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Chapter Twenty-Two

MAVERICK

T his girl is turning me into a fucking sap. I’ve never treated anyone this nice before, not even my own mother. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me? When I look at her, my heart rate speeds up, and it makes my chest flutter when she smiles. That damn giggle she lets out all the time makes me smile myself, which is such a foreign thing. Is this what they call love? Because I feel like a nutcase right now. She doesn’t seem to mind my affection most of the time, but when that sass comes out? Shit, it takes everything in me not to bend her over and fuck her. Not sure how the fuck I got so lucky finding her in the woods that day, but whatever I did to deserve it, thank fuck for that. I watch my girl as she makes her way through the forest, hopping carelessly over fallen branches like she’s a track star. We left the campsite a few hours ago and have been walking since. Mallory has only stopped once to piss, which I am honestly shocked about.

The trees have started to become more sparse, and the air has gotten thicker the farther we walk. Mallory has already stripped off her sweater and tied it around her waist over an hour ago, sweat beading on both of our foreheads as we continue through. The ground has started to get squishy in some spots, making me wonder where the hell we have ended up. “Goddammit!” Mallory’s annoyed screech reaches my ears; her boot is stuck in thick sludge. She tries to tug her boot out, but the suction is so strong that it doesn’t even budge. She narrows her eyes and lunges forward, hoping her body weight will tug the boot free, but she just falls flat on her belly on the ground instead. A sound whooshes out of her when she makes impact, and I can’t restrain the laugh that bursts out of me. “It’s not funny! Come help me.” Her pitiful voice just makes me laugh even harder. She’s up on her knees now trying to pull the boot free, and she lets out a scream of frustration. “Stop laughing at me and get over and help!”

I walk over to her, still chuckling under my breath, and grab her hands, bracing my feet on the ground before tugging. It takes a few minutes and some wiggling to finally get her boot out of the mud, and we both fall back onto the ground with a laugh. She slaps me on the arm with a glare before hopping to her feet and offering me her hand. I smirk at her and grab onto her hand before pulling her back into me, her thighs straddling my lap. Leaning up, I place a kiss on her pillowy lips, and we stay there in our little bubble until the sky starts to darken. “We better get going; it looks like it’s going to rain.” Her face tips up to the sky with a pout as she gazes at the dark clouds floating in. We finally get to our feet and head on our way.

“Mav, look!” Her excited squeal catches me off guard, and I look to where she’s pointing. There’s what looks to be an old dock in the distance surrounded by water. We’ve been hearing the sounds of frogs and crickets for a while now. She runs off towards the dock, and I have no other choice but to follow after her. “Oh my god, look, look!” She’s hopping up and down now and pointing to a small boat that is attached to the dock haphazardly. Her boots echo off of the old wood and sway under her feet as she approaches the boat. “I think we should use this to get us farther down this nasty swamp, because I’m tired of trekking through the mud.” She doesn’t even wait for me to acknowledge her before she swings a leg over and promptly tumbles down into the boat. It swishes back and forth in the water while she struggles to get her bearings.

“Have you ever even been in a boat before?” I ask with a raised eyebrow as she clutches the sides of the boat for dear life.

“Uh, does a yacht count?” She lets out a nervous chuckle, and I lean down to steady the boat for her. “What are these?” She picks up two oars on the bottom of the boat and holds them up to me with a quizzical look.

“Are you serious right now?” I’m trying so hard not to laugh at her, but her lack of knowledge sometimes is just too much for me. “Those are oars. That’s what we use to move the boat with.” I say as I step into the boat myself, barely even jostling it.

“Ohhhhhhh, okay, gotcha. How do you use them?” She holds them up and almost bashes me in the head with one as she goes.

“How about you let me worry about that and you just worry about keeping your pretty ass in the boat, okay?” She shrugs and passes me the oars before settling into her seat across from me. I position the oars in their holders on the edges of the boat and drop them into the water, pushing off from the dock.

Mallory oohs and ahhs over everything she sees as we float through the water. I’ve never seen someone so enamored by nature before, and it tugs at my heartstrings. “What’s that?” She points to a large bird standing on the bank.

“That’s a great blue heron, and that over there is a cottonmouth.” I point to the snake slithering down into the water.

“Fuck no, that’s a nope rope!” She screeches and jumps towards me, plopping down into the bottom of the boat by my feet. I let out a chuckle at her antics and keep moving us through the swamp.

It’s long since gotten dark, and the mosquitos out here are horrible. I wouldn’t be surprised if we looked like we had the chicken pox when we finally made it out of here. Rain starts to drop down from the sky, and I let out a string of curses while scanning the horizon for a place to take shelter. Mallory is complaining about getting wet, but I’m more worried about getting stuck out here in a damn storm. I haven’t told her that there are alligators out here yet just because of the way she acted about that damn snake. The rain starts pouring down in buckets, and it’s hard to hear Mallory over the sound of it, let alone see where we are going. The wind has picked up, making us travel faster through the water, and I feel Mallory’s arms snake around one of my calves as she clutches me to her. Looking down at her, she’s shaking from the cold rain, her blue eyes round with fear as the boat rocks back and forth from the rain and the wind. Before I can open my mouth to tell her that everything is going to be okay, all hell breaks loose.

The boat crashes into a tree trunk and bounces back, knocking into several thick branches. Mallory is frantic, and I can hear her screams over the rain as she clutches onto me with all of her strength. We bash into another tree trunk that sends us careening outward, the boat flipping over in the process. We both splash into the water, and the feeling of her arms on me disappears just as the frigid water seeps into me. Thunder clashes and lightning lights up the area for a split second, and I can see Mallory’s head bobbing in the water on the other side of the boat. “Maverick!” She screams, trying to swim towards me, but the current is too strong for her and takes her downstream. I yell her name, but it gets lost in another clap of thunder, rain still beating down all around me in sheets, making it hard to see. I frantically scan the area for her, but she’s gone. My heart almost seizes in my chest with the feeling of losing her. I promised I would protect her, and I couldn’t even save her in this storm?

I spy the boat nestled between branches on the edge of the swamp and manage to get it flipped over and haul myself inside of it. The oars are long gone, so I rip a branch off the tree and make do with that as I propel myself through the water in the same direction Mallory went. I yell her name while I go, but I don’t hear a sound back, and I fear that she’s drowned. My chest aches with that thought, and my breathing starts to become shallow. When did I become such a pussy over a girl? I set the branch down beside me on the floor of the boat and lay down next to it, staring up at the sky as the rain continues to pelt down onto me. I close my eyes hoping that this is all a dream, but when I open them again nothing has changed.

I eventually fall asleep because the next thing I know I’m waking up to sunny skies and chirping birds. Leaning up on my elbows, I see that there is about an inch of water in the bottom of the boat and thank whoever’s out there that I didn’t drown too last night. I’m still floating down the stream, so I hop back onto the bench and grab my makeshift oar again. Tiredness pulls at my eyelids, but I force them to stay open. A few minutes later I spy something sparkly down the bank, and I propel the boat towards it. Sticking out of the mud is one of Mallory’s pink combat boots. I tug it free from the mud and scan the area, calling for her, but only silence greets me. She had to have gotten out this way with how stuck her boot was in the mud. I steer the boat around a bend, and a wooden dock lies within reach. Using my tree branch, I get as close as I can to the dock before lunging out of the boat onto it. I lay there on my back, holding Mallory’s boot to my chest.

“Mallory!” I yell out one last time, and when silence greets me again, I heave out an exhausted sigh. What the hell am I going to do now? Our packs were washed away during the storm, and the only thing I have on me is her boot. My worry for Mallory intensifies because she has nothing , not even both boots to help keep her safe. The feeling of dread courses through my body, and I pray to anyone out there that she will stay alive long enough for me to find her.