5. Jensen

CHAPTER 5

JENSEN

B illie basically ignores me for the rest of the day. I want to go for a walk and see some of the island, but I’m too scared to go anywhere by myself in case I get lost and die.

After the first hour, I head back to the beach to stare at the sea. It’s perfectly tranquil, and all I can hear is the cheerful chirp of birds and the occasional cry of an animal. There had better not be any snakes here. Or huge spiders. Or wolves.

I haven’t come all this way to be eaten alive.

After the third hour, I start worrying that she’s never going to come back. What did she even need from her boat, anyway? Maybe I should have followed her after all.

It’s a gorgeous day, though. The sun is shining, and even though I can see dark clouds on the horizon, I’m not going to let the memory of the storm ruin my day. Right here, right now, on this island in the middle of nowhere, I’m enjoying a glorious moment of paradise.

I’ve already drunk all the water Billie gave me, and I’m still unbelievably thirsty, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. But I don’t exactly want to go rummaging around in her supplies to steal some.

I could probably go into the cabin; it looks like a pretty big place and I feel like it probably has a kitchen — but maybe they don’t have running water here. Maybe Billie has a set number of bottles, and she’s cursing me for being here because I’m going to take all her supplies.

That seems unlikely, though. She seems like a pretty seasoned traveler. She’s probably prepared for anything.

I’ll wait and ask when she gets back. For now I’m just going to have to lie back and relax and hope the pounding in my head goes away.

I sit back down next to the fire pit and reach into my pocket to get my phone to take a photo of the horizon. And that’s when I realize that my phone’s not there anymore. I’ve been so busy trying not to die that I forgot I might need it.

How am I going to let anyone know I’m okay?

Then again, if I had it, how would I charge it? Where do they get electricity from on this island? There must be some sort of generator here, because Billie’s camera is digital. Unless she has spare batteries.

The more I think about it, the more my heart sinks. There’s a strong possibility that everyone thinks I’m dead right now.

Plus, I’ve never been anywhere without electricity before. I don’t think I like the sound of it.

I’ve started pacing the beach like a caged tiger when Billie finally comes back. “Hey,” I grin, glad to see another human being.

She ignores me and heads straight for the cabin, shutting the door behind her.

“Okay. Good to see you too,” I say to myself, biting my tongue against saying you can’t ignore the prince of Sólveigr , because she doesn’t know that’s who I am.

It was obvious from the second that she laid her eyes on me. Somehow, Billie doesn’t recognize me. I guess if she spends all her time in places like this, she mustn’t get much news.

And yeah, I might have lied to her, but Jens is genuinely my nickname, and the idea of being treated like any other person, even if it’s just for a few days, by this one woman on this island… well, it’s intoxicating.

At least, the idea of it was fun. In reality, I’m faced with a very angry lady who hates me, not because of who I am, but because I’ve shown up and interrupted her alone time on this island and her pictures of wild birds or whatever it is she does.

Eventually she emerges from the cabin again. I don’t smile at her or even look at her, not wanting to annoy her more.

“Okay, look,” she says. I blink at her, waiting for her to keep going. “I don’t exactly like having you here, and you clearly don’t want to be here either, but you are here, and I can’t let you starve.”

“Can I use your phone?” I ask.

She starts lighting the fire, turning her back on me. “It doesn’t work out here, sorry.”

“What if you have an emergency?”

“There’s an emergency phone in the cabin. But that’s just for emergencies. Besides, you don’t really get any signal out here. This isn’t exactly a palace here, not like anything you’re probably used to.”

I flinch as she says it, and clearly don’t recover well enough, because she notices and frowns. She seems to decide against asking me what’s wrong, but I can see it written all over her face that she’s pretending not to care.

Then I realize that the comment wasn’t about me being royal, but a joke about the fact that she thinks I come from money and she’s trying to rile me up into telling her about it. I guess she thinks I’m soft.

“Have you ever heard of Sólveigr?” I say, deciding that giving her this much will satisfy some of her curiosity without giving the game away.

“Sólveigr?” she repeats. “That’s in Europe, right?”

“Scandinavia. We’re a tiny kingdom right up in the north.” I grimace at myself. I shouldn’t have said kingdom. Billie might not recognize me now, but she’s not stupid. There’s a good chance she’ll put the pieces together eventually.

But she glosses over it and says, “A kingdom. I’ve always thought that having a royal family seems so enchanting.” A dreamy look enters her eyes. “I used to wish I could be a princess.”

“It’s not that exciting,” I mutter. Then, noticing her raised eyebrow of suspicion, I quickly add, “Most people don’t care about the royals. If you talk to the average person, they barely remember they exist. It’s really not that exciting.”

“Oh,” she says in a small voice.

A small stab of guilt burrows into my stomach. I shouldn’t have crushed her like that. It’s not exactly going to endear me to her.

She takes a sharp turn away from the conversation and pulls out a camping pot. Carefully, she peels back the tab on a can and empties the contents into the pot.

“What is that?” I say, leaning forward and peering into the pan to see something brown and lumpy start to bubble.

“These are really good. It’s stew,” she says. And that’s all the explanation she offers me.

She stirs it for a minute, then gets up to find some bowls and silverware for us. Carefully, she sits back down, stirs the pot again, then scoops some of the so-called stew into a bowl and hands it to me with a spoon.

I grimace in thanks as I take it and stare down at it. It’s lumpy and brown and smells weird. With my spoon, I poke at one of the lumps and it falls apart.

“You’ve never been camping before, have you?” Billie says, looking at me with barely concealed amusement.

“What gave it away? I say weakly. “I don’t really do a lot of canned meals.”

“Suppose you have a live-in cook, huh?” she jokes.

I know she’s just teasing me again, but it still makes me flinch. I have to stop reacting like this to every joke she makes or else I’m going to give myself away. “I have a lot of takeout,” I manage to choke out.

She hums in acknowledgment, and I feel myself slipping off the hook. I got away with it this time, but it looks like this “normal person” thing is going to take some work.

Maybe I should just tell her the truth. Maybe I should out myself for who I really am and tell her that I’m going to annoy her so much she’ll want to take me back on her boat straightaway. Going home means I won’t have to deal with any of this back-to-nature-living stuff, and she can get on with her day.

I go to speak, but I waver, my mouth hanging open.

It would probably be easier for Billie to take me back and probably better for both of our blood pressures. But despite her irritation and my fumbling way of putting my foot in it, she honestly doesn’t seem to know who I am.

Despite all of my newspaper headlines and foolishness, she’s barely even heard of Sólveigr.

And she doesn’t exactly seem to want to take me home.

If I’m going to be stuck here for God knows how long, maybe it will be better if she doesn’t know. Maybe this could be the “normal person” break I’ve been longing for.

Plus, the longer I stay here, the longer the press will go without bothering me.

This is starting to seem like a great scheme. I’ll hide here, get a taste of “normal person” living, and then she can dump me back in Puerto Rico when we’re done and she’ll never have to see me again.

“Thank you for the food,” I smile, despite the fact I don’t really want to eat it. I poke at it with my spoon again then force myself to take a small mouthful. It’s sloppy, but it isn’t too bad.

Billie chuckles, the first glimmer of a smile cracking through her cold exterior. “You’re welcome.”