Page 5 of Red Rabbit
I guess it could be worse.
3
KAELIN
Graham looked like he belonged out here in these wild mountains with his rugged and untamed appearance. Even the handcuffs made me think of a caged animal set loose back in their natural habitat. Maybe that’s partially why I saved him, in hopes he’d know what he was doing because I absolutely do not.
Up close his presence is dominating and aggressive and damn my body for liking it. It was probably just the adrenaline from surviving the horrors I just went through but either way, that part of me was definitely not broken. When he touched my hand I lost myself to the shadows in his eyes, trying to figure out why they were so dark. I walked back over to the crate.
“So, Graham. We should probably go back down to the plane…”
He walked over and crouched down near the crate as he took in the contents. I could see him quickly process our inventory.
“You’ll need to be the one to do that, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not a swimmer.”
“You don’t know how to swim?” I look at him incredulously.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just not one of my strengths.”
“Well what are your strengths?” I asked.
He looked me up and down slowly and I blushed.
His eyes returned to the crate. “I’m a wilderness instructor.”
“Thank god,” I muttered with an exhale. “I was worried you were some desk jockey—”
“Like you?”
I meant it semi sarcastically but now I bristled and frowned at him.
“How do you know that?”
“You have corporate written all over you,” he drawled.
He ripped open a granola bar and took a bite.
“Shouldn’t we discuss rationing?” I asked worriedly.
“Says the desk jockey.”
“Okay, we’renotdoing that,” I muttered flatly and then turned towards the lake with a frown.
“I guess I’ll go back down there then,” I sighed.
I was not at all excited about getting into the freezing water again. I grabbed a blanket from the crate and went down to the water’s edge where I stood for a long moment as I psyched myself up to go in.
“Need some help?” Graham called from the fire.
I threw him a rude hand sign over my shoulder before I draped the blanket over a nearby rock and pulled my shirt over my head. I could feel his eyes unashamedly watching me and I turned to shoot him an annoyed look.
“Privacy please?”
“Oh right,” he said, looking away. “Wouldn’t want your fiance to get mad.”
“Fucker,” I muttered.
I pulled off my pants and waded into the water. As the cold hit me, I immediately regretted agreeing to do this. He probably could swim. I muttered obscenities towards Graham, letting it fuel me deeper into the lake until I dove and focused on the plane. I swam to the back and saw a flash of orange that I hoped would be the ‘black box’ but when I got to the tail of the plane, my hopes fell flat. It was ironically a life vest and the entire tail ofthe plane was missing. There was no way of even knowing if the plane carried a recorder or not.
