“Like you don’t expect to be here when I get back.” There were tears in her blue eyes, gathered but unfallen. “I’m not blind. I know you’re more hurt than you
’ll admit. I know I can’t help you, and you won’t help yourself, but damn it! Neal, you’d better hold on until someone else can get here and help you, because I’m not willing to lose you.”
Neal felt like the band on his chest tightened three notches, and he envied Mary her easy sobs. “I’ll fight to the last,” he promised. “I’m too tough to die here.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said fiercely, clinging to one hand and bending over him. “I didn’t chase you across half the resort just to let you get away this easily.”
Neal wheezed a laugh for her. “I’ve never been so happy to be caught.”
Mary sniffed and drew in a deep breath before standing. “It’s almost dark. I have to get wood while I can.” Neal wasn’t sure if the tremor in her voice was fear or some other emotion, but he marveled at the way she squared her shoulders and marched off into the growing gloom.
Chapter Twenty-One
The cheerful afternoon sun was gone, and the final direct rays had vanished by the time Mary made it to the stream. She refilled her water bottles and tucked them to the bottom of her voluminous bag. The stream was less friendly in the dark—no longer a Christmas trimming, but a stream of blood, reflecting the final light of the sunset. She rolled up her pants to wade across it cautiously.
The last light was gone by the time she made it across, and it took her eyes several moments to adjust. Every shadow seemed full of chirping insects and singing frogs, and every bush rustled with some sort of creature in it. Continuing to walk forward was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Behind her was Neal and the safe, cheerful glow of her fire, but before her was darkness and mystery and danger.
There was a bright moon overhead, so she wasn’t walking entirely in blackness, but the shadows were thick. Mary wanted to walk further away from the treeline than she had in the daylight, and was alarmed to discover that the tide had come in: the beach was a much thinner sliver than it had been earlier, and the terrifying ocean was threatening to encroach on the places she wanted to walk.
A tiny crab skittered across her path, making Mary startle and bite back a shriek. The last thing she needed was to make Neal try to come after her.
The thought steadied her.
Neal needed her.
She had to be brave for Neal.
She marched forward again, and faced down the menacing driftwood piles with a determined scowl. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me,” she told them fiercely. “But I need wood, and I teach middle school, so nothing you can do can scare me off.”
As declarations of bravery went, it lacked panache, but the ridiculousness of it buoyed her spirits and Mary was able to plunge her arms into the unknown depths and find more wood that was dry to the touch. The sun had even dried some of the driftwood she had rejected earlier.
She couldn’t see each piece well enough to identify bugs, so she could only brush at each one and try not to image that each little tickle was something with too many legs and antenna.
She filled her bag to bursting and piled more into her arms before turning back towards their piece of the beach—and stopped in alarm.
The tide had come in even further as she worked, and where there had once been a clear path back to their fire, there was now ocean, lapping right up to the trees in places.
She could try to scramble back into dense jungle foliage, or she could wade through dark water—dark ocean water. Dark ocean water that was probably teeming with biting, stinging things.
Mary took a tighter grip on her armload of wood. Trying to climb through the jungle— which was undoubtedly full of scorpions and snakes—would be nearly impossible with her load of firewood.
She stopped to roll her pants up further, up above her knees, and as she was patting them smooth, recognized that she was just trying to delay the inevitable.
“I teach middle school,” she reminded herself.
She gathered up all of her wood again, and settled her bag firmly across her body.
Then she stepped into the lapping water and waded across to the other side of the crescent.
Walking in the ocean was not like wading in a stream. The stream knew where it wanted to go and went merrily there. But the ocean was a different matter altogether.
The ocean caressed her. It tickled at her, and swirled around her ankles, and tried to take the sand away from the bottoms of her toes. It surged up almost to her knees and tried to pull her out with it in a salty partners dance. It subsided and relented and teased her, making her shiver as it played against her bare skin. Mary closed her eyes, willing herself just to keep going—and then she was walking out of it close to Neal’s driftwood chair, and she could see the glow of her fire on the undersides of the trees again. Licking her lips, Mary wondered now why she had been so frightened. The ocean against her legs hadn’t harmed her. In fact, it had felt… almost nice.
She actually stopped, and turned around, dipping her toes into the lacy foam right at the edge. It was partly greeting and partly in thanks. She knew she would never have to fear the ocean again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
True to his promise, Neal was still conscious when Mary returned with her heaped armload of driftwood, but it was more of a fight than he liked to admit.