He tightened his hold on me. One of his hands stroked from my shoulder down to the small of my back, and the other rested on my arm.

“You make me feel safe,” I whispered.

“You are safe.”

I gave in to the pull of sleep and the escape it offered, but seconds before I drifted off completely, I could have sworn T.J.’s lips brushed mine in the sweetest and softest of kisses.

I woke up in his arms just before sunrise, hungry, thirsty, and needing to go to the bathroom. I climbed out of bed, left the house, and walked into the woods, stopping to gather coconuts and breadfruit on my way back. The sky filled with morning light as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, then prepared our breakfast.

While I waited for him to wake up, I replayed last night’s events in my mind. His desire had been palpable, radiating off him like heat from a fire. His breathing had changed, growing louder, and his heart had pounded under my cheek. He’d shown remarkable restraint, and I wondered how long he’d be satisfied with only holding me in his arms.

I wondered how long I would be.

He came out of the house a few minutes later, scraping his hair back into a ponytail.

“Hey.” He sat down beside me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “How’re you doing this morning?” His knee rested against mine.

“Much better.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Yes. Did you?”

He nodded, smiling. “I slept great, Anna.”

We sat on the shore after breakfast.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” he said, scratching one of his mosquito bites. “What if I take the life raft out into the lagoon to fish?”

His suggestion terrified me. “No way,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “What if the shark bites the raft? Or capsizes it?”

“It’s not Jaws, Anna. Besides, you said you didn’t want me standing in the water.”

“I might have made my feelings clear on that,” I admitted.

“If I fish from the raft, we won’t be hungry.”

My stomach growled like Pavlov’s dog when he mentioned fish. “I don’t know, T.J. It seems like a bad idea.”

“I won’t go out very far. Just deep enough to catch some fish.”

“Fine. But I’m going with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Of course I do.”

We had to deflate the life raft to get it through the doorway of the house. We re-inflated it with the carbon dioxide canister and carried it down to the beach.

“I changed my mind,” I said. “This is insane. We should stay on the beach where it’s safe.”

T.J. grinned. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

We paddled the life raft out to the middle of the lagoon. T.J. baited his hook and pulled the fish in one by one, throwing them in a plastic container filled with seawater. I couldn’t sit still or stop looking over the side of the raft. T.J. pulled me down beside him.

“You’re making me nervous,” he said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll catch a couple more fish, and we’ll go back.”

The life raft no longer had the roof canopy attached and the sun beat down on us. I wore only a bikini, but I was still sweltering in the heat. T.J. was wearing my cowboy hat and he took it off and plunked it down on my head.

“Your nose is turning red,” he said.

“I’m burning up. It’s hot out here.”

T.J. reached his hand over the side, scooped up some water, and poured it on my chest, watching as it ran in a lazy trickle down to my bellybutton. My body tingled and my core temperature shot up ten degrees. He started to dip his hand in again, and then stopped abruptly. “There it is.” He pulled his fishing pole out of the water.

I looked over my shoulder and every muscle in my body tensed. The fin glided through the water twenty yards away, moving toward us. When it got close enough for us to get a good look, I reached instinctively for the paddles and handed one to T.J. We watched the shark circle the raft, neither of us saying anything.

“I want to go back to shore,” I said.

T.J. nodded, and we paddled away, the shark following us into shallow water. When it was only knee high, T.J. jumped out and pulled the raft onto the sand with me still sitting in it. I climbed out.

“What the fuck are we gonna do about that?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Because really, I had no idea what T.J. and I were going to do about the nine-foot tiger shark living in our lagoon.

We walked back to the house. T.J. made a fire, and I cleaned and cooked our lunch. We ate all the fish, stuffing ourselves after going without them for so long. T.J. started pacing as soon as he finished his last bite.

“I can’t believe you were in the water with that thing.” He stopped, turning to look at me. “You don’t have to worry about me standing in the ocean anymore. I’ll fish from the raft. I just hope it doesn’t decide to take a bite out of it.”

“Here’s the problem, T.J. We can’t keep re-inflating the life raft every time we take it in, or out, of the house. I don’t how much CO2 we have left. As long as you use the raft for fishing, we’ll have to keep it outside. We’ll have the canopy overhead, but that’s it. No protection from the mosquitoes without the nylon sides.” T.J. already had multiple bites from being in the woods all the time.

“So the shark gets to decide if we eat and where we sleep?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s bullshit. The shark can call the shots in the water, but not on land. We’ll have to kill it.”

He’s got to be kidding. Taking on a known man-eater didn’t seem very realistic, and I thought it might also get us killed. T.J. went into the house and returned with the toolbox. He removed the rope, unraveled it, and separated it into individual strands.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, afraid of what his answer might be.

“If I can bend a few nails, and attach them to this rope, maybe we can hook the shark and pull it out of the water.”

“You want to try and catch it?”

“Yes.”

“From the raft?”

“No, from the beach. If we’re on land, we might actually have a chance. We’ll have to get the shark into shallow water,” he said.

“Well, we know that’s possible. I was surprised how close it got to shore.”

T.J. nodded. Neither of us mentioned that the shark had been perfectly capable of swimming in waist-deep water.

T.J hammered three nails halfway into the side of the house and then used the claw end of the hammer to bend them before pulling them back out. He tied the individual strands of the rope around the head of each nail, making a three-pronged hook.

“I’m not sure what to use for bait,” T.J. said.

“You want to try and catch the shark today?”

“I want our lagoon back, Anna.” He had a determined look in his eye, and I figured there was no talking him out of it.

“I know what we need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to contribute to this insane plan.

“What?”

“A chicken. If we put it on the hook alive, it’ll thrash around and attract the shark.”

He patted me on the back. “Glad to see you’re on board.”

“Reluctantly.” But I agreed with T.J. that we had to try. Despite the shark, and the jellyfish, and the other dangers we probably didn’t even know about, the lagoon was ours, and I could understand why T.J. wanted to fight for it. I only hoped we didn’t pay for it with our lives.

We had caught and eaten two more chickens since the one we’d found on our first Christmas. We thought there was at least one left, two if we were lucky. We hadn’t heard or seen one for a while though. It was like they knew we were picking them off one by one.

We scoured the island and had almost given up when we heard the flapping. It took another half hour to catch it. I looked away when T.J. put it on the hook.

He waded into chest deep water, threw the chicken as far as he could, and got the hell back out, taking the slack out of the rope so he could feel any change in the tension.