Adventure to Love (21 page)

Morgan had to stifle a laugh. By now, she was convinced that Ky had taken some kind of dramatic acting class before he started the show. Everything he did was overstated, theatrical, and a little too late-night-infomercial to take seriously.

Ky was a sweet guy, but he had to know that his excessive gesturing and lengthy monologues fit better into the world of Ginsu knives and the Bump It than reality television.

“Ladies, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me privately. The conversations we had were so special to me, and they helped me to make my final decision about who’s going to go home tonight.” Ky paused and raised an eyebrow for emphasis.

“Again, I have to say that I hope there are no hard feelings. I care for each of you very deeply, and you all have something special to offer. But, I’m here to meet my best friend and my soul mate. So, tonight I’m going to have to send home . . . Harper.”

The group remained silent. Harper blinked back at Ky with wide eyes, as if she hadn’t heard a word he had said.

Morgan nudged her and whispered, “Harper, I think you’re supposed to get up and say goodbye now. Harper?”

Harper rose like a zombie. She walked stiffly over to Ky and let him hug her goodbye. She turned to the girls behind her and gave a sad, halfhearted wave.

Finally, she spoke. “I can’t believe it.”

Ky took Harper’s shock as devastation at being kicked out of the competition. He gave her another long hug and then said, “I know it’s hard, Harper. But it’s meant so much to me to get to know you and-”

“No. Fuck this place. Fuck you. And fuck
you
! And fuck
you
!” Harper pointed each of them in turn as she spoke.

Morgan cupped her hand over her mouth to hide her smile at Ky’s stunned expression, his mouth hanging open in shock. Brinkley covered her eyes.

Harper continued. “I already tried to leave this place once, and now you’re kicking me out? I hope everyone knows that this wasn’t worth it, not even for breast implants. This show was a total crock of shit, and I hope you all starve to death!”

With that, Harper spun on her heel and stormed off toward her cabin. No one spoke for several seconds.

Then Ky cleared his throat and said, “I’m so sorry you ladies had to hear that. But what was she talking about? Breast implants?”

Ky was once again interrupted by a screech coming from the cabin behind them. Harper flung her four oversized Louis Vuitton suitcases at the flimsy screen door of the cabin one by one.

Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!
They landed on their sides on the muddy ground in front of the cabin. Harper was right behind them. She jumped through the doorway and almost collided with her largest suitcase.

She looked back at the group next to the campfire again and screamed, “Fuck youuuuuu!” with both middle fingers in the air.

Now Morgan couldn’t stop laughing. She laughed so hard she was crying. The best part of all was that every second of the madness/mental breakdown/Lindsay Lohan-inspired shitfest was captured on camera. It’d probably be aired on the finale of the show and would be previewed on every single commercial and teaser leading up to it.
It was just too good.

Chapter 17

Brinkley

Brinkley’s Confessional:
I’m sorry, I’m just having a really hard time gathering my thoughts. I’m so tired and so hungry that it’s hard to think straight. But, still, we couldn’t be in a more beautiful place to camp at in the jungle, could we? I just feel really blessed to be here. I can’t believe I’m in the final two. I hope that we only have a few more days before Ky makes his big decision because I could use a good meal and a decent night’s sleep. But other than that, I’m doing great!

Brinkley woke up with the sun. The same thing that she’d been doing every day for the past week and a half they’d been stranded at the jungle campsite. Back home, she absolutely loved waking up to see the sunrise. It was exhilarating. It made her feel like she was the only person in the world that got to see such a beautiful part of God’s creation.

But now, she squinted in frustration at the sun rising through the jungle treetops and beating down on her through the screened-in porch. She cupped her hands over her eyes. Her head was throbbing, mostly from dehydration.

The water pump was still out at the campsite. They were going to have to hike back into the jungle to get to the river if they wanted any fresh water for the day. But she hardly had the strength to get out of bed, let alone hike a good five miles back into the jungle. She was completely spent. She’d never felt so exhausted in her entire life.

And all of the drama with Harper’s departure had left her head spinning. Not only was Harper’s colorful language shocking, to say the least, but she still couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. Was the winner of the show going to get breast implants? And if so, could she turn them down, or was that considered rude or a violation of her contract?

She didn’t think it was legal to force someone to get breast implants just for winning a reality competition, but then again, Hollywood was a pretty strange place.

She saw Morgan stir in the hammock next to her. “Morgan?”

“Hmm?” Morgan’s eyes were still closed.

“Do you-do you think we have to get breast implants if we win the show?” she asked meekly.

Morgan groaned and flung an arm over her eyes. “Brinkley, what the hell are you talking about?”

She paused, unsure of whether or not she should continue. She probably sounded like a total idiot. She’d probably gotten it all mixed up somehow.

“Um, it was just that Harper said that thing about not getting her breast implants because she was getting kicked off the show. So I was just wondering if you saw that in your contract, and maybe I missed it? I was just wondering if we have to get breast implants if we win?”

That got Morgan to sit up in her hammock. She took one look at her and started to laugh. Hard.

Brinkley felt heat rise to her cheeks. She knew it. She knew she’d gotten it all wrong, and now she sounded like some kind of country bumpkin idiot.

Morgan’s laughter finally slowed down. “Oh, that is too good!” She wiped tears away from her eyes. “No, no, Brinkley, you have nothing to worry about. It wasn’t in our contract. Harper just had it in her crazy little head that she was going to win the show, get engaged to Ky, and get free breast implants from his celebrity plastic surgeon dad as a gift, or some shit like that.”

Morgan scanned her face and said, “Hey, don’t be embarrassed. It was an honest mistake. If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s Harper for being such a superficial, shallow bitch who entered a competition just to get cosmetic surgery.”

Brinkley nodded, making a mental note to keep her mouth shut from then on whenever she had a silly question like that, especially since the cameras were always rolling.

The fewer people that there were at the camp, the harder it was to distract themselves from the reality of their situation. She stared at the campfire, which was nothing more than an empty fire pit with a few lumps of used charcoal inside.

The staff at the camp was responsible for starting the daily fires. At least they had been for the first few days of their arrival. But now that the staff was nowhere to be found, the fire had gone with them.

Ky had lit the last few fires with some dry wood that he’d gathered and a partially empty package of matches from the survival pack. But now those matches were long gone after cooking fish for dinner the night before. If the group wanted a fire, they were going to have to do it true Boy Scout style. Meaning, they were going to have to search for dry grass and rub two sticks together to get a fire going.

That was something that she had never done before in all her years as a Girl Scout. Her Girl Scout training more so consisted of selling cookies and going to summer camp with her friends. She’d learned a few so-called survival skills at camp, like how to tell the difference between a male and female cardinal. But that was where her survival knowledge ended, apart from fishing.

She assumed that Ky had never been a Boy Scout. He barely knew how to strike a match properly, causing him to waste at least five good matches before he got the fire lit the last time. When she thought back on it, frustration welled up in the pit of her stomach.

If Ky knew at least a little bit about lighting a fire, then they’d have more matches today. And if they had even one more match, then maybe they’d be able to use the rest of the dried wood to start a fire and eat something for breakfast.

Cooking leaves and fish had been their only hope. She had no clue which berries were and weren’t poisonous. She didn’t want to chance eating anything besides fish and plantain leaves.

The last thing that she needed was to poison herself and the entire group, when there wasn’t anyone to give them medical attention. At the very least, she didn’t want to have to deal with any “digestive problems” without a real toilet, in front of the man she could possibly marry.
No, thank you.

The intense pressure was causing her to look at Ky in a whole new light. He was still the same Ky. Handsome, charming, and sweet, but he also was pretty useless when it came to any kind of outdoorsy activity. So, when the three of them were stranded in the wilderness with no one to call for help, Ky had nothing to offer.

She didn’t want to complain. He still made her feel so special whenever he looked into her eyes. He made her feel like she was the only woman he was talking to, even in a group of ten, or now two, women.

But she couldn’t help cringing every time Ky made a joke about being the son of a plastic surgeon. He was poking fun at himself, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he had no clue which end of a hook to bait, let alone how to get them all out of this terrible mess.

According to Ky, the only time that he had spent outdoors was when he’d summered at some château in Europe where he had spent the entire month of July horseback riding. A twelfth birthday gift from his filthy rich father, who wasn’t able to attend because no one could cover for him at the practice.

Yes, Ky had really used the word “summered” to describe his vacation. That stuck out to her like a sore thumb. She now acknowledged that the two of them couldn’t be more different, especially since she had never been anywhere near Europe. Signing up for the show had been the first time she had been out of the country, not to mention the Midwest.

She studied Ky sitting on a log across from her. His hair had gotten longer and shaggier. The scruff on his face was at least a week old, and it was starting to come together as a beard with patches in a few places.

His dark brown eyes watched her, staring without blinking. It made her heart beat faster. So what if Ky was never going to be the type of father to take their kids on camping trips? So what if he’d have to call hired help to change a tire if they ever got a flat?

He was undeniably gorgeous, even without showering or shaving for at least a week. She couldn’t remember how long they’d been there, but it must have been more than seven days. She would have been cutting notches into the wall of her cabin if she’d known that they were going to be legitimately stranded for that long.

The thought made her laugh. Morgan looked up at her, startled. The entire group had been sitting in silence for at least an hour. It definitely made for some boring film, but the cameramen were still there nonetheless, relentless in their quest to capture every second of action that was probably going to be sliced, spliced, and edited into something much more interesting for national TV.

At least she hoped. She really doubted that all of the viewers were going to want to watch the three of them sit in silence for hours and pick at their fingernails because they had nothing better to do. No food, no water, and very little sleep weren’t just making them boring. It was making them borderline crazy.

“What did you say?” Morgan jerked her head to attention.

“Uh, I didn’t say anything,” Brinkley furrowed her brows.

“Sorry, I thought you said something.”

Morgan’s eyes were vacant and hollow. They were all so hungry that their facial features had started to change. Morgan used to have plump, gorgeous cheekbones and soft, silky skin. Now her skin was taut and streaked with dirt. Her cheekbones looked like just that, hard little bones protruding from her cheeks that made her face look sharp, like a bird.

Brinkley didn’t even want to think about what she looked like. If there was a silver lining to the whole situation, it was that she’d probably lost enough weight to fit into the size three jeans that she’d worn in middle school.
Harper would have been so proud,
she thought to herself bitterly.

But besides that, she was sure that her face was filthy, her hair was stringy, and her breath was absolutely horrible.

That was something she’d never thought about when she’d watched
Survivor
in the past. All of the contestants seemed to go a little crazy after spending days in the wilderness without any real food or distractions, but nobody commented on how bad their breath really was.

When you factored in at least a week without a toothbrush, or anything fresh in her mouth, she didn’t want to get closer than two feet to anyone. Her mouth tasted like an old sock day in and day out. That meant that any kind of potential romance with the “eligible bachelor” was completely out.

But who wanted to think about romance at a time like that? She was tired, irritable, and so very hungry. Food seemed to be the only thing on her mind these days.

She decided to break the silence again. She had no idea how much time had passed since she’d zoned out the second time. It could have been five minutes, ten, or even an hour. Who knew? And who really cared at that point?

Wasted time was a gift, in her opinion. It just meant that they were that much closer to getting home and out of the jungle for good.

She cleared her throat. “Do you think we should try to go back to the river to get food?”

Morgan stared back at her with a blank expression on her face. She didn’t seem to register a word that she had said. Brinkley started to repeat herself, but Morgan held up her hand to interrupt.

“I don’t want to be the one to cause problems, but I don’t think I can hike back out there,” Morgan said in a weak voice. “I’ll do what I can to prepare the food, but I don’t have the energy to go back into the jungle again.”

Brinkley let out a sigh. None of them had the energy to do anything. That was the whole point of getting food in the first place. Her head hurt. Nothing made sense anymore.

“It’s like a chicken and an egg,” she mumbled as she put her head in her hands. She just needed to rest for a minute. Close her eyes. Stop everything from spinning around her. “How are we supposed to get food if we don’t have the energy, and how are we supposed to get energy to find food without any food for energy?”

Brinkley sat motionless for several minutes. She heard the sound of footsteps moving closer, then someone sat down on the log next to her. From the corner of her eye, she could see a hairy leg.
Ky.
She felt his hand on her back as he rubbed back and forth.

But instead of feeling comforting, it felt like sandpaper scratching against her skin. Her spine was protruding thanks to the crash jungle diet, and each rub across her back felt like Ky’s hand was scraping across raw skin.

She stiffened. “Could you just stop that for a moment?”

Ky froze. He mumbled something back to her along the lines of,
I was just trying to be nice.
Of course, she knew that, but by that point, she didn’t really care. All of her social niceties and biting her tongue and hiding how she felt to spare feelings had flown out the window.

Her skin felt like it was on fire. Her head was swimming. She could barely muster up the energy to talk, let alone flirt with Ky. You’d think that he of all people would understand that.

She raised her head. From across the campsite, Morgan was staring at her with a strange expression on her face.

“What?” she asked, sharper than she had intended.

“Your face, it looks different somehow. You have little red dots all over your cheeks,” Morgan pointed in her general direction. “Do you feel all right?”

Brinkley felt pretty sure Morgan was hallucinating. But when she looked at Morgan’s face, she saw little white spots of light that swirled and surrounded Morgan’s head in a halo. It was actually kind of pretty. It made Morgan look beautiful and serene, like some kind of otherworldly creature.

“Yeah, well, you have white spots on your head.”

Through bleary eyes, she watched Morgan shoot Ky a concerned look.

“Brinkley,” Morgan said carefully, “do you know what you just said?”

Brinkley repeated herself even slower. Slow enough that a five-year-old could understand. The dehydration and hunger must have really gotten to Morgan. She wasn’t making any sense. She could hardly understand what Morgan was saying. Her voice sounded like it was coming through water or something thick, like syrup.

“Do you hear the syrup?” Brinkley asked. She wasn’t sure if the words were coming out right. Her tongue felt heavy and thick in her mouth. She leaned her head down into her hands again to stop the spinning. And then everything went black.