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Chapter fourteen

Weston

O ne moment, she’s standing there, staring at her hands. The next, she’s crumbling towards the jungle floor.

“Shit!” Bower exclaims, leaping forward to catch her just before her head hits the ground. He cradles her head in his lap as King and I kneel on either side of her, inspecting her for injuries.

I notice red scratches on her arms that look like they happened recently, some of them looking slightly inflamed.

“What happened?” Bower asks, seeing what I’m looking at.

“I don’t think this has to do with what just happened,” I tell him as I glance at the rest of her body. I can see faint white scars all over her skin. My fists clench in frustration and anger. She’s been here for a while. These marks indicate her having a rough life.

“She just… collapsed,” King says, gently pushing a loose piece of hair away from her face.

“I think she might have had a panic attack,” I say, remembering the way her eyes had glossed over right before she fell.

“But nothing happened. Aren't there normally signs? Staggered breathing, light-headedness, things like that?” Bower asks .

“Panic attacks can look different for everyone,” I tell him.

“Back in the Marines, I watched soldiers freeze up, break down… guys you’d never expect.

It doesn’t take much, just the right trigger.

I’ve even had some myself, before I got help.

With Zee, I think seeing the blood on her hands triggered something.

She probably stopped breathing and passed out from lack of oxygen. ”

“What, like she just forgot to breathe? I didn’t even know that was a thing,” he says, his voice filled with concern as we all stare down at her unconscious body.

“Her panic took over her body.”

“What do we do?” King asks. “To help her.”

“We should try to clean some of this blood off of her. We can't clean her clothes, but we can clean her skin,” I tell them, assessing the amount of blood. It’s not too bad.

“We should take her to the waterfall. I don’t think we have enough in our waterskins,” King says, getting to his feet.

“The sun is setting quickly now. We shouldn’t walk around when it’s dark. Why don’t you run and fill up our water and I’ll grab something to use as a washcloth from my pack in the tree hut?”

“Got it,” King says, grabbing the three waterskins and jogging out of camp.

“Bower, you stay with her, yell if she starts to wake up.” He nods, not lifting his eyes from her face.

It doesn’t take long to grab a spare shirt and some soap and King arrives a couple minutes later, panting heavily, clearly having run the whole way there and back.

“Good job, King. I’m gonna wash her face first, then you can hold an arm up while I wipe. ”

As gently as I can, I clean her sun-kissed skin. For someone living outside for who knows how long, her skin was in surprisingly good shape. I suppose the jungle offers a lot of shade.

“There you are,” I murmur, when I get the last bit of blood off her face. Next, I clean her neck and the exposed skin above her top. Then I move to her arms. I make sure to clean the scratches there, wishing I had some clean bandages to wrap them in.

By the time I’m finished, the sun has set, and she’s still out cold.

“Is it this dark every night?” Bower asks, glancing up at the sky.

“Yeah, we’re just usually in the hut, asleep by this time,” King reminds him.

“We can’t leave her out here. I’m going to have to put her over my shoulder to carry her up to the hut. She can sleep in the bed,” I tell them as I stand, hoisting her up as gently as I can, and placing her over my shoulder.

King steadies the bottom of the ladder for me as I climb, it’s more difficult than I expected as I don’t want her to fall, but before long I have her placed in the bed. It’s more like just a mattress, but it’s the closest thing we have here, and a hell of a lot better than the dirty jungle floor.

It’s too dark to see anything, but the thought of losing sight of her scares me. I sit on the ground beside her bed and find her hand, holding it tightly in mine as King settles somewhere close by.

“Hey, guys?” Bower whispers from nearby.

“Yeah?” We both answer quietly, not wanting to wake her.

“Why do you think the sight of blood scared her so much? I can’t imagine that’s the first boar she’s killed.”

“It was probably seeing the blood on her hands,” King whispers .

“It brought back a bad memory for her,” I agree.

I think about what that must mean. That something has happened in her past that left her covered in blood and traumatized.

My stomach twists with the unwelcome sensation of her being in trouble, and me not being there to help, which is stupid, I didn’t know her when that happened.

I think about the first time I saw her eyes, hiding in that tree.

Had she been watching me bathe? I’m not sure if I should be upset by that or not.

If I’m being honest, I don’t really mind her watching me.

In fact, if the twitch of my dick is anything to go by, I like it a lot.

I’d rather she’d have joined me, though.

She’s such a strange contradiction. Somehow she’s fierce and independent and she’d have to be incredibly strong-willed to live out here on her own.

But she’s also shy and hesitant. But what resonates with me the most is how she refused my offer to trade for help, saying she’d give it willingly.

She knows we’re in over our heads on this island, and yet she’s not taken advantage of that.

In fact, she’s helped us at every turn. Bringing us fruit and waterskins, saving us from the boar, then teaching us what to do with it afterwards. She’s kind and sweet, the type of girl who many would take advantage of.

Someone else had been here, we saw the grave. That has to be her father. Did she bury him? Even though she didn’t answer my question, I’m ninety-nine percent sure the four of us are the only humans left on this island.

When I saw her kill that wild boar to save us, she looked wild and savage, but none of her other actions supported that.

No, this girl is no savage. She’s just lost.