Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
The silence of the dusk is so deep it actually amplifies the sound of approaching footsteps. The crunch of gravel and fronds. I hear him before I see him, and of course he comes out of the trees, like fucking Tarzan, right on cue, as if some part of me telegraphed the anguish and summoned him out of thin air. Ace. He takes one look at me, sitting on the ground with my fingers pressed to my temples, and makes a non-committal grunt.
I look up, staring at him, my face unmoving. I can tell he’s been working for hours already. His shirt is filthy, there’s mud up his arms past the elbows, and a thin stripe of blood trails from somewhere on his forearm. He’s holding a coil of that trash rope he and Zeke found, slung over one shoulder. “Nobody taught you how to tie knots, I see.”
His words agitate me, maybe it’s because he is right, or maybe it is because I’m so damn angry at him.
“The fuck does it matter, it’s a knot,” I snap, then close my eyes.
I know I’m being a cow, I know it.
I can’t help it right now.
He strides forward, arms crossed as he stares down at the mess I have made. He looks angry, too. Like he has had the same kind of day as me. Good, because he fucking deserves it. “Looks like you tried to hog-tie a chicken.”
I glare at him, throat blazing with a hundred insults but none of them are clever enough to say. “If you’re here to make fun of me, just go.”
He crouches down, one knee grazing me as he balances in front of me. “Not making fun. Trying to help.”
I can’t stand that he’s here. I can’t stand even more that a tiny part of me is relieved he is. My hands are useless. My brain won’t stop ricocheting off the inside of my skull. But I am so goddamned tired of being helped. He reaches for the stick, and I lunge for it, slapping his hand away. “I don’t need your goddamned help, Ace.”
He doesn’t move, just watches me for a second, all those unreadable emotions tightening his jaw. I can tell there are a million things he wants to say, but he holds them in. I get the stick standing upright, balancing the ends in the dirt. As I go to pull the rope through, my hands slip and the stick scrapes along my finger. Hard. I know it has pushed a splinter into my flesh, but I pretend it hasn’t.
My eyes water, and I ignore the pain and try to cinch it, but in the process I end up digging the splinter so deep into my finger that I hiss, jerking my hand away. “Fuck.”
Ace says nothing, except, “Let me see.”
I shove my finger angrily into my mouth and shake my head, refusing to meet his eyes. “It’s nothing.”
He tries again, this time gentler, and wraps his hand around my wrist. “Grace,” he says, the word so soft it actually registers beyond the pain, “let me help you.”
I yank my hand out of his. “No.”
Am I acting like a child? Yes, yes I am.
Do I care? No.
He leans in, and I can smell the musk of sweat and dirt and smoke from the fire. When his hand clamps over my wrist again, I don’t fight as hard as I want to. He turns my palm upward, peering at the splinter wedged into my finger, slowly trickling blood. It’s such a nothing injury, I want to scream for how childish it feels. Then his cold fingers press in, pinching the splinter between fingernails, and I clench my jaw tight to stop myself losing it.
When he gets it out, he wipes the blood with the hem of his shirt. I rip my hand away the second he’s done. The anger is so much sharper than the pain. “Happy? Hero moment accomplished?”
Gosh, I am such a fucking bitch.
I know it, yet the words just keep flowing.
The frustration in my chest is so strong, so heavy, I can’t seem to stop the words coming out of my mouth.
His nostrils flare. “You know,” he says, voice steady, “you can be mad at me all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m here and I’m goin’ to help you.”
I chuck the stick aside as hard as I can. It goes maybe two feet and thunks into the dirt. “Why are you here? To make me feel like shit? To beg? What? What do you want, Ace?”
“I’m here because we’re all fuckin’ here,” he snaps, his frustration bubbling to the surface now, too. “I don’t have a fuckin’ choice and neither do you.”
I finally look right at him, letting every cell in my body throb with resentment. “You think I don’t fucking know that? God, all I want is to not be on this fucking island. I want to not have to see your goddamned face every day. I want—all of us—to not be living like rats, waiting for the next person to get sick or die or have their heart broken or whatever fucking next trauma this place has planned for us.”