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IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Tri to come back with several fish, which he gutted and scaled with a quick efficiency I knew my uncles would admire.
“So, what are we eating?”
“Cod,” I answered, leaving out the specific genus and species because that wasn’t usually something people needed to understand. All they wanted to know if they could eat it and how it would taste.
We didn’t have any pepper, but while Tri fished, I’d distilled a bit of salt by boiling down sea water in the bamboo cup I’d created, and I sprinkled it on the butterflied flesh. Then I took a pear from the stash I’d gathered, split it in half, squeezed the juice over the fish, and laid thin slices on top. From there, I put the cod on top of one of the rocks and moved it close enough to the fire it would cook without scorching.
As we sat back to wait, I inspected Tri’s improvised fishing pole. He’d done an excellent job creating a rod that was just long enough, the line cobbled together from the flexible bamboo leaf stems and a string that had come off the blankets. I’d watched him make the fly, stripping fibers from the inside of the bamboo, then working them and working them until they looked like something resembling fur, which he’d attached to the string.
“How did you know how to make this?” I asked.
I seemed to startle Tri out of his thoughts because I saw him tense as his eyes snapped towards. Then he relaxed.
“Sorry?”
“The fishing pole—how did you learn to make all that?” My gesture encompassed the entirety of the creation. “You said you used to go fishing as a kid?”
“Oh, yeah.” He pushed at the rod with his foot, brow furrowed as he thought. “I used to go fishing a lot with my dad on the lake, but there were times I just wanted to be alone as a kid. So, I’d go down to the creek and figure out how to make my own. My dad was big on survival skills, too, so that comes in handy.”
“I’ll say.” I flashed him a smile. “I guess if we’re going to get stuck on an island, getting stuck with someone who knows about survival is probably the best bet.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, and I swear I saw a bashful expression cross his face. But it was too fast for me to be sure.
“You’re doing pretty well yourself.” He motioned to the bamboo implements I’d fashioned with the knife he’d found; a kind of water-carrying vessel, the cup, and two pairs of roughly fashioned chopsticks.
I shrugged. “When you’re out in the wild doing research enough, you learn a few things to make up for what you couldn’t bring. Plus, I took a cooking class in Japan once, during a stay after I’d finished my research trip. It was from a famous chef who only used ancient techniques to cook, and I saw him using bamboo for almost everything, including boiling some rice to give it flavor. He even told us how to look for bamboo shoots, but I think that’s only in the spring.” I thought for a minute. “I could go look, though.”
Raising my eyes to the sky, I tried to recall what the chef had said about finding bamboo shoots in the loamy earth in a bamboo grove. I didn’t remember much, just that you could feel around with your toes, and you had to look in a particular place, but—
Tri’s chuckle broke me out of my memories, and I tilted my head as I looked at him. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve just noticed you get this expression when you think. It’s—” It took him a moment to think of the word, “—cute.”
“Cute?”
He poked at one of the fish with a stick to check on it. “Yeah. You look up, your head tilts slightly, and you tap your finger on your lower lip like you’re manually trying to flip through whatever you’re thinking about.”
“I do?” No one had ever pointed that out to me before. Only one ex-boyfriend who had accused me of “overthinking.” He hadn’t lasted long.
Tri shrugged. “I have to observe things carefully for my job, and my dad raised me to do the same—always be aware of your environment. People are part of the environment.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of what the SEAL had said, but there was a small part of me that thrilled when he called me cute. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever called me cute before, at least not since I’d hit puberty. Cute wasn’t something I usually strove for, either, preferring self-possessed, bright, quick-on-her-feet, but something about the way he’s said it, something about the tilt of his head, the quirk of his mouth, and the light in his eye, made that word feel just as good as the others.
But I also didn’t want to think about what that meant too much. It was dangerous territory in which to venture.
“You mention your dad a lot—it sounds like he taught you a lot.” I risked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.
For a moment, Tri looked like he wasn’t going to answer, poking at the fish again, but this time it seemed like he was just looking for some action for his suddenly restless hands.
I took a breath to tell him to forget I’d asked when he finally answered. “My dad had a tough childhood.”
“In Russia?”
“And the US, but yeah, especially in Russia. He wanted to ensure my brothers and I knew how to survive if we had to.”
The words were quiet and slow, like they had been pulled unwillingly forward on a string, and I knew that was all I would get. But it was enough to let me understand much more had happened there that Tri didn’t want to talk about, and I wasn’t going to ask.
And I realized there was so much to this man I didn’t know. I’d barely known him for more than a day, even if it seemed like we’d been together for a lifetime at this point. And it was clear he had many layers beneath the tough and no-nonsense exterior.
The fish was done, and we ate it on large bamboo leaves using the rough chopsticks. It might have been the circumstances, but it was the best fish I’d ever tasted. Possibly the best food I’d ever tasted. Tri seemed to agree because he made a noise of pleasure in his throat, a low hum that echoed exactly how I was feeling.
Afterward, we rested. Tri worked on making more fishing flies out of the bamboo fibers as I lay back on one of the blankets. I could feel the sand beneath the rough blanket, the shifting peaks and valleys that gave way slightly as I lay back, smell the sun-warmed grains and salt of the surf in my nose, and hear the waves as they washed up onto the shore, then back out, its rhythm like a lullaby.
Exhaustion was still set deeply into my body, in the heaviness of my limbs, swirling around my mind like a blanket muffling my thoughts. Time seemed distorted, and I had to remind myself that it had only been just over a day since all of this had started. Of course I was still feeling the after-affects. I’d been through real trauma, being attacked, nearly dying, seeing others killed in front of me, stumbling across my dead colleagues, and then our escape only to be stranded alone on an island.
Why wouldn’t I still be exhausted?
I hadn’t even gotten much sleep between then and now.
But, oddly, and despite all that, I felt peaceful lying on the blanket under the sun for the moment.
I’d always loved the ocean and the beach, felt that they were a part of me, but I’d never been the kind of person to sit and sunbathe. There had to be a purpose for the beach; parties, boogie boarding, swimming, collecting samples, or simply exploring. But as I lay there on one of the blankets I’d washed so that it smelled a little less like fish, in panties but without a bra, I enjoyed the way the sun felt on my skin.
I had a full stomach for the first time in over a day, and we had shelter, fresh water, and even shade if needed. It wasn’t perfect and wasn’t a long-term solution, but at least it was okay for now.
It was strange to think that we’d fallen into his weird, domesticated situation with each other, and so naturally. What did it take to throw two entirely dissimilar strangers together and have them come together, sometimes wildly, to make do?
Escape from terrorists and being stranded on an island, apparently.
What I didn’t know was whether we would have been attracted to each other if none of this had happened. It was lovely to think we would have, but the reality was far different. This was a forced partnership, fraught with terror and the possibility of death, a situation in which we had had to rely on one another to survive. These were all powerful emotions, the likes of which I was sure psychologists would love to remind us pulled people together like magnets, only to pull them apart again once the danger had passed.
The line between love and hate was thin, I’d always heard. But I was beginning to feel that the line between desire and survival was even narrower.
How much of what we’d felt during our wild sessions last night and this morning, the covert looks and comments, the feeling of butterflies I felt when I looked at Tri, was an actual feeling, and how much of it was the situation?
I hadn’t had a boyfriend in a couple of years. Work took up too much of my time—it was challenging to keep up any type of relationship when you were traveling overseas and out of cell range more often than you were home.
More than that, I hadn’t met anyone worth the effort. My last boyfriend had been a dud, barely taking any more interest in me than his career at some tech start-up. Most days, I’d find him sitting at home watching TV, the dishes unwashed, the laundry sitting on the floor unfolded, and a half-eaten pizza on the table collecting flies. He’d told me he was “meditating on a problem.”
What had looked like brilliance at first had quickly turned into simple laziness and a detachment from the world I hadn’t been able to stomach. I’d ended it, moved out the same day, and never looked back.
But Tri seemed different from the other men I’d dated. He had, of course, saved my life, the idea of which gave me butterflies when I thought about it. He was the strong, silent type, smiles and laughter few-and-far-between. But I liked them the few times they’d broken out, a kind of boyish pull to his mouth.
And to say he was strong and gave off alpha vibes was an understatement. I’d watched him fight hand-to-hand with that bear of a terrorist. But he’d also stayed by his teammate’s side as he’d died, which said a lot about him.
Was all that what drove me wild about Triton Rusev? Some combination of maleness and dominance and strength I’d never experienced before? I’d always dismissed men like that as meatheads, but maybe I’d been wrong. Or, at least, I was wrong in this instance. Whatever it was, I could barely look at him without my hormones rising to dangerous levels.
I’d never, ever seen myself as someone who would sleep with a stranger. I’d had one, maybe two one-night stands early in my college career before I’d buckled down to earn my degrees. But between the situation and whatever Tri did to me and my hormones, it had changed everything.
Which begged the question; if we managed to get rescued or found our way off the island, would we still be together?
Probably not.
I had to face the facts. We were two very different people on two very different paths in life. I was a marine biologist who worked in various places all over the world, and he was a special operative. Most likely, not a man who was into settling down. Chances were, I wouldn’t see him again if we ever got off his island.
The way my stomach and chest tightened at that thought, reality though it was, caught me by surprise. Especially as the tightening became a dark, painful hole. But I had to steel myself. That was the reality, and I didn’t even know if we ever would get off this island.
I had to take it one day at a time.
