“Like it? No.” She smiled. “I love it.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
Our lips re-joined.
“Do you think they know?” I asked, pulling away and running a hand through my hair. I’d grown it out again and the length was starting to annoy.
“About Driftwood? I guess. But only if they’ve been sneaky and gone where we told them not to.”
My mind switched to the mongrel pup we’d rescued from the local shelter on the mainland. A scruffy cross on death row. He was currently hidden in the woods by the orchard, waiting to meet his new master and mistress.
We’d gone Christmas shopping for the children, and just like Pippa had every year the turtles came to nest, they’d begged us for a pet.
We’d finally decided to make that wish come true.
We’d also decided to make the turtle’s survival that much easier for the hatchlings, and (with the Governments Conservations approval) installed a few holding tanks inlaid into the sand so the baby turtles could swim and be protected for a few days before flipper-crawling to the open sea.
“Fancy sleeping under the stars tonight, once everyone has gone?”
Estelle nodded. “I’d love that.”
“Perhaps, do our Christmas wishes in the sand, like old times?”
“I’d love that, too.” Her hazel eyes glowed. “You’re full of great ideas today.”
I smirked. “I try.”
Moments like these made my life complete. However, I wasn’t saying our lives were ease and glory all the time. We had rough moments (if a hurricane ripped through), we still got sick, and still argued.
But compared to what the rat race endured, we lived in utopia.
Even our children hardly moaned or complained.
Because what was there to argue about when you lived in paradise?
Nothing.
And if there ever was discord, our tradition of writing messages helped solve it.
If we were angry, we wrote it in the sand.
If we were sad, we wrote it so the waves could smooth it away.
It was the perfect Etch A Sketch for our problems.
“Talking of messages...” I moved back, waiting until Estelle tapered off her music and stood. “You won’t guess what I found last night when I went for a swim.”
“Oh?” She came toward me, slinking her arms around my waist. “What?”
“Something you never told me about.”
“Like what?”
“Like a bottle...”
“A bottle?” Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you—”
“A message in a bottle.”
“What...” She paused then enlightenment brightened her face. “Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
She dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry. It was a low point, and I...I wasn’t thinking.”
“So you ripped out one of your songs and hoped someone would find us?” I cupped her cheek. “Estelle, you do know which song you tossed into the sea, right? You do know you didn’t write down any details of us, the crash, anything to help them locate us if by some miracle the tide carried the bottle to help, rather than circle the atoll to wash up on the very shore you threw it from.”
“I...I’m not sure. I don’t remember much of that night, to be honest. I just grabbed a page, stuffed it into the plastic, screwed the cap on, and threw it.” She shrugged. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Then why were the words about us?”
Her cheek warmed beneath my palm. “What—what do you mean? They weren’t about us. The lyrics were about death and darkness and pain.”
“No, Stel...they weren’t.”
We stood silently, her eyes searching mine, trying to understand.
Dropping my touch, I pulled out the crinkled, waterlogged page from my back pocket.
When I’d found it last night, bobbing in the tide as if begging me to find it, I didn’t have a clue what the contents were. For a moment, I worried some other poor schmuck was capsized and castaway, desperate for someone to rescue him.
I wasn’t prepared to see Estelle’s hand-writing.
Or read a song I’d never had the pleasure of seeing.
But somehow, after almost five years of bliss on an island that’d given almost four years of nightmares, it was the fautless end.
The only end.
The beginning of our new conception.
Breathing shallowly, Estelle straightened out the page and read, “I crash landed to find him. I fell from the sky to know him. I died a mortal death to be worthy of him. I am reborn because of him.
“If rescue never comes, know I didn’t need it. If help never arrives, know I didn’t want it. If we die here together, be happy knowing this was our destiny.
“Don’t find us. Don’t mourn us. Don’t weep for us. Because we were the lucky ones, the chosen ones, the only ones for each other.”
Tears rained from her eyes as she looked up.
Our bodies melted together; our lips kissed softly. “I knew you loved me, Estelle. But that...knowing that even in your darkest moments, you were prepared to die beside me, that you wouldn’t have left me, that you’d chosen me over life, over safety, over everything. You couldn’t have given me a more priceless gift.”
“But don’t you see, I didn’t give you that.” Her lips curved into the sweetest, sexiest smile. “You did. The day you gave me Coco; the day you gave me Finnek. The day you gave me your heart, G, you made my fate shift, and all of this—our island, our home, our very existence could vanish and I would still be the happiest woman in the world because I’d have you.”