“Tell me this is a bloody awful joke,” Henry demands, and his sharp tone takes me by surprise.
Theo squares his shoulders.
“Can you do one fucking thing right?” Henry shouts. Theo’s eye twitches, but otherwise he’s frozen. The pressure of his hand on my knee increases, and as unreadable as he’s felt these last couple of days, I recognize his plea immediately. This is some deep-rooted brother shit, and he wants me to stay out of it.
I don’t. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell Henry.
“Wren,” Theo says sharply.
“He doesn’t! We wouldn’t have even found that phone if it wasn’t for you. It’s not your fault that his battery life was decimated because he didn’t put his phone on airplane mode.”
Henry scoffs.
“You should have some water,” Naomi says quietly as she holds out the bottle to Theo.
“Make him get his own.” Henry snatches the bottle from Naomi’s hand. “We found waterandmade the fire, while Theo hasn’t done a bloody thing to help. He says he doesn’t want special treatment just because he was born first. Time to stop giving it to him.” He unscrews the top and drains the bottle in one long gulp.
“You’ve always been an arse when you’re drunk,” Victoria says.
“How could he be drunk?” I ask.
“He found booze with the salvaged luggage,” Victoria says.
Winston groans from his position flat on his back on the rocky ground. “Got any of that left?”
“Is there food down there?” Brooke asks Henry.
“Ask my brother, he’s the one hoarding stuff.”
“Am not,” Theo protests, but Henry’s accusation is a fuse that quickly burns through everyone’s short temper. Soon nearly everyone is yelling over each other, slinging accusations in all directions.
I draw my knees into my chest and rest my cheek on them. I turn to Theo, who is slumped over with his head in his hands. Smoke curls in the distance between us. I nudge him. He looks at me warily.
Thank you.I mouth the words.
You too,he mouths back.
Naomi leans forward to be heard over the fighting. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“And go where?”
She grins. “I’ve got an idea.”
CHAPTER17
Naomi pulls me to my feet while the others argue and Brooke slips Winston the last of the airplane booze.
“Where are you going?” Reggie demands, looking up from the campfire.
“Be back soon!” Naomi calls over her shoulder. She leads me down the coast in the opposite direction Theo and I came from. We’re both barefoot, stumbling wearily across the mossy rocks in the dying light, with Comet hot on our heels. “The royals are intense. Do you think Theo really hid the alcohol?”
“I—”
“Henry was being a total jerk. I don’t blame him for being upset, obviously, but he shouldn’t have yelled at Theo like that. Major ick.”
“Actually—”
“We’re all hungry, tired, and scared, but that’s no reason to be rude.” Naomi stops to peer over the edge of the cliff. “This is the spot! We’re climbing down.”
