Page 6 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Three

The light on Sam’s helmet flickers and then dies twenty feet into our trek up the trail.

“Top-notch rescue,” I say, still in his arms. “Didn’t they teach you to charge your lantern in hero school?”

“We’ll be fine,” he tells me, still climbing. “It only takes eighteen minutes for night vision to kick in.”

“Fantastic. I’ll just scream until then.”

He laughs, surprising me. “You’re funny. And light as a feather. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Not since the last time I was rescued.”

“Now you’re making me jealous.”

“Shut up.” I roll my eyes. At least he can’t see me smiling in the dark.

“Almost there,” he says. “Uh-oh. Oh no.”

“Oh no, what?”

Up the path, a torrent of water, mud, and rocks rushes toward Sam’s legs. “I was hoping we’d make it to the Jeep before the levee broke.”

This is the levee he predicted would break while I yelled at him on the beach. If he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t tossed me over his shoulder, this avalanche would soon be landing on my tent, smothering my campsite, smashing me and all my possessions. I’d have been sent straight out to sea.

“Oh no,” I whisper, tensing in his arms as he presses against the current. For the first time tonight, I feel truly afraid.

“Don’t worry,” he says, so warmly and softly that I turn to meet his eyes. I still can’t see him, but I want to. “I’ve got you.”

I can hear in Sam’s voice how he isn’t afraid. It eases my mind a little.

“Hold on!” he shouts, as the mudslide slams into his thighs and stops us in our tracks. I feel his spine bow backward like a fishing pole, then straighten. He presses on.

“Dude,” I say, impressed.

“Learned that one in hero school.”

“What were you, valedictorian?”

“Sorta.” He dodges passing boulders and uprooted trees, moving nimbly, holding me tightly, never faltering.

Not once. It’s as if he possesses a preternatural power, like the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein trotting across the Alps for weeks or Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian never loosening his intergalactic grip on Baby Yoda.

Angry new rivers swirl around us, carving the earth with violent force.

Sam pauses, grunts, lunges forward—until we’re all the way up to the top of the trail.

I’m almost disappointed when he sets me down near the cliff’s edge, the same place where my taxi driver dropped me off this afternoon.

Water courses over the tops my rain boots, flowing inside and freezing my ankles.

The island feels oddly empty, except for the two of us and the storm.

The legion of deer is nowhere to be found.

I wonder where they go in apocalyptic moments like these.

I wonder why I was the only camper on that beach.

I wonder what the flare was that Sam thought he saw. The light that sent him down to me.

He pulls a ring of keys from the pocket of his jeans and presses the Unlock button for his Jeep.

I don’t see the car, but I swipe my soaking hair out of my eyes and try to smooth it down, suddenly aware that in a moment we’ll climb into his Jeep, straight into an overhead lighting situation—and something tells me Sam will be looking like tennis legend Taylor Fritz crossed with Charles Melton and Tom Bateman…

whereas I will look like something from the Star Wars cantina scene.

Having written dozens of erotically charged apocalyptic episodes of Zombie Hospital , I’m happy to discover that, despite what that cranky Variety TV critic wrote in his review, I’ve actually been onto something: The end of the world can be a turn-on.

“Sorry about this,” Sam says, turning in a slow circle. “I must have parked a little farther off the road…”

I follow as he strides inland, away from the cliff, still holding out his keys, still pressing the Unlock button. A sudden blast of wind blows me sideways. My feet slip in the mud, and when I stagger to catch my balance, my foot finds only air.

“Sam!” I cry out.

His arm is quickly around my waist, pulling me against him, where it’s warm and far more solid than the ground. For the second time in five minutes, he saves me.

“You okay?” He studies me. The longer we stare at each other, the more brightly his eyes exude this warmth , like someone backstage is turning up a light inside of him.

It makes it impossible to break his gaze.

Something inside me says, Keep looking until you can put this into words .

What I’m feeling in my chest is almost playful, strangely happy—entirely at odds with everything else about this situation.

My entire night, and possibly my entire weekend, has been upended.

“I…I think so?” I am, because of him.

“What happened?” Sam asks.

“There’s a drop. I didn’t see it.”

“There’s no drop here. I know this route like the back of my skull.”

“Wait. What?”

“Oh wow,” Sam says, halting as if he’s just run into an imaginary door. “Oh crap .” He turns his head to me, then back in the direction he’d been facing. “Look.”

He bangs on his helmet, and a weak stream of light flickers long enough to illuminate a deep ravine below. At the bottom, a hundred feet beneath us, I see the dented, upside-down reflection of a word:

JEEP

For a moment, we just stand in the pouring rain and stare. The miner’s light goes black again.

Sam finally says, “I guess there is a drop.”

“Yeah, maybe you should check in on the back of your skull.”

“Let’s get out of this storm.”

“How?” I ask, shivering. “Your Jeep is totaled. And isn’t it six miles to Two Harbors?”

“I know something closer.”

We trudge so long in darkness, up and then down and then up steep and muddy slopes, that eventually I lose track of time.

When finally the downpour dwindles, so does the temperature.

My teeth chatter. The chill penetrates my bones.

The only part of me that’s warm is my left hand, in Sam’s, which he uses now to gesture up ahead.

At a cabin that stands at the end of a path cut through tall grass and wildflowers. It looks like something out of a fairy tale.

It’s modest and charming, built of rough-hewn logs. There’s a porch, a tin roof, two large windows downstairs, and a tiny window up top—near the chimney, from which curls an undulating arm of smoke.

“Who lives here?” I ask as we approach the cabin. “The Seven Dwarves and Jason Voorhees?”

“I do,” Sam says, eyeing the place with a look of pride. “It belongs to the Conservancy—they handle the land trust of the entire island—but I get to hang my helmet here while I complete my training.”

I clear my throat. “Training?”

“All right, you got me. You’re my first rescue,” Sam says, like it’s a huge compliment.

“ What ?”

“Success, though, right?”

I scowl. “You were a virgin. Now it all makes sense.”

“What makes sense?” he asks, looking wounded.

“You did show up looking for someone else,” I say, teasing him. “And when it was time to go home, you forgot where you parked your car.”

When Sam laughs, his eyes crinkle and he looks down at his feet, nudging the wood stairs with the toe of his boot.

“Yeah, well, now I’m inviting you to stay the night,” he says. “So, we must have done something right.”

This comment silences me as we step onto the porch of the cabin. It feels like a lifetime since I wasn’t feeling rain. Sam still holds my hand. We seem to notice this fact simultaneously. His fingers slide loose. Something subtle and enormous shifts now that we’re not touching.

He points at where he’s standing on the porch. “This is where I was when I saw the flare.”

I look into the sky, imagining his perspective.

Then down at the beach, the sliver of it that’s visible from here.

It feels so far away, where we first met.

Another world. Whatever it was that Sam mistook for a flare, I realize I’m grateful it happened.

I’m alive because of him. And more than that, I’m intrigued to find myself here. But I’m unsure what happens next.

I hear a creak behind me and realize Sam has opened his front door. He stands at the threshold and gestures inside.

“You coming? Or you want to hang out with your storm some more?”

In the zombie TV drama, this is the part when the audience would be screaming, “Don’t go in there, you moron!”

But I’m no dewy ingenue. I’m a waterlogged queen of plot and motivation, and here’s the important thing:

I have nowhere else to go.

Here’s another thing:

If I were directing a scene in which a strapping young stranger needed to convey that his invitation of hospitality to a slightly less young woman was a sincere and simple offer of protection, then this man’s gentle-giant posture, the earnest set of his jaw, and the kind, alluring sparkle in his eyes is how I would direct the actor to play it.

When it aired, the fans at home would scream, “Go in there, girl! Go get it!”

And I’m not just saying this because I’m freezing and soaked to my core. I’m saying it with my director’s hat on, and I take that shit seriously.

But first, I really do need to bring up the elephant on the porch.

“Look,” I say, pulling back the hood on my raincoat. “I work with hot people every day.”

“Congratulations?” He smiles. Damn those dimples.

“You destroyed my tent on a desert island with no other shelter within walking distance. Therefore, I have to stay with you. In this trope of a cabin. Where there’d better not be only one bed.”

“I’m waiting for you to get to the part about me saving your life.”

“Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t.”

“Maybe I definitely did.” He takes a step toward me and laughs under his breath.

I find that I’m holding mine. “It’s nothing I haven’t lost before.”

“What does that mean?” Sam asks, tilting his head. “You’ve been…dead?”

“Never mind.” I look away. I can’t believe I just said that. I never talk about my near-death experience with anyone but Edie.

“Fenny, are you trying to tell me you’re not going to sleep with me tonight?”

“To put it bluntly, yes.”

Sam studies me, a small smile turning bigger on his very smooth lips.

“Not that I have to explain myself on that particular front,” I continue, “but I don’t even know your last name, or where you’re from, or how many more hours you have yet to log to be an actual employee of this island, or if you like dogs, or have any allergies, or your favorite movie, or what your mother’s name is, or what kind of afterlife you believe in. ”

“Afterlife?”

“Yes. Generally, this is a thing I would need to know about someone before…but none of that is happening. With us. Is what I’m trying to say.”

“I respect that.” Sam nods, his smile now a little teasing. “But you presume I’m the kind of man who’d just sleep with any gorgeous woman he rescues from certain death?”

“I—I don’t presume,” I stammer. “And you know, my death wasn’t exactly certain —”

“That’s the word you take issue with? Not gorgeous ?” he asks softly, seeming to take all of me in with a single nod until I feel warm inside. “It’s good when a gorgeous woman knows she’s gorgeous.”

“I didn’t say that—”

“You’re shivering,” he says, concerned. “How about we just go inside, dry off, and maybe have a cup of tea?”

“Okay.”

Sam enters the cabin and I follow. He crosses the room, strikes a wooden match, and lights a thick white candle.

The humble exterior of the cabin hasn’t prepared me for what the candlelight reveals.

The vast, open, two-story space looks like Frank Lloyd Wright and Norman Rockwell were hiding out together.

A geometric heirloom quilt is draped over the couch.

A primitive oil portrait of a Catalina Island fox hangs on the wall.

The kitchen is vintage and iron and not too shabbily equipped.

Built-in Douglas fir bookshelves stretch from floor to second-story ceiling, complete with a custom ladder that rolls on metal tracks.

A fire fades in the elaborate fireplace, which is decorated with intricate carvings.

“Holy shit,” I say. “Who built this place?”

“It was bare bones when I moved in. The kitchen was trashed but mostly the same. I did everything else.”

“You… did that fireplace?”

“I carved it. It’s based on a design by William Blake. The figures represent each of the four seasons.”

I look closer and I see it. Sam’s hand-carved personifications of the phases of the year—a plump baby for spring, a laughing young woman for summer, a strong matriarch for autumn, and an austere witch for winter.

“You’re telling me that you built all this”—I turn from the fireplace to gesture at the cabin’s many warm and inviting features—“in your spare time?”

“You make it sound like I’m permanently and forlornly holed up here with my chisel.”

“Who said anything about forlornly?”

“Yes, I like woodworking, but I also like hiking and fishing, cliff-diving, zip-lining—”

“You must have a lot of free time,” I say. Most people say this sentence as a dig, but I’m honestly envious that Sam has time for so many fascinating hobbies.

He lifts a shoulder casually. “I just call it living.”

“I’m sorry, I’m still processing all this. You built the bookshelves, too? And the ladder?”

“I’m pretty proud of that.”

“Have you read all these books?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you intend to read them?”

“Why else would I have them?”

“And you’re just going to leave here when you’re done with training?”

“God, I can’t wait.”

I really didn’t need to know that my knight in flooded armor is also a Jesus-level carpenter. My gaze falls on a built-in wet bar with wine bottle cubbyholes and a knotted pine shelf holding half a dozen bottles.

“You build that wet bar, fancy pants?” I ask.

“In less than a week.”

This island, this weekend, and this man continue to surprise me, to pull the floor out from under me just when I thought I knew where I stood. I’m more surprised than anyone when I turn to Sam and say, with a hint of challenge in my voice:

“Let’s see how fast you can make a highball.”