“So, this unfortunate Mollie is your mate?” Jack inquired.
Mike gave him a lopsided grin. “I was thinking the same thing about poor Charlie here. My condolences,” he said to her.
“It could have been worse,” she replied.
“Not by much,” Mike said.
“True.” Charlie playfully bumped Jack’s hip to temper her statement while Mike laughed.
“Nice,” Jack muttered.
Charlie leaned against his side as she chuckled. They may not be off this island yet but escaping the fire had given her a sense of lightheartedness she hadn’t felt in years. Charlie was wrong to think it, that she may be tempting fate by thinking it, but she believed they’d faced the worst.
Dylan tapped Jack on the shoulder. “I can walk.”
Charlie started to tell him no; he was better off resting and regaining his strength, but he would see her concern as treating him like a baby in front of Mike and Jack, and she couldn’t do that to him. Dylan was relatively easygoing, but with the set of his shoulders and jaw, she could tell he was trying to act older in the hopes of impressing them.
Jack stopped walking and set him down. Dylan smiled at him as he stepped back and straightened what remained of his tattered and charred shirt. It took everything she had not to crush him against her and never let him go, but she couldn’t embarrass him. She clasped Jack’s hand and squeezed it as Dylan fell into step beside Mike.
Jack ran his fingers over her cheek before bending to kiss her. When he pulled away, she smiled at him. Theywouldget off this island.
“How many of the Savages do you think survived?” she asked.
“There’s a good chance the fire got most of them,” Mike said.
“And with all the vegetation gone, if they don’t find a hiding place by daybreak, the sun will get more of them,” Jack said.
“But some will find hiding places,” Dylan said.
Charlie’s hand fell to the handle of one of her knives as she considered the possibility of running into a Savage desperate for shelter. She’d slice them apart.
The distant hum of a boat motor drew her attention away from the cliffs. Excitement flared through her when she spotted a boat skimming across the ocean toward them. Then that excitement vanished as the fear it might be Savages took over. Hitting a wave, the boat soared through the air before crashing back to the sea.
“It’s David and Mia,” Mike announced.
Chapter Forty-Five
Charlie letout a cry of joy before she started jumping up and down while waving at the boat. Dylan jumped up and down beside her as he swung his arms in the air and grinned at Charlie. The joy on his face made Charlie’s heart swell. It had been years since his eyes sparkled like that.
Mia grabbed David’s arm and pointed at them. David waved at them before turning the boat and speeding toward them. When he was a couple of hundred feet from shore, David decelerated and coasted closer until the boat bobbed on the waves about fifty feet away. Charlie’s heart hammered with excitement as she stared at the beacon of hope so close to them.
“Can you swim out?” David shouted.
And then her stomach plummeted into her toes. She didnotwant to dip one toe into the ocean ever again, but she would do whatever it took to get Dylan away from this place.
She rested her hand on Dylan’s shoulder. “Do you feel strong enough to swim out there?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be fine, Mom. The boat isn’t far away, and the tide isn’t as strong now that we’re away from the cliffs.”
“But the water is still cold,” she reminded him and tried not to recall the blue of his lips and the stillness of his body.
“We won’t be in it long, and I’m ready to be off this island.”
“So am I,” she murmured, and he did look far better than he had earlier. He looked better than he had in the caves with that shine in his eyes and the rosy glow in his cheeks. Plus, he was a better swimmer than her.
