Page 58 of Stay With Me

She gasped. “No! That’s way too big. I won’t be able to lift my hand. One carat.”

He scoffed. “No wife of mine is going to sport anything less than two.”

She laughed again. “Fine. Two”

“Two,” he agreed as he tapped a few more options. “And how about a solitaire? We’ll get you a totally blinged out wedding band.”

“Sounds beautiful.”

“And definitely platinum,” he went on. “What’s your ring size?”

“Um, a four, I think.”

He tapped a link and then threw his fists in the air. “That’s it! We’re engaged. You’re stuck with me.”

She grinned from ear to ear as she crawled on top of him and kissed him deeply.

“Yes, I am happily stuck with you,” she agreed. “And I love you.”

“I love you, too. We’re going to have such a good life together.”

Chapter Thirteen

Samantha

Back and forth … back and forth … back and forth.

At first, Samantha sat in silence as she flashed the mirror, but that made her feel stir crazy after only a few minutes.

Then she decided to count while she tilted it. She got to about fifteen hundred before that made her feel more restless.

The sun was now resting on top of the crest of the canyon wall. It wouldn’t be much longer before the mirror flare wouldn’t work anymore.

Nobody’s coming tonight.

She shook her head to push the thought out of her mind and gingerly picked up the water pouch to take a drink. The bag was getting light. If she had to guess, there were about eight to ten ounces left in it. Earlier that afternoon when Nick filled it along with all the other water containers, it had held about fifty ounces. And fifty ounces goes pretty quickly when you’re hiking through the desert and are under the impression that you’ll eventually make it back to your camp where you have a gallon per person per day waiting for you.

She wasn’t panicking yet, though. Nick’s bag still had water in it so if she needed to, she’d tap into that. She didn’t know much about dealing with serious injuries from falls, but she knew you weren’t supposed to move a person who’d possibly injured their spine. She figured drinking the water from his pack would cause him to shift, and in her mind, that could potentially paralyze him. His water supply was an emergency reserve. In the meantime, she’d have to ration hers for both of them.

She set the mirror down, leaning it against a rock so that it still faced the sun, then gently opened his jaw to drop a couple of tiny droplets onto his tongue. Not too much.

This was a dicey decision. She knew he probably couldn’t swallow, and certainly didn’t want to end up drowning him on dry land. But she still couldn’t be sure of what his subconscious state was, and the idea that he could have been internally screaming at her for water made her panic start to rise again. If she could make him feel like he was getting something, that eased what she was sure was her conscience. Especially since—for some reason—all of this was starting to feel like it was her fault.

She poured a small palmful into her hand and rubbed it over his lips and face.

“How are you feeling?”

It was sort of asinine to ask such a question, knowing he wasn’t going to answer. And even if he could, she had an idea of what the answer would be.

“Well, I feel like I’m dying, Samantha. How are you?”

“You’re not going to die,” she reassured him, pretending to answer his pretend response to her question. She picked up the mirror again and began tilting. “Someone’s going to come. Just hang in there.”

Her stomach growled. As far as it was concerned, they should have been back at the campsite eating the dehydrated hiking food by then. She still had a granola bar left, but like the water, she’d have to save it in case things got desperate. Not that they weren’t already desperate. She needed it for when they werereallydesperate.

“You know what would be good right now?” she asked his still motionless face as she used her free hand to rub a bit of the water through his hair. “Wedge salad. I could eat a mountain of wedge salad right now. With bleu cheese crumbles and bacon and all that stuff. I mean, doesn’t iceberg lettuce sound like the best thing in the world right now?”

Merely saying the word brought her an odd sense of satisfaction.