Perry came to a creek that was glistening in the moonlight, found a sizeable boulder and took a seat at the water’s edge. He was off his game, acting out of character.

He found Lincoln’s lack of curiosity unsettling. Even Nadia’s complaints about building a fire had grated on his nerves. The same qualities that were good for publicity—Lincoln and Nadia’s fame and fortune—would make it difficult for Perry to show them he had something of merit to offer.

“This is my life,” he whispered to himself. He taught survival skills because he was a survivor. Of course, Nadia and Lincoln were having trouble adapting to his world. Maybe it was his fault. Perry rarely connected with people, much preferring his own company.

They had, however, shown him a good time at the hotel and made him hopeful this trip would be fun. Maybe that was why he was taking this so damn personally. Perry sighed and skipped a stone. It plunked into the water and he sighed again in frustration. To get through these three weeks with his sanity intact, he would have to stop imagining what could be and accept what was. The others were way out of his league and nothing was going to change that.

Perry heard footsteps behind him. Lincoln settled next to him and stared out at the water. “I didn’t mean to set you off,” Lincoln muttered.

“The other day,” said Perry, “Rick Feldman made a jab about the spike in sign-ups during uncertain times, but I understand why people do that. Terrorism, war or natural disasters, make some people scared. Most look to authority for help and reassurance but a small subset of people get into radical self-reliance. I’m trying to teach you how to be radically self-reliant.”

“I appreciate it. Perry, I wasn’t trying to offend you or make light of your passion. I’m just not the kind of guy to build a bunker in my backyard. I mean, I get that anything can happen at any time, but I don’t jump at every conspiracy theory. I’m not that paranoid.”

Perry nodded, understanding that, too. “I’m not talking about paranoia. I’m talking about emergency preparedness. The average American believes our society is set, ad infinitum. Our money will always be good. Our government will always be benevolent. And our neighbors will always stay on their side of the fence. But that’s an illusion.”

He looked at Lincoln. “After Hurricane Katrina, you know a lot of sick and injured people were stuck in a large metropolitan area without access to food water or the most basic of services. Power grids went out, waste management systems went down, and this lead to a whole host of problems. Let me ask you this: You carry a lot of cash on you?”

“No,” Lincoln snorted. “That’d be asking to be robbed.”

“Yeah? How do you get access to the money in your bank when the roads are washed out and the ATMs don’t work? Hurricane Katrina happened over a decade ago. We’re even more dependent on the power grids and internet now. Ever thought of that?”

Lincoln chuckled quietly and rubbed his hands together slowly. “I’m thinking about it now.”

Perry stared at his hands. Large, elegant hands that would get callouses and chipped fingernails over the next few weeks. Perry wanted to lace their fingers together, but he restrained himself.

They both looked back when Nadia approached, hugging herself to ward against the cold. “I come in peace,” she said lightheartedly.

Perry smiled and beckoned her to join them. “I’m sorry for being temperamental. I think Lincoln and I see eye to eye now. We were just talking about radical self-reliance and the state of the world.”

“My father and some of his friends talk about it all the time. They have a survivalist club. I think that’s why he hasn’t put up much fuss about me being here,” she said. Perry kept his thoughts to himself and nodded for her to continue. “We have an insurance home in New Zealand. In the event of wide scale societal collapse, we have a safe-haven. I used to think Dad was being over the top, but lately I consider it forward-thinking.”

“Is it forward-thinking?” Perry asked lightly. “I imagine it’s a step backwards.”

“Why so?”

He did not answer. He did not want to get into a spirited debate about how billionaires could afford to invest in fixing the problems instead of running from them. He wanted to kiss her. Perry forced the thought away. Rising to his feet, he gestured toward camp where the fire was dying.

“I think we better get more firewood before it gets late. Nadia, why don’t you grab the canteens and take water back to camp. We’ll meet you there.”

“Wait! Why do you think it’s a step backwards?”

“Because,” he sighed. “The same things that destroy the world will be waiting in the hearts of men, no matter how many utopias we try to build. You can run, but you can’t hide from human nature.” The words rang in his head as he ambled away with Lincoln on his heels. Back at the hotel, Nadia had called the volatile chemistry between them human nature. They could not hide from that, either.

* * *

In the days that followed, Lincoln managed to keep his complaints to a minimum, and time passed. Each day, there was so much to learn, so much to do, that by nightfall the three of them fell into bed, exhausted.

They developed a regular routine, rising early and washing up with water from the creek. For soap, Perry extracted tannins from aspen bark boiled in a hollowed-out rabbit skull. The astringent, murky black solution was great for bathing.

They each had two sets of clothes and when one outfit got dirty, they washed it and hung it on the trees to dry. It was not a perfect system, but it worked. Perry taught them how to groom without conventional tools of hygiene. They used a chewed and softened sassafras twig to brush their teeth using a primitive toothpaste made from ashes.

Around the third day out, Perry appeared with a bristly plant that he held up proudly. “Found this. Teasel plant. It’s an invasive species that normally isn’t cultivated, but it grows wild. If we get rid of all the seedpods, this will make a perfect hairbrush,” he announced.

He later produced a medicinal stash of homemade alcohol and taught them how to make neem-infused insect-repellant when Nadia complained about the bugs. Using the tip of a knife, he showed them resin bubbles on a spruce tree and pierced each pocket to produce enough resin for her bites. The clear, antibacterial sap was perfect for wound healing.

Perry also showed them how to make deodorant in the wilderness, explaining that it was not a vital survival component. They picked usnea, a pale green lichen, from the branches of a spruce tree. He demonstrated how to moisten their underarms with water from the creek and how to rub sun-dried usnea along the skin to minimize body odor.

Breakfast was whatever they could forage, trap, fish or hunt. Lincoln developed an appreciation for the peaceful nature walks they took to gather food. He enjoyed the playful banter that belied the simmering attraction that smoldered just under the surface. They grew closer and became good friends, no matter how hard Perry tried to keep the barriers in place.

With every bush-craft lesson, Perry’s calming voice stirred arousal. He would put a hand over Lincoln’s to show him proper form or stand close behind him and whisper instructions. At night, Nadia would gravitate toward him like the moon caught in earth’s pull. Lincoln would wrap his arms around her and breathe in the scent of her sweat and think it was better than any perfume money could buy.

He had no clue whether his senses simply grew accustomed to less luxury and frills or if his primal nature was unleashed by the setting. The hard work of surviving day to day left Lincoln aching for sex. Whenever the desire became too strong to ignore, he would slip away from camp and sketch to take his mind off the tantalizing fantasies.

He caught himself staring when he had no reason to stare, daydreaming when he should have been focused on work. Nadia, who had seemed most eager to flaunt social conventions in the beginning, now seemed determined to keep the men at arm’s length. Perry, for his part, was diligent about maintaining a proper student/teacher relationship.

Lincoln seemed to be the only one suffering from flashbacks of their one-night stand. He wondered what would happen when the days wound down and they had to go back to their real lives. He filled his sketchbook with memories, knowing it was all he would take with him when he went back to Hollywood.

As the week closed out on Friday night, he looked forward to next, when they would move on to another camp. Then, he could expend his excess energy on the hike. Anything to take the edge off.

* * *

Nadia scooted closer to the warm, crackling campfire. The cold air was laden with the smell of the roasted rabbit the three of them had enjoyed just moments earlier. She licked her lips and gazed at the cold blue-black sky. She looked back down at the letter she was writing to Maria.

With Lincoln and Perry away getting more firewood, she had time to herself to think of the unlikely bond forming between the three of them, and her thoughts tumbled onto the page:

I have a confession to make. My notebook is filling with letters I’ve written to you that I’ll deliver as soon as I get back to Perry’s cabin. (No mail service in the woods.) But there’s an issue I’ve been skirting around, with all my talk of what I’ve seen and learned on this trip.

Firstly, you and I both know I’m going through a rebellious phase. I never expected to go through this in adulthood, but I guess that’s what happens when you play by the rules all through middle school, high school and college.

When everyone else was sneaking cigarettes and leaving the club with strangers, I was hitting the books hard and trying to make my daddy proud.

Now, how bad does it look that I’m damn near twenty-seven and still acting like this? I know what you’ll say. You’ll say I’m an adult, and I’m allowed. I’ve been telling myself the same thing for the past week. I just wonder how much of this is about positive exploration and how much is escapism.

The only reason I came out here was to run away from Marson Oil and Gas. My dad thinks I’m nervous about taking the job, but the truth—as you know—is that I just don’t want it. And the problem is that I don’t know what I do want.

Anyway, when I tell you this, you have to promise me that you won’t judge me. I mean, I know you won’t. You never do. When I told you how badly I made a fool of myself behind Jason Stratham, you were ready to hop a plane to California to kick his ass for me. But this is different.

Maria, I had a three—

Dry kindling clattered to the ground beside her, and Nadia jumped and slammed her notebook shut. “Back already? I was just writing a letter to Maria—my, uh, my best friend. I met her in that hurricane I mentioned. Something about danger that makes people bond…” She realized she was rambling and bit her lip in an attempt to stop talking.

Lincoln eyed her in amusement as he sat near the fire. “Sounds exciting. Telling her about us?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nadia laughed nervously. “I’ve tangoed with gossip rags before. Some secrets are best taken to the grave.” You hear that, self? She shoved her notebook under the leaves of her bough bed and returned to the fire just as Perry brought out the moonshine.

“Since it’s Friday night, I figured the three of us could celebrate making it through the first week of training. Congratulations! You’ve earned yourself Mason jars to go with your hunting knives,” he said with a grin.

“About these gossip rags,” Lincoln persisted. “You’ve been in the tabloids, Nadia?”

Nadia cringed, reliving the ugly memory. “Six months ago, my ex-boyfriend cheated on me with a reality TV star who shall not be named. You probably know her. We tried to keep the breakup low profile. Unfortunately, the details got out, and I had to stare at crying pictures of myself on the front cover of National Enquirer for weeks. Part of the reason I ran off to the islands was to get away from the coverage.”

“That’s where you went through the hurricane?”

She nodded. “I learned two things from that experience: One, be prepared for anything, and, two, don’t give them anything to talk about. Damn my ex.”

“Hear, hear.” Perry handed her a Mason jar and filled it halfway with clear, smooth corn liquor.

“Jason Stratham will think twice before he cheats on someone else,” she said as she took a generous sip. “When you mess with a Marson, you take on the whole empire.”

Lincoln laughed heartily. “You are something else, Ms. Nadia Marson, a force to be reckoned with. He had to be an idiot to cheat on you.”

“Trying to butter me up, Lincoln? Flattery will get you everywhere. I was the bigger idiot,” Nadia admitted. “I stuck with Jason, even though I knew he was all wrong for me. It took the paparazzi to get me to wake up and come to my senses. I’ve been single ever since. Maybe that’s why all of this has happened.”

“All of what?” Perry met her gaze.

She giggled and waved her arms to encompass the waning campfire and the three of them. “Oh, you know! Tumbling into bed with you guys. It’s not like me. I’m typically a very boring person.”

“I can think of a number of ways to describe you, but ‘boring’ doesn’t make the list.”

Nadia shrugged and focused her attention on her drink. The hooch was cold and crisp but had an instant warming effect. The heat started in her chest. Or perhaps somewhere in her pelvis. She squirmed. “It’s better to be boring, Perry. If anyone finds out what we did, they’ll run with the story. That’s why I didn’t want to be seen at the hotel with you guys.”

“It’s nobody’s business what we do out here,” Perry topped off her glass.

Nadia knew she should say no to alcohol, but she accepted extra with a smile. “Nobody’s business what we do out here? Is that an invitation?”

“I’m just saying…Hypothetically speaking, even if some crazy tabloid investigator braved the elements to get the scoop on what we’re doing in the woods, you two could easily deny it,” said Perry. “I wouldn’t want to be rich or famous. I prefer my privacy. But I know a thing or two about speculation, and what people think is going on doesn’t matter if they can’t prove it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Nadia said carefully. “Is that an invitation?”