Chapter Ten
My head surfaces back above the water as I gasp for air. I’m gulping more water every time I take a breath. The raft with our bags on drifts alongside me. It’s going too fast to be attached to James now. Unless he’s been caught too.
Another current grabs me, whipping me sideways. I go under again.
My whole body lashes out, trying to find something, anything, to hold onto. I push downwards further to see if I can get a grip on the surface but it’s too deep.
That’s when my leg catches on something sharp. I cry out but I’m underwater. It sounds gurgled, otherworldly. I swallow more. My body goes rigid as it fights the intake. I think I’m choking.
Red droplets float beside me, dragged in the same direction.
Am I bleeding? I close my eyes as they start to sting.
The river bobs, flowing between two rocks and ebbs downwards again, like a violent mini waterfall. My face is thrust back above the surface as I take sharp, painful gasps of air.
“Fliss!” I hear James yell, just as I hit something flat and hard. It slams against my ribs. Or maybe my ribs slam against whatever it is. It leaves me breathless, clawing at anything I can. I think I hear my name again. And then nothing.
*
“Felicity, can you hear me?” James’ voice pierces the silence, the darkness. I burst awake, choking as I try to breathe. There’s still water trapped in my oesophagus. I throw myself to the side, emptying my guts on the soft ground around me. I clench my fists around damp bracken.
James’ hands are on my side, stroking my arms. He helps me lie down again when I’m ready. He touches my face, my chin, my shoulder, casting his eyes all the way down my body. Everything he does is with gentle care. Something about my leg has him touching his face, squeezing his jaw.
“What?” I croak. My throat is burning.
“It’s nothing. Just stay down, ok? You passed out. God, I think I should call for help.”
I take a deep breath, assessing my body for pain. Despite them being icy cold, I can feel and wiggle my toes. My legs ache and there’s a biting pain on my left shin. My ribs burn from where they smacked against something hard, but I can breathe. In fact, my breathing is now relatively shallow with James kneeling beside me, running a hand through his soaked hair.
“You know when I—” I cough as talking becomes difficult. “You know when I said your idea was mad?”
James turns his eyes back to mine, tilting his head in a disbelieving stare. “Don’t you dare…” he says. “Don’t even go there, Felicity. I’ve never been so fucking terrified in my entire life . I thought you were dead!”
I try to laugh, shaking my head. For a moment, I assumed I was too. I think about asking him how the hell he managed to drag me out of the river and onto the bank. I want to talk some more about how this is the stupidest idea he’s had yet but his expression is agonised, not his usual arrogant smirk I’m so used to, so I decide it’s maybe not the time. And anyway, a more pressing concern is bothering me as I look down and realise how exposed I am.
“Where are my bloody clothes, Gloatman?”
James scratches the back of his neck. I’m shivering on the cold muddy ground, but to see him shudder as the chill racks through him is a surprise. Especially as he runs so hot. He looks back down the river enshrouded in thick greenery, the trees on either side linking branches over the water as if to provide it with shelter from the sun.
I gulp, realising how serious this actually is. What if I had actually drowned? Or knocked my head so hard I couldn’t be resuscitated? What if I never saw my parents, my friends, ever again?
I could’ve died!
“Please stop freaking out,” James says quietly, softly. I peek across at him through blurry eyes. He’s right, I am freaking out. But at least he’s not saying it like he usually does. There’s no accusatory tone there this time. He puts his hand on my shoulder, rubbing his firm-skinned thumb in circles. “It’ll be ok, alright? I’m going to go search for our bags.”
“You lost our bags!?” I sob.
“Well, Felicity,” he chuckles, exhaustion sitting heavy on his features. “I prioritised saving your life over our clothes. I’m sorry if that now presents an inconvenience to you.”
A memory flashes back to me. I was flitting in and out of consciousness as he hauled me onto the muddy bank. My brain has retained snippets of hot skin plastered on mine. Strong arms lifting me. Curse words being hissed.
“I’m so co-old,” I whimper. “But thank you,” I add as he rolls his eyes.
“Good to know you’re back to your usual self. I was going to turn your phone on and call for help but then I realised it’s fucked off down the river somewhere with our bags.”
I gasp. “Oh god! James, what if it’s broken?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he says, shuddering again. He looks back down the river, peering as if he might be able to spot them in the rocky waters ahead. “Stay here. I’ll go look for them.”
He rises to his feet. As he walks away in his drenched boxer shorts, which are leaving very little to the imagination (he has a really nice arse), he calls over his shoulder, “Don’t look at your leg. Just stay like that.”
My leg!? Shit, what’s wrong with my leg?
I sit up fast. In doing so, I bend my knees and a sharp pain has me hissing. That’s when I remember the jagged rock, the blood trickling through the water. It was me bleeding. Specifically, my shin, which now has a nasty two-inch gash across it. Luckily I’m not squeamish, as the blood has poured all the way down and over my trainers.
In order to not make the gash worse I restrain myself from touching it, lying back down and crying into the grey skies above me that promise drizzle. Slow, lazy tears wet my cheeks and ears as I wait for James to return. After a while there’s the promise of heavy breathing and footsteps crunching through the overgrowth.
He stops a few steps away from me with a strange expression on his face. He places two soaked bags down on the ground in front of him. They land with a squelch. Another sob racks my chest.
“You looked at your leg, didn’t you?” he says, coming to sit beside me again.
I suck in air to calm my breathing. “What’re we going to do!?”
James sighs, raggedly. His breathing is still choppy from having hunted the bags down. “I don’t know. We need to find out if you can walk on it first.”
“Where were the bags?” I ask through fresh tears. So much for never letting this man see me cry.
“All the way down there, getting pummelled by the current on the rocky part… I saw an otter,” he adds, as if that somehow sweetens the situation. “We need to get somewhere dryer. I need to clean your leg up. Can’t believe he didn’t think to give us a first aid kit. Maybe he is trying to kill us off…”
“Are all our clothes wet now?”
James squeezes the back of his neck, as a breeze plays with the branches in the trees around us. “I haven’t looked at the clothes, but I suspect so. Definitely everything nearer the top of the bags. But I did check just now, and your phone isn’t turning on.”
I sniff, covering my face with my hands.
“We’ve been walking for a day now. We’re not in a desert, Fliss. This is Scotland. We’ll find somewhere, or someone, to help us very soon. I promise.”
I note how he’s started calling me Fliss intermittently over the past few hours. I decide not to comment on it yet. Instead, I power up my threshold for pain and try to sit up. James notices what I’m doing and offers me his arm like a gentleman. I let him help me, feeling like a fool and a baby for needing help at all.
Once I’m standing, we’re both relieved to find I can put weight on my leg and won’t need carrying. The clothes are drenched. My bag was hit worse than his for some reason.
James offers me his top, which although wet, is long, falling down over my buttocks to provide a modicum of dignity. He puts his shirt on, not bothering to button it up. It hangs loosely to the side of his toned abdomen. His wet boxer shorts are officially leaving nothing to the imagination anymore. I bite my lip to remind myself not to look, since he’s providing me with the same respect.
After hobbling off the bank, we find miles and miles of bracken-covered undulating Highlands. In the far distance, I can see the blue outline of mountains. The birds are well and truly alive here. We must spot at least three birds of prey in an hour. Ravens hop across our path, eyeing us suspiciously, before flying off again, crying out in their creepy way.
We don’t make it far, finding a patch of clear ground, where James pitches the wet tent, with a small lake about ten metres away. I sit and watch, as I’m ordered, sipping water from my steel bottle. He finds some fallen branches from a nearby patch of trees, using rocks to raise them off the ground enough to hang all our drenched clothes over. Somehow the sleeping bags are only wet on the outside. He shakes off the water droplets, hanging them out to dry too as I shiver on my perch.
“I’m going to attempt to make a fire,” he tells me, peeking over with a frown.
“Is it even legal?” I ask, my quivering voice giving my chilliness away.
“We don’t really have a choice, do we? I need to help you wash your leg. You’re not going to be able to rely on my body heat tonight as I’m also freezing. Plus, there’s hardly any sun here.” James rubs his face. “We really need to get you to a doctor. Your leg might get infected.”
“I’m sure we’ll find something tomorrow,” I say, slumping at the thought of spending another night in a dripping tent, fighting midges and digging holes for toilets. And now I have an injury to factor in as well. “Do we still have the tampons?”
“No. They were ruined.” He pauses, not looking at me. “Why? Do you need them?”
I snigger. “No, not for that! Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried… I have three sisters, remember? But I can’t nip to the corner shop for you right now, can I?”
“You do that?”
“What?”
“Buy tampons.”
He gives me a look. “Of course, I do. I don’t care.”
“None of my ex-boyfriends would do it, it was always a categoric no.”
“They’re idiots,” he says, ripping something. I turn to see what he’s doing. He’s taken the nice white shirt he wore on his journey here and is tearing it into strips. “Come on. Better get you down to the lake as it’s easier than using bottled water.”
Once I’m seated on the rocky beach, long grasses tickling my arms in the breeze, James takes off his trainers and steps in barefoot, squatting down to my eye height. He cleans my leg diligently, taking care to be gentle when I hiss, clenching my fists and biting the insides of my cheeks. He watches me, his blue eyes warm when they connect with mine. I try to ignore the heat building in my core whenever he’s nice to me. It’s the last thing I want to be thinking about considering he’s both my colleague and my nemesis. I’m waiting for him to suddenly lash out with a smart comment or jibe.
“Why’re you being so kind to me?” I say. I mean it in a jokey way but it comes out more vulnerable than I was going for.
James is carefully cleaning off the dried blood near my ankle. “Would you prefer for me to pick another fight?”
I can’t stop myself from smiling. “At least it will feel somewhere closer to normal.”
“Alright, give me a second.” He’s quiet for a moment then chuckles suddenly. “You know I’m way better at rattling you when I don’t have to think about it. I can’t come up with anything right now.”
“Nothing? Not a single thing to annoy me?”
He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “Nada.”
“How disappointing.”
Once he’s finished, he rises to his full height again offering me both his hands to help me up too. I take them, but hold back, watching, as he returns to our makeshift camp.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he actually cared about me all of a sudden. It was like he purposefully didn’t take the bait to nettle me just now. I don’t believe he can’t think of at least one thing which would set us off.
Maybe I read him all wrong these past six years. Or maybe he read me all wrong.
Then I remember how he tried to discourage me from going for the director role earlier in the day and it stings in a different way. Somehow, that discussion got right to the centre of me. The place that harbours my lack of self-confidence and people-pleasing tendencies. And it hurt. I look over at the man who is now fiddling with the tent. I’m used to snakes. He doesn’t look like one right now. But I know who he is really. All this flirty nonsense between us needs to end here.
I will not fall for James Gloatman.