gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 28

"Steamy, right?"

"Like a fresh pile of shit."

Hunter snorted as she hummed a little as Fatin ran her hands through the roots of her hair, causing her to close her eyes as she fought off the nap that she felt coming. She knew that if she went back to sleep she'd be unlikely to sleep through the night again - something that she was finding incredibly difficult at that moment in time. It didn't really matter that much as she knew that when night came she would insist on taking the nightshift of watching Leah to make sure she didn't overdose again.

"I mean, an entire book about hornball wedding planners in some snobby f*ck' town called Green-wich, Connecticut," Dot replied, not as amused with the book as the other two were.

"Grennich," Fatin and Hunter both corrected at the same time. Fatin sat up slightly, nudging Hunter and moving her gently so that she was sitting in between the girl's legs. Hunter nodded in agreement to the movement, knowing what Fatin was silently asking her for permission to do.

"And that's not the only one," Fatin continued, her fingers moving swiftly as they began to braid one side of Hunter's hair. "Apparently, there's four in the series."

"Four of these turds? I can't even get one sequel of District , and the world gets four of these shit cakes!"

"Why don't you just give it a few more pages?"

"Yeah Dot, maybe it'll hook you. Just imagine it's you and Mateo..." Hunter joked, noticing the blush that crossed Dot's cheeks instantly at her words.

"It's a hot little romp." Fatin concluded, chuckling at Hunter joining in with the attempt to get Dot to read the smutty book.

"People actually enjoy this activity, holding open a big stack of paper and just moving their eyes back and forth and back and forth?" Dot joked before looking behind Fatin and Hunter and seeing the other girl moving about the camp. "Toni, help me out. Fatin is trying to convince me that I might actually enjoy reading this skid mark of a romance book."

Toni let her eyes brush over Fatin and Hunter for a moment, glad to see that her healing girlfriend was allowing the others to touch her again. She was worried that she wouldn't let them as she hadn't been previously since the shark attack but she seemed to be making leaps and bounds every day. She couldn't help but think about Fatin's words from earlier that day, allowing the slight doubt to settle in her stomach about how little time she had spent with Hunter since the shark attack. The bandages on her leg had been swapped for new ones - and by new ones, it was an old shirt that had belonged to Nora that Rachel had volunteered since they'd ran out from having to rebandage not just Hunter's leg but Rachel's arm stump too.

"Oh, hell yeah. I love that one," Toni replied, causing all three girls to look at her in absolute shock, disbelief and amusement.

"Get the f*ck out," Dot replied without hesitation.

"I'm not, like, a Martha-level superfan. That's, like, super straight and white," Toni added, smiling a little as Hunter snorted at that comment. "But I don't know, I kind of like all the wedding shit."

Even Hunter was a little surprised about that. They hadn't really ever spoke about what would happen if - when - they got off the island, especially what their hopes and dreams for the future were. The blonde girl smiled a little, wondering if they didn't have that different a dream for their future after all.

"You kind of like the what?"

"The wedding-planning stuff. Gets me thinking what I want for mine, you know? A big-ass buttercream cake, flowers all over the place, a fancy f*ck' dinner. Wait, what's it called when it's not a buffet? Plated, a plated dinner. I want all that shit!"