I finally fall asleep, but when I wake the next day, it’s raining even harder than before. Cy is already up, securing our shelter against the rain. I lay back, still half asleep, the memory of last night’s dreams slipping away as I watch him. He’s always bare-chested, his jeans so faded they’re little more than tatters. I helped him cut them off into shorts long ago, and as he leans up high, checking the roof, his muscles pull taut.
“You awake, babe?”
I close my eyes. “No. Still asleep.”
He chuckles low and sexy, and I smile to myself. I’m so certain we’re getting off this island, I already miss this. The banter, the teasing, the way he is with me.
But why can’t we still have this? Why wouldn’t we stay together?
How could we?
I open one eye and he’s grinning at me, his eyes twinkling like little bits of sapphire.
“God, you’re so sexy,” I tell him. “So fucking sexy.”
How could we not?
He looks around at himself as if he’s standing in front of a mirror. “I’m too sexy for my shirt,” he quips in a singsong voice. “So sexy it hurts.”
“Oh, God, you’re seriously dating yourself now. How long have you been on this island?”
He smiles sadly. “No fucking idea.”
He continues checking the ceiling, and I sober.
“Cy?” I whisper, my throat clogging a bit. But I push through.
“Yeah, baby?” he says softly, as if he knows this is important.
“Will you… do you… I mean…” my voice trails off. I swallow hard. I have to ask him. “Promise me this won’t go away,” I say so softly, he doesn’t hear me.
“Say that again, honey,” Cy says, looking at me curiously.
I clear my throat and muster the courage. “Promise me this won’t go away,” I say, firmer this time. Louder. “Me. Us. This. No matter what, promise me, Cy.”
He stalks over to me and drops to one knee, taking me by the hand, and for one heart-stopping moment I think he’s going do something crazy, like… propose. But instead he only holds my hand and looks straight into my eyes.
“Harper Lake, you have my word,” he says. “No matter what happens, we’re in this together. It won’t change. Not us. Nothing between us.”
But how can he promise if he doesn’t know?
I sigh and worry my lip. Leaning down, he kisses my forehead. “You don’t believe me,” he says softly.
I shake my head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I say. “It’s that… it’s that there are too many unknowns. You know?”
That makes him laugh. “I do know there are unknowns, yes.”
I smile in spite of my suddenly blurred vision. “Things go away, though. People are in love in college, then they graduate and move apart. And me and you… we’re different people. We lead different lives. When we get off this island…”
“Harper, I think the first thing we need to worry about is how to make that happen,” he says. “We’re still very much stranded. We’re still very much into each other. And I’ll still dominate your pretty ass until I stop breathing.”
And for some reason, that makes me laugh and sigh all at once. God, I love him so much.
“Okay, deal,” I tell him. I return his kiss, then push myself up to sitting. I yawn widely. “Wish we could go looking for that camera.”
“We will,” he says. “Let’s just do what we can here.”
But it’s still pouring and even I, in my impulsive ways, know better than to risk injury by looking for the camera in the storm.
“What do you think will happen when we find that last camera?” I ask him. “What if nothing happens?” I can’t get it out of my mind.
He’s busy hacking coconuts open to eat from our stores, but even though he’s intent on his work, I can tell he’s thinking about it by the way he works he jaw. After a moment, he speaks.
“After that, we move onto plan B.”
“Which would be...”
“Smoke signals?”
“A raft?”
We talk about all these things half joking, half seriously, as if any of them are a possibility.
If they were, we wouldn’t still be here.
I smile and reach for my bag. I have limited toiletries and a nearly empty pill container. I eye it warily with a shocking realization.
I only have a few birth control pills left. What happens when they’re gone? I look over my shoulder at Cy. We talked about this before, but then we both sort of accepted that we’d be out of here by now. And here we are.
For one crazy, ridiculous moment, I pretend it doesn’t matter. I pretend that I’m ready for a baby and he’d be a great father, that he could get me pregnant and I’d thrive on coconuts and fish, and he’d help me deliver our island baby.
But it’s just a moment, just fantasy, like one would imagine winning the lottery or traveling to the moon in a spaceship.