Chapter 7 #2
Colton pulls the oars closer to him. “I know you don’t want to, Missy, but we have to put everything behind us. Just for now, for this show, let’s work together. I promise I’ll have your back. I just need you to trust me this once.”
The sincerity in Colton’s eyes catches me off guard. Is he being serious? Can I trust Colton to have my back? Can I trust that Colton wants to win this show as badly as I do?
I heard his answer to Niall. The real one.
Not the one he tried to turn into a whole do-gooder speech.
He’s here for the fun of it—or for flashy toys, or whatever.
He has no real need for the money. So when it comes down to it, can I really trust that Colton will have my back even when things get hard or exhausting or inconvenient, or when we can’t get along?
But one more glance in Colton’s persuasive eyes makes me rethink my doubts.
The thought of having a genuine ally in this game is an undeniable asset.
But how often have I been lulled into a false sense of security and trust only to have my hopes dashed against the rocks?
My own mother couldn’t keep her promise to me, so why would I trust that Colton would?
I hear the drones hover closer, and I take a shuddering breath.
We are wasting valuable time. I break my eyes from Colton’s.
No, I can’t trust him. In the end, it’s me holding my own, a lifelong lesson I’d be stupid not to stand by.
Without another thought, I leave the oars in Colton’s hands, grab the crowbar, and jump into the ocean.
Water rushes up to greet me, swallowing me whole before I break through the surface. Lugging the crowbar out of the water, I swim off-kilter toward the closest crate.
“Missy!” Colton yells over the churning waves, frustration evident in every letter of my name.
I know I’ve just swatted at a hornet’s nest, but we need supplies.
He may be a future lawyer, but I doubt any skills they taught him at Yale ever included scaling coconut trees or making deodorant appear out of thin air.
He might be frustrated now, but he’ll be thanking me for the next eighteen days.
I reach the crate, realizing just how much bigger it is at water level. There is no way I can even reach the top, let alone crack it open with the crowbar, but neither can Colton leave for the island without me.
Water streams down my face, my curls now drenched and swishing around my shoulders as I hold onto the side of the crate and watch as Colton reluctantly rows the boat closer to me. His sharp jaw is tight, and his gaze is cold.
“Give me the crowbar, Missy, and get in,” Colton says.
“We are not leaving without supplies,” I demand. I didn’t get soaked for nothing.
“I know,” he grumbles through bared teeth. “Hand me the crowbar so I can open the crate.”
I’m about to ask him for the magic password when I realize that we’re not in one of our normal spats, and this time I have a future at stake.
I doggy-paddle next to the boat and hand Colton the crowbar.
He immediately goes to work, wedging the crowbar between the two wooden slabs that make up the opening.
All the while, I fight for my life as I try to hike an arm and leg over the rim of the boat in my fully clothed and sopping state.
My glittering daydream of a dress has just become my nightmare. I attempt to get into the rowboat three more times, grunting like a warthog with every unsuccessful try. I’ve practiced a lot of things in an evening gown, but climbing into a rocking boat in the ocean at night is not one of them.
By the time Colton finishes loading the crate’s contents into our boat, I’ve gotten stuck with one knee and one hand hooked over the boat’s edge, making me the world’s best-dressed barnacle.
Fortunately, despite the anger I know is simmering under Colton’s stoic features, he takes pity on me and grasps my arm, pulling me out of the water with surprising ease.
“Thanks,” I say, righting myself and readjusting my bunched-up dress.
Colton doesn’t say a thing, nor does he look at me. He just grabs both oars and rows like he’s one of The Boys in the Boat.
I look back to find that Team Peach and Team Violet are several yards behind us while Team Amber is scavenging a nearby crate.
Ahead of us, Team Ruby, Team Fuchsia, and Team Lime row closer to the island.
With the three boats in front of us, I can only imagine how ticked off Colton must be, but we’ve been in worse scrapes than this, and we’ve always come out of it just as annoyed with each other as we started. We’ll be fine.
Now that Colton has gone into Hulk mode with the oars, I take to sorting through the items we got from the crate.
My heart lights up like a kid who’s just collected a good haul of candy on Halloween night.
At my feet, I find over a week’s worth of airplane food wrapped and packaged like TV dinners.
I smile, knowing how long this will last us.
Below the meals, I find sunglasses, a Swiss Army knife, and a hygiene kit with toothbrushes, deodorant, and toothpaste. Helpful. The last item is a kids’ coloring book with pictures of little airplanes on each page along with a pack of crayons. Less helpful. But it’ll do.
As we row ever closer to the beach, we pass several scavenged crates with their wooden lids ripped off and floating in the ocean.
My heart sinks every time we pass one. The more supplies we miss out on, the worse off we are.
That’s when I see a sealed crate directly in the path ahead of us.
I’m about to let this one slide for the sake of our team’s future partnership, but then I think of how nice it would be to have flint and steel for a fire or even a machete.
Once again, I glance back, finding two of the three teams behind us working on opening new crates. Surely, we have enough time to crack open just one more box and not come in last.
“Colton,” I say, in my nicest tone. I point to the crate that is coming up on our right. “We should stop for at least one more.”
Colton huffs out a humorless laugh. “Whatever you do, don’t jump in.”
“Does that mean we’re going to open the crate?”
His eyes pierce mine. “This is the last one, Missy. The last one.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling a spark of joy.
Colton pulls the oars once more, thrusting us forward so our boat skims next to the large floating crate. He tosses the oars in the boat and plants his hands on top of the wooden box, pulling us flush against its side. “Crowbar.”
I pass Colton the crowbar and reach over the boat’s ledge to stabilize the bobbing crate with both of my hands while Colton starts prying it open.
The box is nearly as long as one of my arms and keeps shifting with every wave the ocean sends our way.
The constant movement makes it difficult for Colton to wedge the crowbar in between the narrow slit of the opening, so I double down my efforts to stabilize and wrap both my arms around the crate in a bear hug.
The wooden crate is rough under my fingertips, and I can feel a tree’s worth of slivers shoot into my skin.
I turn my head, wincing, when my face brushes against Colton’s chest. Without pause, he works awkwardly around my body that’s wrangling the silver demon.
That’s when I smell something fresh and expensive.
Colton. The aroma coming from his shirt is somewhere between a musk and a scent that is unfairly part of his genetics.
It’s the same scent I imagine moths smelling before they get zapped to death by one of those electric lanterns— alluring and deadly.
I try to reangle my head, but there are not many places for my face to go since we’re knotted up in some weird game of crate Twister. “Colton, how’s it coming?”
“This”—he grunts, attempting to jimmy the crate open—“is a little more difficult than I thought.” He grunts again. “It’s not even nailed on the same. What did they do to this thing?”
I hear the paddles of a boat splashing past us, and I’m tempted to call it quits and be satisfied with what we have when I hear the snap of wood shards and the top of the crate bursts off.
“Yes!” Colton says in victory while leaning over the crate, only for his face to fall a half a breath later. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“It’s empty.”
“What?” I say, mystified.
Colton looks down at me and eases his weight from the crate. I inhale a dose of salty sea air, letting it clear his scent from my nose.
“Too bad, Team Teal,” Team Lime, Colton’s baseball idols, yells victoriously from ahead of us.
We can barely hear Team Lime due to the distance that separates us, but it’s clear from how Team Lime raises their fists triumphantly over their heads that we’ve been sabotaged.
They must have a hammer or heavy object that they used to reattach the top of the crate to its bottom, making us think it had something inside it.
Colton’s speechless, and it’s clear that he’s rethinking getting their autographs.
“They’re brilliant,” Colton says as he reaches for the oars once more.
Okay, or maybe not. Why do I even try to guess what’s going on inside of his head?
It’s then that I notice the sweat trailing from Colton’s mussed hairline.
His arms and body are likely running on fumes from all the rowing.
I start to reach for the oars in his hands and suggest we switch when my hands screech out in slivered protest. If I start rowing, we’re as good as last place.
So instead I sit down and helplessly watch as Colton crouches back in his seat and sinks into rhythmic strokes.
Not but a moment later, I see a fuchsia flare shoot high into the sky, arching over the beach, and fizzling out over the water.
My stomach drops—Team Fuchsia has already made it to Sabotage Island.
Though I didn’t expect us to come in first during this Mayday Challenge, watching Legend and Silver drag their boat onto the shore of the island brings me face-to-face with the reality that if we come in last tonight, we’ll be on the chopping block.
I do an immediate surveillance check, noting our spot among the remaining boats.
Panic seeps deep into my chest, my breathing coming out ragged.
We must have taken too long on that last crate because now we are nearly level with the boats that were previously behind us.
With even more motive, Colton leans into every stroke as we race neck and neck with three other teams that are likely thinking exactly what I am: We cannot come in last.