She’d shown me what a hypocrite I’d been.

I hurt because she wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t let me touch her. I hated that she kept me at arm’s length physically.

But I’d done the same to her. I’d barricaded my emotions. I’d buried my past and locked up my secrets. I’d cut her off emotionally.

My shoulders sagged as an even more heart-destroying conclusion found me.

If I was to earn Estelle’s permission to finally have her, then I had to give something of myself in return. I had to be willing to share.

I had to be willing to let her in.

I had to be willing to let her judge me for herself.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

...............................................

E S T E L L E

......

Time is measured more than in minutes and hours. Time is more complex than dials on a wall or hands on a clock. Time is contrary.

Twenty-six years, I’d been alive. Two years, I’d been a successful songwriter singer. Three months, I’d been island-wrecked. Two weeks, since I’d touched him.

So why did two weeks feel longer than every year I’d been breathing? Why did three months seem like an eternity?

Taken from the notepad of E.E.

...

FOURTEEN WEEKS

SOMETHING CHANGED IN Galloway the night I’d touched him.

He thawed a little. He smiled more. He made an effort to converse.

In the beginning, I’d been wary—looking for a trap. Then I’d been besotted, drinking in everything he let slip. His revelations were nothing earth-shattering. But I valued him opening up to me, to us. I finally believed we could become true friends and not standoffish survivors.

I learned he didn’t like hard liquor but loved craft beers brewed right. He didn’t like large cities but loved working in wide open spaces on his own. He got headaches when he was stressed. He suffered from claustrophobia. He was an only child and his dad was still alive.

Such simple things but I hoarded each one as if they were the key to unlocking him. Unfortunately, the more I learned about him, the more I wanted him.

My trip to my bamboo spot to pleasure myself became a regular occurrence and the desire to orgasm never stopped tormenting me.

I knew what I needed.

Him.

But no matter how many invitations I gave him: lingering glances, fleeting touches, desperate wordless hints to take me.

He never did.

He permitted my fingers to touch his when we cooked together. He allowed my thigh to rest against his while we carved bowls from coconut shells and weaved another blanket to sleep on.

Yet, he never accepted my solicitations.

He did, however, throw himself into building us a home.

Ever since the week of dismal dusting of rain and shadows, he’d announced we’d waited long enough for a roof over our heads.

Now his splint had come off, he moved more, but he couldn’t hide the anger at not having a fully healed leg and ankle. He limped (he tried not to), but his body was broken and there was nothing we could do.

It didn’t stop him from working with Conner. Together, they slowly dismantled the helicopter’s rotor blades with the aid of rocks and axe, smashing them free from the mast and dragging them through the forest to our beach.

It took them three days to get the two rotors to the sand and another afternoon to dig deep enough holes to ensure the blades stuck proudly from the beach like joists for a wall.

We only had two, but it was better than nothing.

Galloway took his time.

He asked for a page from my notebook and scribbled calculations and schematics, coming up with a draft for our island house.

Once the blades were sturdy and the markings for walls and entrances were drawn by our toes in the sand, I took Galloway to my private zone with the bushes of bamboo.

His eyes lit up. His hands twitched to touch me. And my heart knew if Conner and Pippa hadn’t been with us, he would’ve kissed me.

And if he’d kissed me, I wouldn’t have let him stop.

Pregnancy or no pregnancy.

With the axe, he hacked away bushels of long, strong stems, carting them back to begin the arduous task of erecting walls.

Conner turned out to be a perfect protégé.

Pippa and I took over hunting while the boys spent every daylight hour hacking, splitting, tying, and constructing.

Pippa, apparently, was the chosen one with fishing. She wasn’t strong enough to use the spear, and I had no coordination. But together, we used my tatty t-shirt and a Y-shaped frame to drag the material through the water and catch the smaller silver fish in the shallows.

She became so fast, she could tickle them from the water with her bare hands.

The first meal with the smaller fish had been awful with crunchy scales and bones. But every inch of the creature (minus the entrails and head) was nutritional. The calcium from their bones, the protein from their flesh. Nothing went to waste, and slowly, we invented new ways to cook.

While the boys steadily turned our roofless camp into a home, Pippa and I experimented with menus. We forced ourselves to think outside the box. We wrapped fish fillets in leaves (like nature’s tinfoil) and broiled in charcoal. We pan-fried on rocks and buried pockets of ingredients in hot ash.

Some trials worked and others didn’t. But we never stopped trying.

One afternoon, we shredded three coconuts, warmed some water, and pounded the mixture together. Once a gooey paste, we wrapped it in a purple muslin scarf we’d found in Amelia’s tote. Squeezing the goo as tight as we could, we painstakingly drained the concoction and made coconut milk.