My world went from deep, soft black …to blue.

My eyes were opening. I stared straight up, or what I thought was up. Nothing but a depthless, cool blue, and a wisp of cloud that told me it was the sky. I wasn’t dead. That was air – normal, clean air in my lungs – and I wasn’t dead.

All at once every one of my muscles shot to life and I sprang up, then recoiled instantly in pain. It felt like a hot, burning knot had taken the place of my foot; I looked down to see it tightly bundled in various rags. Worrying sensations radiated from some unseen spot on the back of my skull, and when my fingers went to explore the ache there, they touched more of the same rough bandages. I hurriedly examined the rest of my body: I was alive, but felt like a lumpy bag that had been kicked down a hundred flights of stairs.

After I was satisfied that my limbs were mainly intact, I turned my attention to the world around me.

Sand.

Sea.

I was on a beach, surrounded by all the elements of a tropical paradise except it was all far, far more frightening. The sand was too white. The air too thin. Some seagulls wheeled up overhead but it hurt to lift my gaze to the sun and look at them. Wincing, I tried to remember.

Todd.

The storm.

The storeroom.

Was I the only one who had survived?

I looked down again at my body. The silk over the bodice of the best dress I ever owned was ripped and hanging in ribbons off me. The salt water had matted my hair in one loose dreadlock which was now pasted to my back, and crunchy with beach sand. I was struggling to sit up when thought hit me. A thought so devastating it was like watching the whole accident happen all over again: I had nearly cheated on Anthony.

Or had I?

I sat back down again, head suddenly reeling.

Was the storm the only reason I hadn’t gone through with anything? What would have happened if that storm never came? Would I have just gone back to the room, back to my life with him, back to California and straight into the marriage that was waiting for me like a wolf in the forest, licking its chops?

I looked down at the shreds of my dress.

The irritating fact was, I didn’t know. I liked to think that I would never have jeopardized my relationship with Anthony. And yet, why did I feel so guilty? How could I feel so bad about something that never happened? Never got the chance to happen is not the same as not happening, though, is it? It all seemed so pathetic now. So sordid in the hot morning sun. Suddenly, as though I had been kicked in the stomach, I folded over to the side, retched and threw up all over the sand. Sitting up again, I felt no relief. I wanted to cry but felt too dry inside. Too tired.

I flopped back down and contemplated dying right there and letting the seagulls peck me away, when my eye caught something. A jacket. An orange jacket laying neatly in the sand. I couldn’t coax my bruised body up to go and examine it, but my mind raced off all the same.

Anthony…?

What were the chances?

When I saw two figures walking over a soft dune towards me, I didn’t know if I started crying or laughing or screaming. I had never been more happy to see human beings in my life. One of them picked up their pace when they saw me; the other hung back. I lifted stinging eyes upward and saw who it was. Todd soon stood towering over me, sun behind him, an undecipherable expression on his face.

“You’re awake,” he said.

I could think of no response. I just wanted to reach out and hold him, to just touch something that wasn’t the hostile elements of sand or sea or wind. But I couldn’t get up. I felt like my entire body had been rinsed out inside with burning salt water and now everything hurt. I could hear the muscles in his thighs crack as he crouched down and looked me square in the eye.

“I was sure you wouldn’t make it. You took a massive gash to the head, and you were out cold for at least a few hours.”

My hand again went to the back of my head to see if it felt different now that I knew what it was. Everything was slowly coming back to me though.

“Maybe you don’t remember. The ceiling broke and came down on your head. It knocked you right out.”

“You… you saved me?”

“Nah, you can thank your life jacket for that,” he said and gave a playful nod to the orange jacket I had spied earlier. So Anthony wasn’t here, then. I stopped my mind from thinking any further. My head spun.

“I feel like shit, Todd.”

To my surprise he broke out in a big, juicy laugh.

“Yeah, I bet! But you’re a fighter, no question,” he said, and extended his hand for a high five. I weakly lifted my hand to his and, despite the wash of pain moving through every part of me, I found myself laughing quietly with him.

“Has this actually happened, Todd? Did the ship really sink? Are we really …shipwrecked on an island?”

“Yep, not a dream I’m afraid” he said, and straightened to standing again.

The other figure had ambled over now, a woman. I recognized her from the bar. She said nothing, but only peered down at me, and I wasn’t quite sure if the scowl on her face was my fault or the sun’s. Her hair was tightly braided back and she seemed …angry. I couldn’t think of anything to do but nod in acknowledgment of her and try to stand again.

“So, the deal is that we appear to be the only three survivors,” she said quickly. “The ship went down sometime last night after nineteen hundred hours. Your foot was broken but we’ve made a short splint and bandaged it as best we could. Your head will be fine, just a surface wound. I recommend keeping that braid in, the tension will help it heal.”

My fingers went to touch my hair again. Ah, not a dreadlock, but a braid. The thought of them both ministering to me while I was unconscious sent a strange pang of fear through me. I tried to stand again and coax my limp legs to hold my weight. I wobbled, but Todd immediately stepped in, grabbed my arm and held me up firm. The effect his had on the girl was palpable. She shot us both fiery looks but held her tongue.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name…” I said, trying to soothe the awkwardness of the moment and to tear my attention away from how wildly erotic it felt to suddenly have his arms around me, faintly touching over the places where my dress had been torn open.

“Charlie. It’s Charlie,” she spat and watched me struggle with a faint sneer on her face.

“If it wasn’t for Charlie, we wouldn’t have found the raft, or made it to the island. In fact we wouldn’t even be here right now,” Todd said, but there was something not perfectly sincere in the way he said it. I wanted to collapse against his touch and sleep in it forever.

“Thank you, Charlie,” I said with full earnestness. “It looks like you saved my life.”

“I saved Todd’s life, actually. You just happened to be strapped to him.”

The look they exchanged with one another was loaded with venom. I gently pried myself free of his grasp and took a moment to wobble and come to standing on my own. My foot rang out in pain with even the faintest touch on the ground beneath. But I was too exhausted to lift my leg and carry it. The compromise was to hang awkwardly somewhere in between, trying to find my balance.

“Well, however it happened, thank you. I don’t even …I don’t even remember getting here, to be honest. Nothing.” I looked at them both and wondered what we had all gotten ourselves into. “You and Todd are both… uh…?”

“Both SEAL trainees, yes. We trained together. We’re training buddies, me and him. And we’re doing our next course in California together,” she said, again speaking so quickly it made me wonder if I had scrambled my brains somehow and wasn’t processing so well anymore. But I think I got it now. This was his girlfriend. Or …was his girlfriend? My head was too sore to tease out the soap opera dynamics in front of me, so I just put my forehead down and tried to focus on standing upright.

My rag-bound toes touched the sand but this time the pain was so intense I felt it stab right through me, and I cried out in pain. Anthony was gone, and it was my fault. The thought of what had happened was indistinguishable from the pain in my body. I had put on this dress. I had gone out, when he asked me not to. I was just trying my luck. Just having fun. But now he was dead. Now they were all dead and only I was alive to think of how I had betrayed him, or meant to betray him. I burst into tears. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.

The tears came in big, inelegant gushes, and my whole body shuddered. The grief was so intense I could do nothing but let it take me completely, and now I was sure the waves of nausea and guilt and searing pain would kill me for real, and that I was half dead already, just a worthless piece of debris. I cried and cried and cried, not even summoning enough energy to sob.

His arms closed around me again. And the second they did, everything changed. What a delicious torment. How outrageous. Not only was I a deceitful asshole, apparently, I was actually doing this. I was actually getting turned on by this hot stranger who I had just a day ago been so eager to wreck my entire life for. I cried even harder. The ship was wrecked. My life was wrecked.

“Hey, shh, it’s OK, it’s OK… I’m sorry, Ellie, I’m so sorry,” he said and crumpled down to the ground with me, his body a warm shell around my small, broken one. The way he stroked my brow seemed to me, at that moment, the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. Not forgiveness exactly. Not a chance to fix anything. But it was human, and it was warm and soft, and I felt so cold and hard inside.

“Shhh, it’s OK…”

“Yeah, I don’t mean to interrupt y’all, but we have a lot of shit to get done right now.”

I looked up to see Charlie with her hands on her cocked hips, looking irritated. I quickly wiped away my tears, trying to gather myself.

“I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Jesus, Charlie, can you give her a break? She’s in shock.”

“Yeah, OK, fine, but what’s crying about it going to achieve?”

“What the hell, Charlie? She just lost her fiancé, can you show some fucking sympathy?”

Charlie’s eyes widened with interest.

“Oh, so she has a fiancé?”

They exchanged another venomous glance. Charlie turned to me and in a slow, deliberate voice, said, “I’m sorry your fiancé went down with the ship, Ellie,” all without taking her eyes off Todd. “But we lost people too, you know.”

I groaned and looked around. What the hell did people even do in this situation? What was the protocol? Somebody had to be looking for us.

“You OK?” he said.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s just that I …this is embarrassing but …I have to …go.”

He looked confused for a second but then immediately sprang to action, understanding me.

“Of course! Right! Yeah, we’ll give you some privacy, you can go behind those bushes over there…”

“But I can’t walk…”

Charlie snorted.

“Charlie, can you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Just cut it out.”

“It’s not my fault she’s a fucking baby. We’ve all sustained injuries, not just her, you know.”

“Just lay off. She’s a civilian. She’s scared. And you’re not helping. Hey, Ellie, just …how about I carry you over there?”

“Carry me?”

Charlie gave another nasty laugh. “You sure you can handle it, Todd?” she said, and looked down at the white of my stomach peeking out from a tear in my silk dress.

Fat. She was joking about me being fat, of course, because all the tragedies so far hadn’t quite been enough, and I needed some stranger to quip about my belly. Of course.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I said. I’m not an angry person, but the pain gave my voice a bitter edge. She looked as surprised at my tone as Todd was.

“Nothing, buttercup, jeez, just chill,” she said and turned to leave.

“No, I won’t just chill. You apologize to me. Right now.”

“Excuse me?”

Todd was beginning to look like he wanted to crawl into the sand and get away from us both.

“You meant my weight, right? Just say what you mean. I don’t even know you and you’re saying that kind of stuff to me? Apologize.”

Charlie looked a little stunned but stood her ground. She kept glancing over to Todd but he wasn’t returning her gaze.

“Fine, I’m sorry, OK?” she said, squeezing as much poison into the word as she could. She straightened her posture. “But the next time I see your pasty fat ass in trouble, remind me not to step in and help,” she snapped and turned to leave.

I could only look on, mouth hanging open, as she walked off again. Todd let out a long, low whistle as we both sat in silence for a moment.

“Don’t mind Charlie, she’s just …she’s kind of used to playing the badass, you know?”

I bit my tongue. If these seriously were the only other two people on this island with me, the last thing I needed was to fight with them on day one. But damn.

“Here, put your arm over my shoulder.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, slipped under my arm and in one movement hoisted me up and had my weight resting across his broad shoulders.

“Let me take you to those bushes over there.”

I nodded and we went.

“I’m sorry, Todd. This is not my finest hour, I know,” I said as he padded softly but strongly through the fine sand.

“Don’t worry about it.”

He carried me towards a small copse of palm trees a few yards away from the shoreline, behind which was some denser, dark green growth so thick it was almost completely enveloped in darkness.

He had to stop and adjust his grip around me a few times – firming up his one arm under my knees and the other behind my back and curling over my shoulder. For a moment, the skin of our bare stomachs touched. Though we both did nothing to acknowledge this, it was all I could think about as we walked on. I didn’t move away. Neither did he. And then I noticed something else. I had to check that I wasn’t dreaming. No. It really was what I thought it was. I could feel …him, through his still-wet trousers. It was unmistakable. There was a firm, distinctive bulge below the waistband of his pants and it was rubbing squarely against my hip. His cock. Right there, pressing firm against me. Unable to control myself, I looked up at him and to my surprise, he was already looking down at me. We still both said nothing and quickly snapped our gaze away again.

“Hey Ellie?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t feel weird about asking for help, OK? Till your foot’s healed I’ll carry you to wherever you want to go.”

He was slowly ascending the small dune now, and I could feel the mercifully cool shadows on my skin.

“Yeah? Well, can you carry me away from here? Back to California?” I said, laughing. What I really wanted to say was, “thank you, that means the world to me, I have literally nothing else in the world right now but your kindness, so thank you with everything I have in me…”

He looked around for a good spot to lower me down onto, but I caught his eye again and he froze.

I could kiss him.

I could.

What was there to stop me from kissing him as much as I wanted, now that my whole life was in ruins and there was nothing left of it except him?

I had known this stranger for less than two days. And yet looking up at him now, I felt like I knew everything that was worth knowing about him. I knew that he was strong, and that he wanted to help me. I knew that in the face of the most absurd danger, he still knew how to laugh. In that moment, that handful of facts seemed enough. He parted his lips and the moment tightened a little with anticipation.

“Ellie?”

Todd spun around so fast it made my neck jerk. But what I saw was a greater shock still. Walking over the same soft sand hill, clothing torn and dirty, was Anthony.

He looked ten years older. Redder. Sadder. But it was still him and the longer I stared the more it sank in: he was still alive after all. Alive and well and on this island, with me.

He looked at Todd, looked at me again, and it seemed like a thousand painful years passed between us. He took a single step towards us, then another. Todd stood firm and still, hugging me close to his chest. I was still wearing that shameful, torn dress. And I was in the arms of the man I had tried to maybe-seduce by wearing it. Even from this far off, I could see the hate coiling up in Anthony’s clenched fists.

“Get your fucking hands off my fiancé,” he hissed.