I JERK AWAKE WHEN I hear something loudly crashing through the woods behind me. Sitting up quickly, I’m grateful the sun is high enough to give me a visual and I still completely, searching between the trees to see whatever is running towards me.
Damn, I wish I had that knife. Something to protect myself.
My hand falls to the fruit. I guess if I have to use it as a weapon, I can do my best to throe this at it. Twenty pounds of fruit hitting something should at least hurt it enough so I can attempt to get away.
“Taylor!” East’s voice cuts through the silence and I’m immediately on my feet, running towards him.
I see him almost instantly, pale and clearly scared. “East!”
He whips towards me and mouths my name before running straight towards me. I notice he doesn’t have his shirt on again, but instead of chastising him like I normally would, I take my time and check him out. His muscles bunch and flex as he runs, his skin brown from the sun glistening with sweat, and his face…
No one has ever looked at me like that. Like everything he needs is right there in front of him.
Before I can say anything, I’m in his arms and he’s squeezing the life out of me.
“Where the fuck have you been? Are you ok? Did you get hurt? Where did you sleep? Taylor! Say something!” His frantic hands search my body for injury and I bite my lip to prevent a snarky comment. Now is not the time, Taylor, he’s clearly upset.
“East, calm down.” I feel his hands shake as he frames my face and studies my eyes for signs of concussion. “Hey, hey,” I say soothingly before drawing him into a hug, wheezing slightly as his arms band around me again. “East, I’m ok. I got lost and slept on the beach over there. I’m ok.”
“I thought you died. Or you were lying somewhere hurt and wondering where I was. I couldn’t think—that you might need me and I wasn’t—” His breath catches and he leans back to look at me again. “Don’t ever do that again.”
I roll my eyes and detangle myself from his embrace. “I didn’t do it intentionally. And besides, you went off by yourself too. This could have easily happened to you too.”
“No,” he shakes his head, following me as I make my way back to the beach, “it wouldn’t have. I had a knife and I’m—”
I pause and turn around with my hands on my hips. “You’re what?”
He says nothing, just exhales hard and moves around me to take the lead.
“Come on, East. You’re what? A man? Don’t go all chauvinist now, you were doing so well,” I say sarcastically.
“I’m not getting into this with you.”
“I’m going to contribute just as much as you. I have as much stake in this as you. No way am I going to sit around while you do all the work,” I tell him firmly.
“I’m sorry. You freaked me out. I can’t lose you, Taylor. I’d go insane here by myself,” he says, refusing to look at me.
I sigh in defeat because it’s the same for me. We need each other to survive and it’s starting to blur the lines. The level of responsibility I feel for him and obviously him for me could cause problems.
“I feel the same,” I give in and it’s a sort of apology for scaring him, “but I found food.”
He turns back with a hungry look on his face and grabs my hand. “Show me.”
I lead him back to my sandy bed and explain to him about the jackfruit, getting excited all over again. It’s such a great find and I’m proud I found it. I tell him all about yesterday. How scared I was, how lost, that I lugged this thing for God only knows how long. He watches me intently, eyebrows rising when I tell him there are fruits bigger than this one and he laughs when I tell him about that fucking spider.
He listens to everything intently and it takes me a moment to realize I haven’t had this kind of attention since my father. Someone genuinely interested in what I was saying; it warms my heart and I find myself smiling wide at him.
“What?” he asks softly, tucking some hair behind my ear.
I shake my head, feeling slightly stupid, and point to the fruit. “You get to carry it back.”
Who else is he going to listen to, Taylor? There’s no one else here but you.
Feeling foolish, but doing my best to hide it, I slap his arm and get up from where we both sat, wiping the sand off my butt. “You remember how to get back?”
East gets up and picks up the fruit easily before quirking a brow at me. “Yes, luckily at least one of us has a good sense of direction.”
I scoff, “Careful or I won’t show you how to cut and eat this.”
“You’re not going to refuse to feed the guy that found fresh water, are you?” He grins over his shoulder as he leads me through the trees.
My mouth drops open in delight. “East!”
“There’s a river, a couple of miles from our beach. I already purified some, but waited to drink it.”
“Aw, Easty, you waited to drink our first batch of clean water with me?” I tease, but am secretly pleased.
East stops abruptly and I smack into his back. “Never call me Easty again, Tay-Tay.”
I gag. “Deal. If you never call me Tay-Tay again.”
“You got it. And of course I waited, we’re a team,” he explains easily.
There’s no way he knows what that means to someone who has no one left in the world. To be able to count on someone other than yourself, even if it’s just while we’re stuck together.
Warmth blooms in my chest as I watch him walk in front of me, the strength in his back obvious as he moves. It reminds me of how he refused to give up, paddling for hours until we found this island. He shifts the jackfruit in his arms and I watch those muscles flex, remembering how he stayed still for over an hour until he grabbed a fish straight out of the sea.
I have to stop checking him out.
“East,” I say softly and he stops, glancing over his shoulder.
I close the distance between us and hug him from behind. His body tenses and I grip harder and eventually he relaxes into me. I squeeze my eyes shut and bite my bottom lip to prevent myself from spilling every thought I have.
“Are you ok?” he asks in a hushed tone, as if feeling the weight of the moment too.
I nod against his back, giving him one more squeeze before stepping back, “Sorry—I—” I clear my throat and start again, “I want to thank you. For everything. For providing for us and never giving up even when I had. For not giving up on me.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do. I really do.” I cut him off and then laugh, trying to break the tension, but it’s obvious and loud. “Hop to it, I’m dying of thirst,” I joke, but it falls flat.
East shakes his head and continues walking.
We make it back to camp a little over an hour later and I immediately set to showing East how to open the jackfruit. We eat in comfortable silence, watching the water for boats, before East grabs the now empty pot of water and gets up. “Want to come with me?”
Shading my eyes, I look up at him and think of the awkwardness of the walk back here. “Nah. I’ll collect some more firewood and see if I can find some large rocks so we can make a sign on the sand.”
East hesitates for a moment. “Please don’t go far off.”
I want to argue, but after last night I know I don’t have a leg to stand on. My silence is apparently too much because he squats down in front of me. “Please, Taylor. I—I can’t come back here and find you gone. The waiting—I can’t do it again. Please don’t wander off without me. I know how that sounds, but I can’t help it.”
I place my hand on his knee to stop him from rambling. “I won’t.”
His green eyes are bright with urgency. “Promise?”
My heart squeezes at what I put him through. I was scared last night, of course I was, but if I would have come back yesterday and waited around for East only to never have him show up, I would be terrified. “I promise.”
Truth is I want to go with him. After a week of being in very close proximity to him, I loathe the idea of being without him. But the last thing I want is to make things awkward or become clingy. His presence makes me relax and now, after he came for me, I know it’s because he has my back. No matter what. And that feeling is quickly becoming addictive.
I blink, realizing he’s still staring at me, so I laugh and give him a big smile to calm his nerves. “East! Go!” Please stay. “You’re being weird.” I love that you care.
He runs his hand over my hair in a brief caress before promising to be back soon.
I ignore the chills running down my back from the spot he touched and look back out over the ocean.
“What are you doing, Taylor?” I whisper, and the wind grabs it, taking it out to sea where I left the rest of my sanity.