Nothing makes it clear how badly you want to live as having a moment where death seems to breathe down your neckâ or pull you under a roaring river and into its greedy clutches.
Sharp pain cracked across my hand, a blinding spark of fire as the current tugged me into darkness. The water was warm, warmer than the lakes in Montana I had grown up with, but even without the sharp cold, the current was violent, yanking me in circles, shoving my body up against something hard that snagged around my waist like vines, yanking me farther away from where I thought the surface was.
I struggled, attempting to get free of the vines, terrified. But the fire that snaked up my hand again nearly made me go numb, and in my hesitation, I was pulled deeper into darkness.
Things seemed to stutter, splashing from light to dark and back again. The vines pulled me toward light. I gasped. The world went dark again.
The current tugged me back toward consciousness, the water roaring, my own name ringing in my ears, a leftover memory from falling off the rocks. Darkness again.
The world became solid. Body drenched, but somehow still moving. "Autumns, you need to wake up..." the words were pinched, concerned.
My eyes flickered open to see a pair of dark eyes looking down at me. Relief evident on his face at the sight of my gaze. He let out a huff of air, body seeming to sag. He was drenched, hair sent water falling onto my face, lashes collecting droplets at the tips before sending them falling on my cheeks.
His face was flushed, gasping for breath, warm against my neck, body nearly parallel with mine from where he hovered over me.
"Laurence?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around his expression. Around the state of him. "What happened?"
"You fell," he said as he rolled onto his back on the ground next to me, exhausted.
"Did you fall to?" I asked, brain feeling waterlogged.
He was quiet, eyes fluttering shut. Details clicked into place. My name being shouted. Hitting something solid. Vinesâ his arm wrapping around me, him pulling me toward the surface, shouting my name in the roar of the current.
"You... jumped in after me?" I whispered, the words feeling fragile in my mouth. Then I scanned the rest of him, my mind finally catching up.
"Your shoulder and wrist," I said, shooting up to a sitting position. "You can't move! What were you thinking!"
Laurence's sling was nowhere in sight, wrist brace swollen with water. His hand was across his chest, face pinched in pain. "I did just fine."
I shuffled over to him, growing worried. "You aren't fine! You were wearing a sling five minutes agoâ"
"Can you stop shouting," he murmured, sounding like he was falling asleep, the fight draining out of him.
"No! You can't do that! You don't get to black out now when we are stuck in the middle of the rainforest!" My eyes went wide.
OH MY GOSH... WE ARE LOST IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RAINFOREST.
"I'm just shutting my eyes for a moment..."
I shoved myself to my feet, determined to get him up before he passed out, and the sudden pressure on my fingers sent a bolt of pain up my left index and middle fingers. I let out a yelp, sending Laurence's eyes snapping open.
The sharp pain cleared away the rest of my brain fog, and I looked down at my left hand. Two of my fingers were broken. Laurence's wrist and shoulder were still injured and as I took in the world around us, I realized I had no idea where we were or how we were going to get back.
"Autumns?"
Laurence was sitting up, looking at me, concerned. "You're hurt."
I let out a tired laugh. "Compared to you? After you probably did irreparable damage to your body? Hardly at all."
I could see a fight building up in his eyes, but I turned away before he could argue.
Spotting my small travel pack further up the bank, I pulled it off the ground, slung the soggy strap it over my shoulder with my good hand, adrenaline keeping the pain dull for the moment, and walked back to Laurence.
"I can't believe you jumped in after me." The words sounded far more accusatory than I had intended.
"What was I supposed to do? Let you hit the rocks? Watch you break?" he asked, frustrated.
"You are lucky that you didn't pop your shoulder back out of joint. You could have ended up damaging your shoulder permanently."
A muscle worked in his jaw, his dark eyes flashing. "I don't regret what I did Autumns. And you could at least pretend to be grateful that I tried."
Letting out a shaky breath, I forced back a few biting comments, my hand beginning to throb. "I am grateful. I just don't like that it resulted in youâ"
"I'm fine," he said, standing to his feet as if to prove his point. "I didn't throw my arm over my head, over extend it or any of the other stupid rules on that doctors list. I'm sore and tired and will live and thankfully, so will you."
I swallowed, looking at the sky. "Come on Royal. We got to move." The sun was disappearing. "We need to find somewhere to camp. We aren't getting out of here today."
...
I itched for my binder, a comfort I didn't have but desperately needed. But even without it, I had every piece of information inside of it memorized.
In one of my sleepless nights leading up to our trip to Costa Rica, I had made a survival guide page. One Bex was convinced I wouldn't need, but was now grateful for.
If you get lost in the rainforest, get somewhere with waterâ CHECK. Then when night approaches get someplace high to stay away from snakes and bugs and... other wildlife. The height will also help you get your bearings.
Our footsteps were quiet in the thick green rainforest, the sounds of birds and bugs deafening. There wasn't a clear path, so each step felt dangerous, taking us deeper and deeper into the unknown. After walking a steep incline, I was surprised to find a structure high in the air.
A lookout tower sat among the trees, a worn down roofless wooden platform. The sky had grown darker, the sun setting. And my relief at finding a place that would keep us safe from the bigger predators filled me with so much relief that I nearly cried.
We are going to be okay, I promised myself.
Shoving down tears and the deep ache in my fingers, I moved toward the platform. A rope ladder hung down, the bottom half shoved against a knot in the tree. "There. We'll climb up, get some sleep and make a plan in the morning."
After several failed attempts to reach the ladder and pull it downâ which was far too high for me to snatch, Laurence came up behind me, gently pushing me aside, fingers brushing my waist. "You're too short."
He reached up with his good hand and tugged down the ladder. "There." Taking a step back, he gestured for me to climb up first. I complied without a word.
...
When you have two broken fingers and the other person lost in the rainforest with you has a sprained wrist and an injured shoulder, it takes a very long time to climb a rope ladder. And by the time we reached the top, the sun was nearly gone, leaving us in shadow.
The platform was five feet long and five feet wide, hardly large enough for one person to lay down flat, let alone two. Ignoring the obvious problem, I went about pulling everything out of my pack of supplies, the items making me feel slightly more encouraged.
A zip-locked bag with my lunch sandwichâ which I hadn't eaten earlier because work always made me forget to eatâ an apple, bug spray, a rain jacket, an umbrella and my new phoneâ which had been gifted to me in a water proof case but didn't have a cell signal.
My spirits went from tentatively positive to irritated as the sky cracked with lightning and rain suddenly began to pour down, hitting the wooden platform with a vengeance, soaking us just as we had begun to feel slightly dry.
Without a word, Laurence shot open my umbrella, hoisting it up over my head, while I quickly set to work making a tarp out of my rain jacket, tying the ends to trees that poked out on several spots next to the platform, biting back yelps as my fingers throbbed.
Tucking everything back into my pack, I tore my sandwich in two, passing half to Laurence as we settled underneath the rain jacket tarp.
"Well... this is not how I thought today would go," I admitted, now utterly drenched as I bit into my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Laurence let out a tired huff of a laugh. "You weren't expecting to go into survivor training?"
I shoved wet curls out of my face. "I mean what girl doesn't want to spend the night, lost in the rainforest under a rain jacket? I was planning on saving that delight for a few years down the road."
Finishing my meager meal, I closed my eyes, fighting the pain in my hand, the adrenaline wearing off and leaving me feeling like a hollow husk of a person.
"Here."
I peeked an eye open to find two small pills sitting on Laurence's palm. They weren't nearly as large as the first set I had given him when he left the hospital, which would explain the lack of 'Loopy Laurence' I had seen lately.
"For the pain," he clarified.
I made no move to take them. "What about you?"
He gestured to a small pill bottle of pain medication at his side. "I brought more. I can always refill the prescription when we get back. They were in my pocket when I jumped. I had no idea that these hotel gift shop pants would come in so useful."
"What if we don't get back?" I asked, showing my first sign of doubt since waking up on the river bank.
He raised a brow. "You've been a driving force since arriving here. Don't go giving up now."
When I continued to stare down at the pain medication, Laurence gently poked my knee. "Do you really expect me to sit here and do nothing when you obviously have broken fingers?"
When I still didn't move to take them, his tone changed, gentle, tentative. "Please."
Reluctantly, I plucked them up, grabbed my water bottle and swallowed. I wasn't normally so stubborn when it came to medication or being helped, but Laurence had been sending me messages that were hard to ignore, and at the moment I had very little to distract me from overanalyzing the last week from every possible angle.
The sky had grown completely dark, the sound of the rain loud against the rain jacket, flashes of lighting serving as the only light, greeted moments later by violent thunder.
"Thank you," he said softly, his voice hardly audible over the rain.
Lightning cracked through the sky again, making the hair on my arms stand on end, a sharp contrast to his gentle tone.
"Laurence, why did you jump in after me?"
My question felt dangerous, a change in the air that I refused to back down from. I had grown suddenly brave as darkness consumed us.
His eyes flashed vibrantly as another crack of lightning filled the sky. And in that moment, I saw a glimpse of something I had never seen on his face. And the sight of it sent me scooting several feet away, staring up at him shocked.
"You know why," he said quietly, his face back in shadow as the lightning vanished, leaving rain and thunder in its wake.
"Don't do that," I said, voice uneven, trying to erase the sight of him looking at me with deep, unshakable want. "You keep messing with my head."
"I'm not playing games with you," he said, turning in the small space to face me.
"Then what?" I asked my voice growing louder as the wind picked up. "Why are you here? Why did you really come all the way to Costa Rica? And don't lie to me."
"I haven'tâ"
"Why did you lie to me about the receptionist sign?"
There was a loaded beat of silence. I couldn't see his face, the sky was too dark and it took everything inside of me not to shine my phone flashlight on his face and start treating him like a hostile witness.
"I didn't lie. I said they'd be back later. I just wanted you to let me go to the airport. But you insisted I stay. And when you offered your room..." I could hear the sigh of frustration that seemed to fall out of him. "I was honestly too shocked to push back. And by the time I realized how it would look, you handed me food and..." he trailed off, sounding far more unsure of himself than I had ever heard.
"That doesn't answer my first question. Why are you here?"
A muscle worked in his jaw. "You."
A single word. That was all it took to shatter something inside of me. I was on my feet, two steps out into the storm, drenched in seconds as I contemplated climbing down the rope ladder slicked with rain in the middle of the storm while lost in the rainforest at night. I was suddenly furious that all my exists had vanished.
I shouldn't have asked. I should have just let it go...
"You keep running from me," he observed, on his feet, watching me stand at the edge, glaring down at the rope ladder with fury and fear coursing through me.
I spun, staring up at Laurence, my uninjured hand balling into a fist, wild wet tendrils of hair whipping around me. "Because you are playing a game that will break me, Laurence!" My voice cracked like my own personal brand of thunder, wild and unpredictable.
He took a step toward me, the lightning cracking across the sky showcasing him for a beat as he stepped into the rain. His body drenched, his jaw tense, his eyes dark. "It's not a game."
"Why now? I've been in your life for three years!" I shouted to be heard as thunder shook the platform. "I'm not some girl you don't have to call back! Up until three months ago, I was that girl that fielded those calls!"
"I know," he said as he took another step toward me.
"We work together Laurence," I argued.
"I know." Another step.
"Then what are you doing!?"
"Making a choice. One I couldn't make before."
I searched his face in the dark as he stopped a foot away, trying desperately to see him in the darkness. "Because that would have been an HR problem?" I guessed.
"That. And the fact that you started dating someoneâ"
I let out a huff of disbelief. "Liam is not a factor. You haven't wanted me for that loâ"
His voice turned husky, a deep guttural thing that threatened to haunt my dreams for years to come. "You underestimate how truly... beautiful... and alluring you are Lily Autumns."
The breath left my body. My mind seeming to stutter to a stop. I could no longer think, frozen in the middle of the platform, lost to everything but those words.
You underestimate how truly... beautiful... and alluring you are Lily Autumns.
I shut my eyes, trying to shove the words out. "You aren't playing fair Laurence."
"I don't intend to. I am an utter mess Miss Autumns. But there is only so much I can take."
I blinked rain out of my eyes, suddenly shaking. "Why do you still call me that?"
Miss Autumns... Miss Autumns... Miss Autumns...
He drove his fingers through his hair. "Sanity is a thin line. A timeline that cannot be reversed. It is a habit I've developed. A daily reminder to keep the status quo."
"What you are trying to do right now, changes that," I said pushing back.
"Only if you want it to."
I threw up my hands, sending water scattering off my skin. "You can't have it both ways Laurence. I am either Lily or Miss Autumns. You don't get both." I shook my head. "You are tempting me with something I can't have."
He tentatively took one more step, bringing us within inches of each other. He slowly reached out, fingers brushing against my cheek, seeming lost in the feeling of my my skin. When I didn't back away, because apparently my body had turned traitorous, Laurence's hand moved to cup my cheek, tilting my head up. "And what is it that you want, Lily?"
"I..." My determination seemed to vanish under his touch. Every part of me seemed to forget every word of of self confidence, every mantra, every determination that I had spent months building. I forgot that Laurence wasn't looking for forever. I forgot that I would regret what happened next because I would always just be a number, and yet...
My eyes fluttered closed, body humming under the feel of his skin against my cheek. With a single touch, the world around us vanished. There was no storm, no rain, no pain, just the mere and daunting fact that Laurence Royal wanted me.
No words came. And after a moment, when I didn't come up with any more arguments, any more protests, when my face seemed to melt into his hand, he leaned down and kissed me. And that moment broke apart every resolve I had ever built. Every argument I had ever created. Every bit of self preservation I had ever fought for.
He tipped up my face to get better access to me, my hands wrapped around his neck of their own accord, tugging into his hair, greedily burrowing deep into his locks. The rain made me fully aware of his body pressed against mine, holding me steady, keeping me close as lighting cracked across the sky, illuminating his features for a moment before shrouding us in darkness again.
His hand moved to the nape of my neck, down my shoulder until it settled at my waist, caging me against him, impatient, hungry for more. His mouth traveled down the curve of my neck and I buried my face into his hair, overwhelmed by my reaction to him. To how badly I had wanted to be touched like this. Like he had waited his whole life to kiss me.
"Lily," he murmured against my shoulder, tattooing his wants against my skin.
The sound of my name in his mouth was a prayer, causing me to shudder under the power of it. Then his mouth came back up to mine, his kisses slow, determined to take his time, to memorize everything about me, like I was a set of numbers that needed to be checked again and again until he was satisfied with his discoveries.
And with each brush of his lips, with each touch, I felt laid bare. Wanted. Worshiped.
Kissing Laurence Royal was better than I had ever imagined, and the reality of it broke me. It was perfect and that unknown that was suddenly real, tangible and true made me cry. It made me wish I could forget everything that I was so I could sink into him, throw myself into something that wasn't me.
You deserve more than this, a voice inside of me whispered fiercely.
Self preservation finally stumbled into the picture and I forced myself to let go of Laurence and take a step back, the world snapping back into place, body shaking with want and heartbreak as the rain and wind continued to pelt and howl. "No," I whispered, my voice less broken than I felt.
At first I wasn't sure he heard me, but when he stiffened at my one word response to him and let me go, I knew he had. I swallowed taking another step back so I wouldn't launch myself at him. So I wouldn't dive into another kiss and burn all possibilities of staying strong. I itched to wipe my eyes, but knew that what little dignity I had left wouldn't let me.
I deserve more than to be a number to someone. I am worth more than this, my self talk reminded me gently.
My breath was uneven as I spoke. "What I want is to be loved," I said, finally finding my answer. One that had been obvious before he had touched me. "Openly. Fully. To love without being afraid that my partner will get cold feet and leave. I am a forever girl, Laurence. And I don't want a fling. A kiss that will leave the other person waking up regretting it or me."
He was quiet.
"And unless you have changed overnight," I continued, wrapping my arms around myself to keep myself from breaking. "And developed the ability to look at relationships as more than something used to extort and hurt you," I shook my head. "Then I can't..."
I took a step toward him and placed my hand against his cheek, needing him to understand. "I deserve more than scraps of love. And I hope that someday, you see that you do too."
He placed his hand over mine, keeping it against his face for a moment, swallowing. "You deserve everything, Lily."
"Then stop trying to make me settle for less."
---
Thank you for reading chapter twenty one! I hope you are enjoying the story! Or are at least curious to see where it goes! Add this story to your reading list to know when the next chapter drops!
UPDATE DAYS - A NEW CHAPTER EVERY FRIDAY!
WOWZA! Kiss achieved. But at what cost?!? Will Laurence regret the kiss?
Will Lily find a way to get over Laurence?
What will happen with them next?
How will Lily and Laurence get out of the rainforest?
Will Lily tell anyone what happened?
What will happen next?
CHAPTER QUESTION - Have you ever spent the night in the wilderness? What was that experience like?