Chapter Eleven
Cillian
I catch Jules by the shoulders, steadying him. There’s surprising strength in the arms that lock around my waist. Mathieu is only a step behind. He scans Seán and me, eyes brimming with plain relief.
“Why were you gone so long?” Jules demands into my chest.
“We were pretty deep in the forest,” I answer. “We got turned around and all of a sudden the daylight was gone.”
“Ten hours isn’t all of a sudden.” Jules clings to me tighter. I go from holding his shoulders to patting his back, shooting a questioning look at Mathieu. Why am I being hugged?
Mathieu is talking to Seán a few feet away, his back to me. I’m on my own. I think back to my girlfriends and how I would get out of trouble with them. Reasonable explanations sometimes worked. Sometimes they made things worse.
I adjust my grip on Jules. I flatten my hands over his back and smooth them over his shoulder blades, down the curve of his back, and then slowly up again.
Jules deflates with one slow drag. Warmth spreads beneath my ribs.
I shuffle, so I’m blocking Jules from view, and Seán and Mathieu can’t see what I’m doing.
I cup the back of his head, fingers threading through the longer strands near the top, and I bend so I’m speaking into Jules’s ear.
“We were looking for a water source. We’ve been lucky with the rain, but we’re not guaranteed to get that daily.
We have those coconuts, but I want something more secure.
There are nine of us, so the supply will run out eventually.
We didn’t want to come back until we found something, so we pushed it further than we should have. ”
The point of Jules’s chin presses into my pec.
He’s a total shorty, and I like the feel of him bundled in my arms. I’m exhausted after trekking through the jungle.
I’ve been bitten by a thousand bugs, not to mention that damned racer that bit my ankle.
The longer we stumbled through the dark, the more my fatigue grew.
Being responsible for so many people sits with its own unique heaviness across my shoulders.
Jules’s arms locked around my waist lightens the feeling.
“Next time you have to be more careful.” Jules sounds cross.
I huff. “Yes, boss.”
He tenses, so I stroke his hair gently. “That’s not an insult coming from me. Remember?”
Jules peels back enough to peer up at me. I can picture, very easily, leaning down and taking that mouth in a kiss. I can picture it so vividly, I know exactly the feeling of relief it would bring. I know I would feel it like a reward. My hands flatten on his lower back, pulling him in.
“I’m here too,” Seán says.
Jules turns. Because of his neck, he has to twist his entire body, pulling himself from my grip. I almost don’t let him go. He marches straight over to Seán and, despite the fact that Seán was teasing, Jules hugs him too. Not as tightly as he did me.
Seán chuckles and pats Jules’s back with his good arm. I don’t think any thoughts of gathering Jules in his arms and kissing him cross my cousin’s mind. Over Jules’s head, Seán meets my eyes and raises a brow. I turn to the dying fire.
“Thanks for the light,” I say. “It helped.”
“Hah,” Mathieu says. He butts against my shoulder. His fingertips feather briefly over my lower back and are gone again so quickly I might have imagined it. “Of course it helped. It was Jules’s idea. Darren was being cruel earlier.”
My full attention shifts to Mathieu. “What did he do now?”
“He’s just being a dickhead,” Jules answers. He pulls away from Seán. “I don’t even care, I’m just glad you’re back.” He stares at me as though afraid I’ll vanish if he blinks. “You too,” he adds belatedly, dragging his gaze away from me to glance at Seán.
Seán cracks a good-natured smile, and we begin walking back towards camp. “I’m the less popular cousin now, am I?”
I catch Mathieu’s elbow, slowing our pace so that we’re walking behind Jules and Seán. I only have to give him a look and Mathieu’s talking. “He’s making snide comments to Jules. Calling him ‘sleeping beauty’ because he’s lying down to recover, and calling him incapable. It’s upsetting Jules.”