On the Island (13 page)

“You make me feel safe,” I whispered.

“You are safe.”

I gave in to the pull of sleep and the escape it offered, but seconds before I drifted off completely, I could have sworn T.J.’s lips brushed mine in the sweetest and softest of kisses.

I woke up in his arms just before sunrise, hungry, thirsty, and needing to go to the bathroom. I climbed out of bed, left the house, and walked into the woods, stopping to gather coconuts and breadfruit on my way back. The sky filled with morning light as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, then prepared our breakfast.

While I waited for him to wake up, I replayed last night’s events in my mind. His desire had been palpable, radiating off him like heat from a fire. His breathing had changed, growing louder, and his heart had pounded under my cheek. He’d shown remarkable restraint, and I wondered how long he’d be satisfied with only holding me in his arms.

I wondered how long I would be.

He came out of the house a few minutes later, scraping his hair back into a ponytail.

“Hey.” He sat down beside me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “How’re you doing this morning?” His knee rested against mine.

“Much better.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Yes. Did you?”

He nodded, smiling. “I slept great, Anna.”

We sat on the shore after breakfast.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” he said, scratching one of his mosquito bites. “What if I take the life raft out into the lagoon to fish?”

His suggestion terrified me. “No way,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “What if the shark bites the raft? Or capsizes it?”

“It’s not
Jaws
, Anna. Besides, you said you didn’t want me standing in the water.”

“I might have made my feelings clear on that,” I admitted.

“If I fish from the raft, we won’t be hungry.”

My stomach growled like Pavlov’s dog when he mentioned fish. “I don’t know, T.J. It seems like a bad idea.”

“I won’t go out very far. Just deep enough to catch some fish.”

“Fine. But I’m going with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Of course I do.”

We had to deflate the life raft to get it through the doorway of the house. We reinflated it with the carbon dioxide canister and carried it down to the beach.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “This is insane. We should stay on the beach where it’s safe.”

T.J. grinned. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

We paddled the life raft out to the middle of the lagoon. T.J. baited his hook and pulled the fish in one by one, throwing them in a plastic container filled with seawater. I couldn’t sit still or stop looking over the side of the raft. T.J. pulled me down beside him.

“You’re making me nervous,” he said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll catch a couple more fish, and we’ll go back.”

The life raft no longer had the roof canopy attached and the sun beat down on us. I wore only a bikini, but I was still sweltering in the heat. T.J. was wearing my cowboy hat and he took it off and plunked it down on my head.

“Your nose is turning red,” he said.

“I’m burning up. It’s hot out here.”

T.J. reached his hand over the side, scooped up some water, and poured it on my chest, watching as it ran in a lazy trickle down to my belly button. My body tingled and my core temperature shot up ten degrees. He started to dip his hand in again, and then stopped abruptly. “There it is.” He pulled his fishing pole out of the water.

I looked over my shoulder and every muscle in my body tensed. The fin glided through the water twenty yards away, moving toward us. When it got close enough for us to get a good look, I reached instinctively for the paddles and handed one to T.J. We watched the shark circle the raft, neither of us saying anything.

“I want to go back to shore,” I said.

T.J. nodded, and we paddled away, the shark following us into shallow water. When the water was only knee-high, T.J. jumped out and pulled the raft onto the sand with me still sitting in it. I climbed out.

“What the fuck are we gonna do about that?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Because really, I had no idea what T.J. and I were going to do about the nine-foot shark living in our lagoon.

We walked back to the house. T.J. made a fire, and I cleaned and cooked our lunch. We ate all the fish, stuffing ourselves after going without them for so long. T.J. started pacing as soon as he finished his last bite.

“I can’t believe you were in the water with that thing.” He stopped, turning to look at me. “You don’t have to worry about me standing in the ocean anymore. I’ll fish from the raft. I just hope it doesn’t decide to take a bite out of it.”

“Here’s the problem, T.J. We can’t keep reinflating the life raft every time we take it in, or out, of the house. I don’t how much CO
₂
we have left. As long as you use the raft for fishing, we’ll have to keep it outside. We’ll have the canopy overhead, but that’s it. No protection from the mosquitoes without the nylon sides.” T.J. already had multiple bites from being in the woods all the time.

“So the shark gets to decide if we eat and where we sleep?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s bullshit. The shark can call the shots in the water, but not on land. We’ll have to kill it.”

He’s got to be kidding.
Taking on a known man-eater didn’t seem very realistic, and I thought it might also get us killed. T.J. went into the house and returned with the toolbox. He removed the rope, unraveled it, and separated it into individual strands.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, afraid of what his answer might be.

“If I can bend a few nails, and attach them to this rope, maybe we can hook the shark and pull it out of the water.”

“You want to try and catch it?”

“Yes.”

“From the raft?”

“No, from the beach. If we’re on land, we might actually have a chance. We’ll have to get the shark into shallow water,” he said.

“Well, we know that’s possible. I was surprised how close it got to shore.”

T.J. nodded. Neither of us mentioned that the shark had been perfectly capable of swimming in waist-deep water.

T.J. hammered three nails halfway into the side of the house and then used the claw end of the hammer to bend them before pulling them back out. He tied the individual strands of the rope around the head of each nail, making a three-pronged hook.

“I’m not sure what to use for bait,” T.J. said.

“You want to try and catch the shark
today
?”

“I want our lagoon back, Anna.” He had a determined look in his eye, and I figured there was no talking him out of it.

“I know what we need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to contribute to this insane plan.

“What?”

“A chicken. If we put it on the hook alive, it’ll thrash around and attract the shark.”

He patted me on the back. “Glad to see you’re on board.”

“Reluctantly.” But I agreed with T.J. that we had to try. Despite the shark, and the jellyfish, and the other dangers we probably didn’t even know about, the lagoon was ours, and I could understand why T.J. wanted to fight for it. I only hoped we didn’t pay for it with our lives.

We had caught and eaten two more chickens since the one we’d found on our first Christmas. We thought there was at least one left, two if we were lucky. We hadn’t heard or seen one for a while, though. It was as if they knew we were picking them off one by one.

We scoured the island and had almost given up when we heard the flapping. It took another half hour to catch it. I looked away when T.J. put it on the hook.

He waded into chest-deep water, threw the chicken as far as he could, and got the hell back out, taking the slack out of the rope so he could feel any change in the tension.

The chicken flapped on the surface, trying to escape. We watched, horrified, as the shark launched itself out of the water and engulfed the chicken in its mouth. T.J. yanked on the rope as hard as he could to set the hook. “I think it worked, Anna. I can feel it pulling.”

He took several steps backward and dug his heels in, holding the rope with both hands.

Suddenly, the rope jerked and T.J. flew forward, landing facedown as the shark swam in the opposite direction from shore. I threw myself onto his back and clawed at the sand, snapping back two of my fingernails. The shark dragged us both as if we weighed nothing at all. When we managed to regain our footing and stand, we were knee-deep in the water.

“Get behind me,” T.J. said. He wrapped the rope around his forearm twice. I grabbed on to the end. We took a few steps backward and held our ground. The shark thrashed back and forth, trying to simultaneously eat the chicken and dislodge our hook.

It jerked us forward again. T.J. pulled back on the rope as hard as he could, forearms bulging. Sweat poured down my face as we continued our tug-of-war, the water now up to our thighs.

My arms burned, and as the minutes passed I knew with absolute certainty that T.J. and I could never land it. I thought the only reason we’d held any ground at all was because the shark
let us
. It would have taken three grown men to have any kind of fighting chance, and it was time to give up.

“Drop the rope, T.J. We need to get out now.”

He didn’t argue, but the rope was wrapped so tight around his forearm he couldn’t unwind it. He struggled to free himself as the shark pulled him into deeper water, and he was in well over his head when the rope went slack. Relieved, I thought it had snapped, but then I realized the shark was swimming toward us.

“Get out of the water, Anna!”

I froze, watching T.J. frantically untangle his arm from the rope. The fin slipped below the surface, and I knew he’d never make it to shore in time.

I screamed. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed more fins, moving so fast they sped by in a blur. The dolphins had arrived, two or three of them swimming close together in a group.

I scrambled out of the water and watched as they surrounded T.J., protecting him while he swam toward the shore. When he joined me on the sand, I threw my arms around him, sobbing.

Four more dolphins joined the others and now there were at least seven. They charged the shark, battering it with their snouts, pushing it into shallow water.

T.J. spotted the end of the rope floating next to the school of dolphins. He waded in and quickly grabbed it. We pulled, and with some help from the dolphins, the shark ended up on the beach shaking its head back and forth, a few chicken feathers protruding from its mouth.

T.J. scooped me up in a bear hug. I wrapped my legs around his waist and we screamed and cheered.

The dolphins swam back and forth excitedly. T.J. and I ran into the water and though hugging dolphins wasn’t an easy thing to do, we managed. They dispersed a few minutes later. T.J. and I left the water and stood next to the shark, which lay still on the sand.

“I don’t know what would have happened if the dolphins hadn’t shown up,” I said.

“We were getting our asses kicked, that’s for sure.”

“I’ve never been so scared in my life. I thought that shark was going to eat you.”

T.J. hugged me, resting his chin on the top of my head. “It didn’t, though.”

“We’re going to eat him now, aren’t we?” I asked.

“Oh, hell yes,” he said, a big grin on his face.

T.J. cut the shark apart with the handsaw, and it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. I carved chunks of it into steaks with the knife. The saw and the knife weren’t ideal implements for filleting a shark and the blood covered us, soaking my yellow bikini and his shorts in an oily residue. The smell overpowered me, a sharp metallic assault every time I inhaled. We’d have to bury the carcass somewhere, but we decided to worry about that later.

I surveyed our work. We had more shark steaks than we could eat and we’d have to throw most of it out, but dinner would be a feast.

Blood streaked T.J.’s chest. “Do you want to get cleaned up first?” he asked, after we walked back to the house.

“No, you go ahead. I’m going to make mashed breadfruit. I’ll go after you.” It had been days since I felt truly clean. I looked forward to using soap and taking a long bath in more than one foot of water.

He went into the house and came out carrying his clothes and the soap and shampoo.

“Just leave your shorts down there. I’ll try to wash them out later.”

“Okay,” he said over his shoulder.

I made mashed breadfruit. I’d invented the recipe one long, boring day, first grating coconut on a rock and then squeezing it through a T-shirt to make coconut milk. I roasted the breadfruit and grated that, too, adding the coconut milk and heating it near the fire in an empty coconut shell. T.J. loved it.

I impaled the shark on sticks so we could cook it over the fire.

“Your turn,” T.J. said when he returned, smelling a lot better than I did. “I’ll start cooking while you’re gone. We can eat as soon as you get back.”

“Okay.” I pointed at T.J. “Hands off that breadfruit.”

I went inside the house and reached into my suitcase for my clothes. Something blue caught my eye.

Why not?

I had every reason to dress up. Dinner was always special when you killed it, instead of the other way around.

Chapter 26

—

T.J.

I spread the blanket out next to the fire and checked the shark, making sure it wasn’t burning. Not that it mattered because we had plenty, but my stomach growled, and I couldn’t wait for it to be done so we could eat.

Anna walked up wearing the blue dress, her wet hair combed back. She smelled like vanilla. I smiled and raised my eyebrows at her when she sat down beside me, and she blushed.

“You look very nice,” I said.

“Thanks. I thought I should dress up. Since we’re celebrating.”

We ate as much shark as we could hold. The texture of the steaks reminded me of beef, and the flavor was stronger than the small fish we usually ate.

“Do you want some more breadfruit?” I asked. Instead of answering me, she burped. “Anna, I’m
shocked
,” I teased. “I have never heard you burp.”

“That’s because I’m a
lady
. And I never have enough food in my stomach to make me burp.” She grinned. “Wow. That felt really good.”

“So, do you want some? It’s almost gone.”

“Sure,” she said, laughing. “I have room now.”

I had already scooped some of the breadfruit onto my fingers. Without thinking, I held them out to her. She stopped laughing, and looked at me like she wasn’t quite sure what I meant. I waited, and she leaned toward me and opened her mouth. I slid my fingers inside, wondering if my eyes were as big as hers. When she sucked the breadfruit off, my breathing got all messed up.

“More?”

She nodded, just barely, and her breathing didn’t sound right either. I scooped up some breadfruit and this time, when I put my fingers in her mouth, she put her hand on my wrist.

I waited for her to swallow and then I lost my shit completely.

I grabbed her face with both hands, and I kissed her, hard. She opened her mouth and I slipped my tongue inside. I could have kissed her for days, and if she told me to stop I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.

But she didn’t tell me stop. She put her arms around my neck, pressed herself against me, and kissed me back just as hard. I pulled her onto my lap so she straddled me, and I moaned into her mouth when she sat down on my hard-on, her dress pushed up to her waist.

She kissed my neck, licking and sucking her way down to my shoulder. It felt incredible. I pulled her dress over her head, and lifted her off me, easing her onto her back. I hooked my fingers under the waistband of her underwear, and she raised her hips so I could take them off. I kissed her frantically, my hands roaming because I couldn’t decide where I wanted to touch her most.

“Slow down, T.J.,” she whispered.

“I can’t.”

She reached between us and tugged on my shorts. I pulled them off, and as soon as I was naked she wrapped her hand around me. I came twenty seconds later, surprised it took that long.

When my head cleared I kissed her and ran my hands over every inch of her, slowly this time. I touched her in places I never thought I would and listening to the noises she made, I guess it must have felt pretty good.

When I was ready again, which was very soon, I pulled her on top of me. Being inside her was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Emma had been nervous and tense, and I’d worried about hurting her, but Anna seemed relaxed, like she knew what she was doing. She sat straight up, her hands flat on my stomach, moving at her own pace. The view was amazing. I watched as she closed her eyes and arched her back, and a few minutes later, when her expression changed and she cried out, I held her hips tight and came harder than I ever had in my life.

Afterward, I put my arms around her and whispered, “Was this just a one-time thing, you and me?”

“No.”