Chapter 81

As I handed Jack a plate of food I felt some satisfaction with what I'd achieved. The sun had set and we were sitting out beside a lamp, the house now as cold as outside.

The generator still wouldn't work. Jack had been forced to give up, focusing his attention on other forms of keeping us safe while I cooked. We had blankets wrapped around us now, Jack having ventured upstairs despite the risk and gathered some stuff.

A lot of the upstairs was wrecked, glass having torn through it, he'd said. Most of it was embedded in walls and furniture, but it had also reached the closets, torn apart clothing, and littered the carpets and floors.

Thankfully, the blankets were in a small closet out of the way, the door having been an awkward one that used to get stuck anyway. My clothes were ruined, as were many of Jack's.

It stung a little, having spent so much money on clothing only to wear two of the outfits once each so far. But the shelter had finally been pumped free of water, and Jack had retrieved the valuables we'd stowed down there.

The waterproof compartments had done their job for the most part. My notebooks and laptop had survived. My phone and Jack's were both ruined, but Jack pointed out that both would have been useless anyway.

Not sure whether that comforted me, I tried to focus on the positive. I hadn't quite lost everything. I could still write, and all my ideas and thoughts were safe. I felt sorry for Jack at points as he discovered yet another thing was broken, soaked, or otherwise ruined.

If it bothered him, he took it well, sticking to problem-solving ideas instead. However, now that everything was calmer and we were sitting and eating, the emotions began to return.

After stealing over me in gradual degrees, the numbness gave way to tears and shaking until Jack noticed. He immediately came over to me and scooped me up, pulling me onto his lap as I started to sob.

For what felt like forever, I cried against him, not caring how I looked or if I ever stopped. All the while, Jack held me and rocked me back and forth gently, stroking my back.

I tried to calm down a few times, but then I'd think of some other element of what had gone wrong and how stranded we still were, and it would set more tears in motion until I was exhausted and spent, leaning against him, my head fuzzy and my eyes puffed up.

He felt warm, and I still didn't move, even once I was calm again. If Jack minded me seeking comfort from him like this, he still didn't say anything, merely holding me as darkness fell and brought out the stars here and there.

"We should light a fire or something. At some point, boats will start coming by to check on people. If we have a bonfire, we'll draw attention," Jack said. "It'll also keep us warm through the night."

I didn't question him, but it crossed my mind that he'd changed his comments from his boat coming back to get us to any boat coming by. Although his boat wasn't far away, it clearly wasn't coming back in a hurry.

Without any dry firewood, I wasn't sure how we would start a fire, though.

It didn't stop Jack. He gently set me on my feet, making sure I was all right before he got to his as well. Then he strode down to the beach.

Before my eyes, he dragged over a fallen tree, grabbed an ax, and started chopping it up. I found some smaller tools that looked as if they'd cut off branches and went down to help him. Keeping useful would help me both stay warm in the meantime and get the job done quicker.

I was impressed to notice that some of the smaller wood had already dried out a little, the tree dead in places. I pointed it out to Jack.

"Yeah, dead trees, or dying ones, are most likely to fall in a storm. Makes better firewood in this situation."

Grateful for that small mercy, we split the tree into three sizes of fuel—large logs, large branches, and the leafy canopy and twigs. Jack then started constructing a small bonfire and added everything, one pile at a time.

I expected that to be enough, but he then went to the shed and the pile of wood that had been stacked there. He found some matches and a large gas canister.

After helping him bring that to the bonfire, I helped him arrange even more wood on the pile, and then he drenched it in gas, pouring it so liberally that the entire beach soon stank of it.

"You'll want to stand back," he said, backing up with me.

After everything else, I definitely wasn't going to argue. I backed up with him until I was farther up the beach and waiting to see how he intended to light it from there.

He answered my unspoken questions in seconds, flicking a match against the edge of the slightly damp box and somehow managing to light it anyway. Pausing to give the match time to burn with a larger flame and spread down the stick, he focused on the pile of wood.

With a precision I hadn't expected, Jack flicked the match into the heart of the pile, and it went up with a whoomph. I stood back farther, the sudden heat startling me as Jack came to join me.

It crackled and spat, smoke rising in plumes that would have made us instantly spottable in daylight. I watched as the fire started to calm, the gas burning off as the wood caught alight.

After a few minutes, the smoke died down a little, and the wood burned itself. Jack spread one of the blankets on the sand a little closer to it on the side that would allow us to see out to the water and then encouraged me to sit down with him.

I did, not sure how I felt about being so close to him after deciding I was done with our relationship and I was going to leave. Was I really done?

My thoughts went back and forth. Sometimes, Jack could be perfect and everything I needed. But he was also so blind at other times to what was going on and how I felt. And his world was just too different from mine. I didn't belong with him, and I'd been a fool to think otherwise.

None of that changed the attraction I felt for him or that I was already head over heels in love with him. Nor did it change how much money I'd just wasted.

I felt like such a fool. I'd let my heart get carried away, and it had taken my head with it.

As I sat watching the fire and the stars come out above, I knew that a boat couldn't come soon enough to take me to the larger island and away from everything. Beside me, Jack didn't really speak, alternately gazing into the fire and out to sea. It was as if either he was heartbroken too, or he knew I wasn't his anymore.

We stayed like that, side by side in silence, for what felt like hours, time losing all meaning as the fire burned itself lower and we grew slowly colder.