Page 76 of Wild Life

Have you ever had an impression that the universe was conspiring behind your back?

Like things had been set in motion without your knowledge as a means to punish you for something you didn’t know you had done?

I had that notion now.

Maris had done nothing wrong, but I couldn’t fight the sensation that my face was still covered by the cloth mask. Everything was wrong and I needed space.

The shell I had grown after I had landed on this island, the one that had hardened my emotions so much so that I couldn’t feel anymore, had regenerated. The joy from our relationship was already like a distant memory.

If I retreated first, it would hurt me less when she physically left. Indifference was my protection against heartbreak. It was easier to harden my heart, to bury it with ice until my blood eventually ran cold again, than to face the reality of what her leaving would mean. What her coming into my life in the first place had meant.

Her footsteps followed behind at a distance as the sun woke up for another day and slowly stretched its rays like tired arms.

We walked the same route separately. We were slipping back into the people we had been before we had fallen in love: two souls who had randomly traveled the same path for a brief time. That was all. Nothing more.

We made it back to the hut, and Poaka jetted past me, heading straight for her. She knelt on the ground and hugged him.

There was a possibility that she would never be rescued, but I knew she was more driven than ever before. Humans could accomplish anything when they had purpose. It was the reason why I had never successfully left—my parents had died and there had been no one to return to in New Zealand.

Maris rubbed Poaka’s belly and talked to him, the usual vibrancy in her voice now lacking. He wiggled as she rubbed his neck, soaking in every bit of the attention. Her absence would hurt him.

Not as much as it would hurt me, though.

She caught me staring and straightened up. “Can we talk?”

Daylight was now in full force, and our new reality was etched onto her face in the form of dark bags under her eyes and her pale complexion.

It was easier to hide our hearts in the darkness than in the light.

“I don’t know what there is to say,” I said.

“Anything would be better than silence. You barely spoke back there.”

“I didn’t think I had to. We both know what seeing those sick bats means.” I wasn’t a scientist, but I knew how serious the situation was. The bats were sick, and Maris had a calling to take care of them.

“We don’t actually know if I can leave. I tried to be rescued before, but I failed miserably.” She was attempting to lighten the mood by planting false hope inside me. Yet again, she was considering my emotions over hers.

“But, you’re still going to try to leave?”

She was turning the knife in my chest, even if she didn’t want to do it. “I am.”

I sighed. “And I won’t stop you, if it’s what you want.”

“I don’twantto leave you. But I’m a scientist, and I have an obligation to the organisms that I study.”

“And my obligation to you is always to never hold you back from your commitment.”

She moved in as if to touch me, but I didn’t have the heart to meet her the rest of the way. “Aleki, it doesn’t have to be a final thing. I would come back to see about the bats. And to see you.”

“To be with me? To stay?”

Her gaze fell from mine to her feet, speaking volumes about our future. “I don’t know. I mean…I wouldn’t know anything until I could get back to my lab and confer with my team.”

“And bring them here?”

She caught my hostile glare. “What?”

“They’ll want to come here and see the cave, see the land they’ve never heard of, see the freak who has been living here his whole life.” I didn’t want the public here, invading my space. They’d colonize this place, forever changing my home.

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