. “Oh yeah, man. Agreed. Food would be literally the best.”
Ness cleared her throat. “I was thinking we should start a fire. And there are a bunch of branches down on the beach. We could make a sign for planes that might fly over.”
Hayes, having emerged empty-handed from his cupboard adventure, stood casually in a spot of sunlight. A streak of dirt ran along the side of his nose. A cobweb adorned his silver hair, shimmering in the soft breeze making its way through the open windows.
“A sign seems good,” he said, hands in his pockets. Ness could feel the tension radiating from him despite his casual stance.
Bradley’s eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared.
“Those are . . . reasonable suggestions.” His tone indicated that he thought they were asinine. “But first, we need to identify and secure any resources.”
“Yeah, okay. But I’ve identified that we have the resource of wood. And if we help people find us, we might not need other things. Surely rescue is our first priority . . . ?” She tried not to sound as frustrated as she felt, or look as suspicious as she felt. Was he foiling her on purpose? She plowed on. “We’re somewhere in a pretty populated chain of islands, not lost at sea in a kayak. Someone is bound to pass by soon.”
Bradley placed a heavy hand on her arm and looked down his nose at her, staring into her eyes with unnerving intensity. His short-sleeved button-down was open enough at the collar for her to see his recently waxed chest, and she tried not to be distracted by a single stray hair poking out from his collarbone.
“I understand you haven’t had training for this. And I see you’re in a place of emotional reaction instead of critical foresight. That’s okay. That’s why I’m stepping in.” He squeezed her arm, stopping just shy of making it painful. He looked at her pityingly before turning back to the group.
Libby let out an infuriated sound somewhere between a groan and a scream.
Bradley gave her a cautious sidelong glance and edged away. “We’ll split into teams.” He looked like he was about to start assigning partners, but he didn’t get a chance before Ian slid off his barstool and announced, “I’m with Ness.”
Ness nearly choked on the chalky mouthful of protein bar she’d taken in a half-hearted attempt to camouflage her frustration at being so fully dismissed. “You are?”
“Me too,” said Tyler, swinging his feet down to the floor and trying to hoist himself upright. He wobbled as he stood, and plopped back down. “Actually, maybe I’ll wait here and run the command center.”
Ian shrugged. “Sure, my dude. Command center it is.” He swiped Coco’s half-full bottle of water off the counter, tightened the lid, and lobbed it into Tyler’s lap. “Stay hydrated.”
Bradley plucked the partially eaten bar from Ness’s hand. “First rule, conserve our resources.” He slid the cookies-and-cream-flavored rectangle into his back pocket and continued, pointing at each of them as he assigned duties. Ness’s mouth hung open. She considered tackling him and taking her breakfast back by force. It tasted like stevia-coated dirt, but it was her dirt.
“Hayes and Daisy, you take the upper level. Libby and I will inventory the kitchen and then work our way through the main floor.”
“Naaahh.” Libby drew it out, sounding purposely contrary. Typical. “I’ll check out the bedrooms. By myself.”
Bradley pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine, whatever. Ian and Ness—”
“We’ll do a perimeter sweep. Got it, chief.” Ian saluted, grabbed Ness’s hand, and pulled her through an arched doorway toward the back of the house.
“I’ll back up my pal Tyler here at command,” Coco said as they walked away. “Something something, special ops, whatever the fuck.” Ness heard a magazine page flip, followed by an exasperated sigh that could have come from anyone in the room. Coco had that effect on people.
Despite the complete dumpster fire of a situation she’d tumbled into, she smiled. It was nice to know some things hadn’t changed.