A few hours later, they were back, dressed in their swimsuits that they’d washed at the waterfall, and were spread out on the space blanket. It was so hot again that even though they desperately wanted to hold one another, their bodies simply wouldn’t let them.

“That waterfall shower is shot to shit,” Mari grumbled, beads of sweat forming on her chest and brow.

“Yeah, in terms of cooling me off, it was shot to shit the second you got naked.” Jay rolled his head and grinned at her. It was the first they’d addressed what happened at the waterfall.

They’d walked home through the jungle quietly. Both of their hearts and thoughts running a marathon.

Jay had pulled up short of making love to her, even though they’d both desperately wanted to. They’d come to different conclusions as to why.

Mari knew their time was limited. That there was only so much intimacy one could handle with someone they were probably never going to see again after they got rescued. This didn’t have the luxury of the casualness of a one night stand. And this didn’t have the luxury of infinite time, like a real relationship. So whatever it was between them, they were stuck in no man’s land. Too short to be real. Too intense to be dismissed. She understood that he didn’t want to accelerate things, make them even more intimate. She understood that it would just make their inevitable goodbye even harder.

Jay saw it differently, in his head. He didn’t want to take advantage of their situation on the island. He intended to make love to Mari. In fact, making love to Mari had just knocked everything else on his list of priorities down a notch. But he didn’t want to do it in a situation she’d later regret. He didn’t want her to think back and feel like he’d taken advantage of the intensity of their circumstances. So, yes, he was going to make love to her. He was just going to do it in a hotel on Grand Bahama right after he explained that he was gonna go wherever she was going.

So for now they sat in comfortable silence in the supply closet. Jay had broken through a few of the hotel room doors and cracked windows, so there was a bit of a breeze going. Although they both had tacitly agreed to stay in the supply room. The beds in the hotel rooms were moldy and decrepit anyways. This was still their best bet.

“I wish we could go down and sleep on the beach,” Mari said, flinging a bouncy ball across the supply closet and catching it one handed on its bounce back.

“Me too. But when I radioed to emergency rescue this morning they told me to stick close to the hotel. They’ll probably come in a chopper.”

“Really?” Mari asked, bouncing the ball again. “I assumed the coast guard would come.”

“Nah, I don’t think they’d risk navigating the waters this soon after a hurricane. Swells that big can change the landscape under the water. I don’t think they’d risk a shipwreck when it’s only a twenty or so minute chopper ride.”

Jay snagged the bouncy ball out of the air. He wanted to ask about her family. He wanted to ask her where she hung her hat when she wasn’t surfing the tropics. He wanted to ask how old she was or whether or not she was dating anybody back home.

But he also didn’t want to ask. He wanted her to tell him. He rolled the ball over his knuckles and caught it out of the air. He wanted her so badly that he knew he was seconds away from pushing every boundary they had between them. He wouldn’t let himself do it.

Mari leaned over and snatched the ball from him and tried to do the knuckle trick he’d just done. She growled in frustration when she just fumbled it. And then again.

“Here,” he smiled and took her hand in his, showed her how to do it.

She tried again and this time she flicked it neatly into her palm, just the way he had. She grinned at him and both of their eyes dropped to the other’s lips instantly.

Mari was just leaning forward to kiss him when she nearly jumped out of her skin.

A crack of thunder, so loud it sounded like it was directly over top of them, shook the building. She squeaked and Jay automatically reached for her.

“Thunderstorm,” he said, grinning down at her.

“Just our luck.” Mari rolled her eyes.

The thunder and lightning lasted a few hours and then it gave way to just a good, solid rain. Mari drifted off to sleep, halfway across Jay’s lap. Even with the sun down, even with the rain, even with the cross breeze through the hall, it was still oppressively hot.

Jay was drifting off to sleep, his head leaned back to the wall, when he heard it. Tapping on the roof. First just a scattered knocking, here and there. And then it was a full on deluge.

“Mari,” he whispered, stroking a hand over her silky hair. “Baby, wake up.”

“Hmmm?” She came out of the dream with blurry eyes, stretching like a cat.

“Baby, it’s hailing.”

“What?” She was more awake now, pushing up on her hands and letting her hair tumble all over the place.

God. Jay was not an impetuous man. In fact, in most matters, he moved downright slowly. But looking at her there in the dim dark, he was almost positive that he could love this woman. Something about her was just so right.

He’d been viciously attracted to women before. He’d lusted and liked and crushed. But damn if this wasn’t different.

He tugged her up to standing and nudged her into her sandals.

“Come upstairs with me,” he said and the two of them jogged down the hall toward the stairwell. He led them up to the roof and slid the door open, peeking out tentatively. He grinned into the night and tucked her into his side.

“Well, would you look at that,” Mari shook her head in disbelief. “Hurricane one day and hail the next.”

The hail was slowing down, the storm moving on, but there were piles of it on the roof. Not too big, all the pieces of ice were about the size of marbles, and melting quickly in the tropical heat.

Mari stepped out on the roof, swiped a handful of the ice off the ground and immediately pressed it to her chest, to her neck. Up onto her face, over her belly, even down between her legs.

“Jesus, Jay. You’ve gotta feel this.”

So he followed her lead, pressing the ice all over himself. After days of sweltering heat, the freezing hail was deliciously welcome. It tightened his skin and heightened his awareness. Every place the ice touched felt as if it were burning and melting and freezing all at once.

Mari turned, her hands full of ice, and she brushed it over his chest. He did the same for her, over her back, down across her ass.

The ice was melting between them but they didn’t care. It was natural and unstoppable when their mouths met. When their bodies smashed against one another.

“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “Yes.”

Jay’s hands, chilled with the ice, were desperate for her. He’d been holding back for so many reasons. And so had she. But how many miracles did the universe need to kick their way before they got the picture and made love to each other? This was a blessing. Finding her, holding her, surviving with her; it was a wild blessing and turning away from her would be to throw it aside.

Jay anchored his hands on the backs of her thighs and Mari hopped up onto him, her legs clasping around his waist.

Jay stumbled over to the outside wall of the stairwell and pressed her back against it, thrusting his hips into her.

“Yes,” she whispered again, biting at his bottom lip.

Jay freed one hand and tugged her bikini top to the side, dropping his head to feast on her.

“I can’t turn away,” he muttered against her skin.

“Then don’t.” Her voice guttered and gasped with her desire for him.

“It’s too much of a miracle.”

“Don’t turn away,” she begged him.

Jay slid down his swimsuit a few inches and tugged hers to the side, he pushed up against her, testing her readiness. He groaned and dropped his forehead to hers. “You’re a miracle,” he whispered against her lips.

She pushed down as he pushed up and into her. The air left both of their lungs at once as he found his place inside of her. The hail had turned back to rain and the changes in temperature caused steam and mist to rise simultaneously from the jungle around them. Clouds raced across the hot night, and as Mari tilted her head back in ultimate pleasure, she saw patches of velvet black sky. Glittering stars.

The ocean roared from every side of the island, and somewhere far off, a foghorn sounded.

Neither of them had ever felt more twisted into the fabric of the universe in their lives. The world was large and breathing and beating around them. Mother earth had almost wiped them from the planet. But they were here and living and grinding against one another in a dance as old as life.

Jay had one hand banded around her waist and the other he used to steady them against the wall. Mari had her face buried in his neck, her arms clamped around him, and her breasts smashed to his chest. She worked herself up and down onto him as he thrust from below. She could feel his muscles bunching and firing under every inch of her body and she couldn’t help but open her eyes to peer down his back. She gasped at what she saw there. The golden dips and valleys of his muscles. Just the edge of his midnight blue tattoo. And most tantalizingly, the shadowed cleft of his muscled ass as he pounded into her.

Mari moaned and whipped her head backwards, letting her hair dangle back as she clung to him.

He was perfect, skilled and ruthless, making her rise and rise, making her tighten like a fist. But he was also out of control with passion. This was not a refined lover. This was a man who saw no way out but through her. The animal in him was calling to the animal in her.

A guttural noise tore out from his chest as Jay clutched her back with one arm, holding her so tight she thought she might just meld with him.

Jay was burning alive. Everything about her was soft and warm and straining toward that good, good ecstasy. He’d never been with a woman more unrestrained, more unconcerned with how she looked or acted in the throes of passion. Mari had unleashed herself, she was taking everything he was giving her. It woke something deep inside him. Something that had slept his entire life.

Jay felt a beast awaken inside him. This was about pleasure, of course, but it was also something else. His movements were harsh and savage. He kept her in mind, of course, never wanting to cause her discomfort, but it was the least refined he’d ever been while with a woman. All he could think of was that he needed her to feel him. The way he was feeling her.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was teaching him something that couldn’t be unlearned. Sex with Mari was like seeing a new color, just once. He knew he’d never be able to forget it, just as he’d never find it anywhere else.

Jay widened his stance and clamped his mouth onto hers. He swallowed her breaths and panting moans. He tore at her lips with his teeth and then dropped his mouth to bite and suck at her neck. She was perfect. God. She was perfect. He’d meant it when he’d said she was a miracle. She was everything. She was everything.

“Everything,” he couldn’t help but growl into the curve of her neck as she stiffened and tightened around him.

“Jay, I’m gonna—I’m gonna—” she panted.

“Give you everything,” he cut in, unsure if he was issuing a command to himself or finishing her sentence.

And then Mari’s legs clamped even harder at his waist as she squeezed him like a fist. She let her head fall backwards as she screamed her pleasure into the night.

She was certain she could feel every molecule in her body vibrating and clanging against each other. She was ringing like a bell, her blood racing and floating and tremors working their way through her.

She clung to Jay as she felt him stutter beneath her, his strokes intensifying and losing their smoothness. He was close.

“Mari, baby—” he lifted his eyes to hers.

“Yes,” she interrupted him. “Now. I need you.”

And it was with his eyes on hers, blue into green, all the colors of the sea, that he exploded into her, emptying and emptying every feeling he wasn’t ready to say aloud.

***

She shifted her feet to stand but Jay merely swooped her up in his arms to carry her like a baby. Mari laughed as he stepped back into the stairwell and started down the stairs.

“I can walk, you know,” she teased him.

He nuzzled at her ear. “I know. Just let me hold you close for a minute.”

She raised an eyebrow as he kicked back into the fourth floor hallway from the stairwell. “You didn’t get enough of holding me up on the roof?”

Jay scoffed. “Mari, what do you weigh, a buck? A buck five? Trust me. This isn’t a hardship.”

He didn’t mention that the only time he’d felt calm since the hurricane was when he had his hands on her, holding her close. He finally set her down on the blanket in the supply closet but he didn’t let her go far.

He pulled her up onto his chest and let some of her hair slip through his fingers.

“You alright, baby?” he asked her, his fingers lightly playing over her scalp.

Mari wasn’t sure how to answer that question. She felt as if she’d just returned from an alternate universe. One where her body was capable of showing her God.

And it made her go all funny inside when he called her baby. She had to swallow hard to get her powers of speech back. “I’m very, very good. You?”

“Very good,” he agreed. Suddenly Jay rolled them so that he crouched over top of her. “And about to get even better.”

***

The next morning, the two of them sat under the shade of a tropical tree and waited for someone to answer the phone call that Jay was making. He gripped the phone so hard he was scared it might shatter into pieces.

Jay spoke briefly, giving clear directions and information to the person on the other line. Neither of them knew what they wanted the answer to be. They needed to get the hell off this island. That was for sure. But they also needed this time to go on indefinitely. Into infinity.

They both had trouble picturing their relationship when they got off the island. But whereas Jay had decided that no matter what, he’d make it work, Mari had decided that no matter what, she was gonna leave him with dignity.

Jay ended the call. “They said that the emergency services have been hit pretty hard. But they’ll send a chopper tonight sometime. They said to be on the roof of the hotel so we don’t miss them. It’s the only place safe enough to land and they won’t be able to come back for a few days.”

“Alright,” Mari shrugged. “Sounds easy enough.”

An uneasy silence fell over them. Neither wanted to talk about leaving. But the idea of missing their ride out of here made both of them panicky.

“Wanna see what’s left of the beach in the meantime?” Jay asked.

Mari nodded and the two of them held hands as they picked their way through the wrecked jungle. They hadn’t made it out all the way to the shore yet and they were both stunned at what they saw. Seaweed and dead fish, coral and algae everywhere. There was even old wreckage washed up. A rusted, hulking hull poking out of the water that they’d been scared was a beached whale from a distance.

They climbed a tree for coconuts and stilled at the view that laid out before them.  The ocean stretched on for miles, bright and blinking in the sunlight. At the edge of the horizon a pod of dolphins dipped and danced in the water. Mari grinned at Jay and he found it even more blinding, more dazzling than the sun on the water.

Deciding to head back and pack up to wait for the chopper, Mari and Jay were quiet as they picked their way through the jungle. Were these their last few hours together? Mari wondered.

Were these their last few hours before everything changed? Before he had to tell her how much she meant to him? Jay wondered.

Maybe it was because of this preoccupation of thoughts that they didn’t notice the way the stairs creaked and groaned under their feet. Made of metal, they’d been pretty well rusted before the hurricane. The constant wind and saturation in sea water hadn’t helped matters any in the last few days.

They were on the third floor, and Mari, light and small, was dancing up the side of the staircase, holding on to the banister as she went.

Jay, tired from the sun and thirsty as hell, tromped up the middle of the stairs.

The rusted hole crumbled beneath his foot like he was walking on sand. Suddenly, he was wheeling backwards, his hands struggling for any handhold. But the only handhold he could see was Mari, and he refused to drag her down with him.

So his weight went down on his leg, which went clear through the rusted metal stair, all the way to his hip.

“Jay!” Mari screamed, immediately kneeling beside him, her hands on his shoulders.

Jay wasn’t in pain. He was sort of numb on his right leg where it had gone through the metal. His head felt strange and buzzy. He was dimly aware of Mari speaking to him, although for some reason he couldn’t hear her words.

Bracing his hands on the stair in front of him, Jay attempted to drag his leg out of the hole. And that’s when the pain started.

It was a dull, aching pain. Not too bad, really. And with another tremendous push from his muscular arms, his leg started to pull free. He wondered vaguely why he couldn’t bend it. But he didn’t think too hard on it as he dragged himself up the stairs and out of the hole.

He made it to the landing between the third and fourth floor on what he’d later come to identify as pure adrenaline. Besides being strangely heavy and achy, his leg didn’t bother him that bad.

It wasn’t until he turned back to see Mari’s face that he registered more of the pain in his leg.

She was ash white and horrified, her eyes pinned to his right thigh. For some reason, he found he didn’t want to look down, to see what she was seeing. He stared at her face instead. She was saying something to him that he still couldn’t hear.

And then she was gone, sprinting up the stairs. Seconds later she was back with the first aid kit from his backpack and a small length of rope he kept there. He kept his eyes on her face as he realized she was tying a tourniquet on his leg, taping a towel over the wound. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks and it was the last thing Jay saw before darkness took him.

When he woke up again, it was nighttime. And he was outside. Later, he’d realize that Mari had somehow carried him up all those stairs to the roof of the building. And she’d cleared off all the branches and debris so that the helicopter had been able to land. Later, he would realize that she’d called emergency services, changed their rescue from coast guard to med evac. Later, he would marvel at how the hell she’d done all of that on her own. He was practically twice her size.

But now, he just let his eyes flutter open to look at the deep night, the stars, fuzzy as hell. He felt something cold on his forehead. And then there she was, the woman he loved.

He had no question that he loved her. Not now. He knew. He knew the way you know if you’re hungry or thirsty or happy. He just knew. He loved her. And here she was, touching his face and whispering sweet things to him.

When she saw his eyes had opened she pressed her lips to his.

“You have blood on your cheek,” he tried to say, tried to lift his hand to her face. But he found that he couldn’t. Everything was too hard, too heavy. He was too tired. Maybe he’d tell her tomorrow.

When he opened his eyes again, there were strangers around him. Strangers in uniform lifting him onto a helicopter. He looked around him blearily. How had he not heard the chopper? It was so ungodly loud. How could he have missed it?

A feeling like he was forgetting something tore through him.

“Mari!” Her name tore out of his mouth the second it lanced across his brain. Even though there were hands attempting to restrain him, Jay still managed to sit upright for a moment.

“I’m here, Jay,” she said from right next to him, her cool hands on his forehead and neck. “Lay back.”

Jay looked down for the first time as a paramedic took the towel off of his leg. It was heavy and saturated with blood. Jay could barely believe what he was seeing. His leg was sliced open across his thigh. The gash was at least a foot long and Jay could see the pink of his severed muscle, and something white peeking out at him. Whether it was fat or bone, he’d never know. Dazed and horrified, he fell backwards onto the stretcher.

“Ma’am, you’ll have to wait,” one of the paramedics said above him.

“What?”

“The med evac is only equipped for five people,” the paramedic said to Mari. “Stay on the roof and we’ll radio for the coast guard to come get you. It’ll only be a few hours.”

“Alright,” Jay heard Mari agree and fear and pain whipped through him.

“No,” he groaned. It was the best he could do. In his mind he was furious, words racing through his brain. She only weighs a hundred pounds. What did they mean they couldn’t take her! “No.”

He tried to sit up again.

“Sir!” another paramedic yelled. “Sir! Lay down!”

“Hold on!” Mari yelled. “Let me talk to him.”

She bent down so that her mouth was right at Jay’s ear. “Jay, you have to lie down so they can take you to the hospital.”

“Not. Without. You,” She’d never know how much each pained word cost him.

“Okay,” she nodded, looking up at the paramedics. “I can go, right? I’ll just have to sit in the front, right?”

There was a cough and then a “Yes.”

Mari nodded, her clear green eyes searching him. “See, mi amor? I’ll be going too. But you have to relax and let them help you, okay?” She bent and kissed his mouth. “We didn’t survive a hurricane so that you could bite the big one half a mile in the air between here and Grand Bahama.”

“Okay,” he agreed, falling back, assuaged by her words. “Okay.” He grabbed her hand and let his eyes flutter closed. She was here. Mari was here. She was here.

***

She was gone.

Three days later, Jay stared at the ugly, water-stained ceiling in Miami General and still couldn’t make it make sense. She was gone.

He’d been completely out until just a few hours ago. He’d passed out on the helicopter and they’d kept him under straight into surgery the second they’d gotten him into the OR in Miami. They’d completely skipped Grand Bahama, they explained. And he was lucky they had, considering that he may have lost the whole damn leg if it weren’t for the surgery in Miami.

His mind was slow and syrupy from the anesthesia, but even so, Mari was the first person he’d asked the nurse for when he’d finally opened his eyes. She’d had no idea who he was talking about.

He’d been so persistent that finally the nurse had gone to find one of the paramedics who’d been on the med evac helicopter with him.

“Where is she?” he ground out to the man who didn’t look familiar at all to Jay. The only face he’d been able to see on that roof had been Mari’s.

The man had grimaced and wiped a hand over his short hair. “I don’t know where she is. She, uh, didn’t come with us.”

“What the hell are you talking about? She said she was riding in the front.”

“She just said that, man. To get you to calm down and come with us. We had to leave her on the roof. She knew it. She was fine with it. We made sure the coast guard got to her a few hours later. I was worried about it, so I checked in on it myself yesterday. They got her to Grand Bahama totally fine.”

“She’s not here,” Jay ground out through a mouth filled with sand.

“I’m sorry, man,” the paramedic replied, slipping out through the doors when Jay said nothing more.

He soothed himself in his head. It was alright. He’d just get in contact with emergency services in Grand Bahama. He’d call around to hotels and track her down. It was with a horrible sinking sensation that Jay realized he didn’t know her last name. And she didn’t know his. And she didn’t know he’d come to Miami.

He didn’t have her phone number. Or her email. Or her hometown. She was gone. Thin air. It was then that he finally felt the pain. It screamed up from his leg, threatening to take him under. To drown him. He almost let it.

The pain in his leg echoed into his chest. The empty cavity where his heart used to live. It didn’t live there anymore. He didn’t go under again. In fact he barely slept. He couldn’t let himself succumb to the very thing that had taken him away from Mari. He was going to stay awake and endure this pain. It was the only thing he could do.

And so Jay lay there, trying and trying to think of any way he could have done it differently. If there could have been any circumstance where she’d be at his bedside right that very second.

It was a question he would ask himself for the next five years.