Survivor

8| Uphill Battle

I was still hesitant as I felt completely and utterly useless now. I knew from the moment I was pulled out from underneath the seat that my leg was hurt, but I never expected to be told I wasn't allowed to walk on it AT ALL. Now I just felt like a burden to all of the guys here who were already dealing with injuries of their own.

Jake put a backpack on backwards so that the pack was on his front and handed another, even bigger backpack to me. I quickly slipped it on and used my arms to bounce it up and down, feeling it's weight. This bag had to weigh at least 30 pounds on top of my 135 that I weighed, plus however much he was carrying in his other bag. I looked around as the other men were securing the different bags onto themselves, most of which had at least 2.

I couldn't help but think that Jake should really only be carrying one other backpack since he already had the heaviest load—I'm referring to my myself, of course, as said load. I knew he was built like a tank but he's only human. Then again, as far as injuries went, he was the most intact.

"Ready Cass?" Jake asked as he held out a hand to me, cutting off my thoughts.

"Um... I guess so. Are you?" I prodded as I dropped my hand into his. He hesitated to help me up and cocked a perfect eyebrow at me.

"Of course I'm ready, what's with the hesitation? Are you okay?"

It was hard to gather my thoughts while he was still holding tight to my hand, but I managed to stumble out my self-conscious thoughts anyway. "I just feel really bad that you're already carrying like 80 pounds worth of backpack and then all of my weight on top of it? I'm not exactly the smallest woman..." I said as I felt a blush appear in my cheeks.

"Trust me Cassie, you're perfect—and I can handle the weight. I'm a big guy; quite strong," he said with a confident smile. Now I was definitely blushing. I let him pull me to my feet before he crouched down with his back to me. "Okay, jump up!" He urged.

I put my bad leg up fist before kicking off the ground with my good leg. I wasn't able to jump very high, especially with the backpack, and my pathetic excuse for a jump barely got me up passed his butt. However, Jake was able to hook his arms under my thighs and hoist me up onto his back the rest of the way.

He was really strong, and I could feel his muscles flex underneath me as my body pressed to his. Although I felt bad about him needing to carry me, I had to admit it felt nice to be so close to him, especially after the traumatic day we were having. It seemed everyone was still full of adrenaline and nobody had stopped to think about what happened yet. I knew even for me it hadn't quite sank in. I just kept focusing on what came next, because if I didn't, I would straight up lose it.

"Okay, everyone settled?" I was pulled back into reality by the sound of Nathan's voice. "Let's move out."

Everyone began walking into the trees. As we were, it was Nathan and Cam in the lead, Derek to my right, Wesley to my left, and Adam and Luke tailing behind us.

"Let me know if you need to set me down at all," I said to Jake.

"Cassie relax you're okay. You're really not that heavy, even with the backpack."

Sure. That's why you've already shifted me twice, I thought.

"But am I hurting your hand? You just got stitches and now you have to use it to hold me up..."

"I'm really okay Cassie. Stop worrying."

"Is this the way we should be going?" Nathan turned around to ask Jake.

"I mean, it's hard to know for sure, but I think if we keep going in this direction it's our best bet," he replied.

Cam used a machete to cut away branches and leaves hanging in our way. "Ugh, this would be much easier if there was some kind of a path," he complained.