Reckless Girls(64)

Amma scrubs her hands over her face before reaching into a canvas bag at her feet. She pulls out her phone and I feel this immediate, instinctual surge of relief. Yes, we’ll call his phone, we’ll call someone—

“Fuck,” she mutters.

Brittany looks over and rolls her eyes. “You know there’s no signal here.”

Giving a frustrated sound, Amma tosses her phone onto a stack of striped towels on the deck. “I know, but I just thought … I don’t know, I thought I’d try.”

My throat closes up, sweat prickling along my spine. Being off the grid, fully disconnected—it had felt so freeing at first, but it feels like a trap now, like there are jaws closing around us. No radios to contact the outside world, no way to even contact each other if we get separated …

We’re on our own.

And while that thought had once filled me with something close to elation, now there’s only panic.

Amma runs her hands through her hair, looking around, and then she’s over the side of the boat, her long arms cutting smooth strokes back to the beach.

The fuck?

“Lux, listen,” Jake says now, stepping forward again but keeping his hands to himself. “If he’s not back in a few hours, we’ll worry. But for now, let’s just relax and assume he woke up feeling as fucking rank as the rest of us, and thought getting an ocean breeze would help.”

It’s perfectly rational, but the mood on the island has been uneasy ever since Robbie showed up, like there’s a storm about to break, and I just wish it would already. I wish I had an excuse to scream and lose my shit.

Instead, I nod. I’ll keep it together a little longer. I’ll wait.



* * *



I SWIM TO THE BEACH, hoping to catch Amma, but she’s already disappeared.

I sit on the sand and let it trail through my fingers as I watch the horizon. Jake is right, Nico probably just needed to stretch his legs, so to speak. Maybe even get his head straight about me and Amma. The island does feel small, cramped. Like it’s closing in on us.

Even now, as I look back over my shoulder, I swear the jungle feels closer than it did yesterday. I turn my attention back to the lagoon, trying to ignore the feeling that something—or someone?—is watching me from the trees.

He’s on the other side of the island, I tell myself. He’ll be back any minute now.

The water laps against the shore. When we first got here, I found that sound so peaceful, so comforting. Now, it grates on my nerves.

The day wears on. Brittany comes to bring me some water and extra sunscreen, sits with me for a bit, then eventually heads back to Jake and Eliza’s boat.

Soon, the sun is setting, turning the sky that same blaze of brilliant orange and pink that enchanted me my first night here. Seeing it now makes my stomach twist in knots. Sunset means night is almost here, and if Nico isn’t back by the time it’s dark …

I still can’t comprehend that he left me here. But then again, I never would have thought he would cheat on me, right under my nose. The truth is, I have no idea what Nico might be capable of. The Nico I met in San Diego, the Nico who promised to show me the world, he wouldn’t do this.

But Nicholas Johannsen III? Who the fuck knows?

My mind flashes back to Susannah, standing on that dock, her eyes red. Good luck. Alongside the immediate fear of how the fuck will I get off this island, there’s a deeper anxiety that I can’t shake—that I had been willing to put my faith in a man I never really knew. Never really cared to know. Like everything else in my life, I just let it—let Nico—happen to me. He was cute, he liked me, he offered me an escape. And I took it, ignoring so much shit that I shouldn’t have, and now I’m here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, no boat, no clothes, no way of contacting the outside world.

No Nico.

I had been looking for an escape, and now I am quite literally trapped.

I’m still sitting on the beach when the sun sinks below the horizon. My eyes strain for that flash of green Nico always told me you could see if you looked carefully. But there’s nothing. Another empty promise.

The sky fades from pinkish-orange to lavender to deep purple until finally the sky is navy blue, the stars so bright they stand out like sequins on an evening gown.

I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste the salt on my lips.





TWENTY-SIX





I swim back to the boat, no longer caring what might be lurking in the dark water.

I hear Jake and Eliza talking and laughing, the hiss and clink of beers being opened.

Nico has been missing the entire day, and these assholes sit here acting like everything is fine, like it’s just another night in paradise.

When I haul myself onto the deck, Eliza looks over at me, eyes going wide.

“Jesus, Lux,” she says. “Are you alright?”

Pushing my wet hair out of my face, I glare at her. “What do you fucking think? Nico isn’t back,” I say, shaking my head. “And I don’t know where the fuck Amma is, either. Have you guys just been … sitting here all fucking day?”

Jake sighs, putting his beer down and crossing the deck to embrace me. I jerk away from him, nearly stumbling.

“Why is no one worried?” I shout. “Why do none of you give a fuck? Nico is gone. The boat is gone. Robbie fucking died out there, and Amma is just—what, spending the night in the jungle?”