Page 84 of Hate Wrecked

If we don’t get rescued soon I’ll go mad, and I’ll give in. I know I will. She’s too tempting, too much of everything I want.

When I make my way back to the campsite I don’t see Riley there, but I see my notebook.

She says I should write about our time here, the story. But I’m not sure I can make permanent the way I act toward her—cold and angry at times. Revealing our present would mean revealing our past. And I’m not sure I could survive that.

I wonder how Riley would feel. Another book showing a version of her that lives in someone else’s head. It’s why she should write songs, tell her own story.

After about a half an hour, Riley joins me at the camp.

She doesn’t look at me when I look at her, but she knows I am. I can see it in the way she brushes her hair from her shoulder, damp. I wonder if she took another shower or a swim in the ocean.I wonder if she touched herself…

She has a handful of clothes from the line in her arms.

“Were there any other pieces left? I can go get them,” I offer, closing my notebook.

“No, I got them.”

I clear my throat, setting my notebook down. “I’m sorry about earlier. About yesterday, too.”

Riley makes busy putting our clothes into two piles. One for me, one for her. “About what you did? Or about stopping?”

“I shouldn’t have started,” I admit. “Then maybe I wouldn’t have needed to?—”

She scoffs. “Of course.”

“I meant it, I meant what I said. We can’t go back there.”

“Then do it cold turkey. No back rubs. No brushing against me in the tent. Do something, or nothing.”

It’s a hard line in the sand, what she needs. What I need.

It hits me how much I enjoyed the grey area. And my role as the reluctant object of her desire.

When I look at her again, her eyes look glassy. “What is it?”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all fucked. For all my talk about the peace out here, maybe I’ve been lying to myself.”

“About what?”

“Maybe something happened. There has to be a reason they haven’t found us. Maybe something happened to one of my parents. I don’t know. But I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have found me yet. It doesn’t make sense. You said the island has been sold. How come no one has been out here yet?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Even when the family owned it, there would be long periods where no one was here.”

She rings her hands as she sits down, and I’m grateful for the turn in the conversation, despite how grim it is. “I’m just…I feel something inside of me. Here.” She presses her hand to her chest. “I’ve had this ache, and I’ve ignored it because everything was bad when we got here. But now I wonder what my body was trying to tell me. I’m worried something happened to my mom and I wasn’t there for it. And if her last memory is of a daughter who hates her… I’ll never forgive myself.”

I stand before I can think it through, taking a seat next to Riley. I wrap one arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to her temple. “She knows you love her,” I say, hoping my mother knows that too. We had been fighting before I went to Hawaii. She has no idea where I am now…

Riley interrupts my guilt. “All she knows is that you were supposed to give me her book, and then I vanished.”

“I did too. If anything”—I laugh—“they probably think I murdered you or something and I’m hiding.”

Riley looks at me, her face appalled. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Weirdo,” she grumbles. And before I can move, she says, “Don’t move your arm. Don’t overthink it, Rowan.”

So I don’t. I run my hand up and down her arm, offering her comfort as she leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. “We’re going to leave here. We are. And…and maybe I really will write that book.”

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