Adrienne, who had known Vivian would turn toward her, braced accordingly. She pushed her chest out and forward, tilted her chin just a fraction, and ran her tongue over the faint fuzzy film coating her teeth. Coco Rocha had once said a good model should know her angles, her lighting, and be there to inspire the photographer, and Adrienne had taken it to heart. If the cameras were going to pan to her face, she wanted to give them her best angle.
“What was the thinking behind that swap?” Vivian asked. “Are you a Valerie Lang fan? Or do you two know each other?”
Honesty was either a life raft or an anchor. “Can it be both?” Adrienne asked.
“Can you elaborate?” Vivian asked, raising an impeccable eyebrow skyward.
Adrienne glanced sideways, catching a few surprised looks along the way. She stopped her gaze at Valerie, who was staring dead ahead. Fine. It seemed Adrienne had to carry the question all by herself.
“We briefly met in Porto Cervo two months ago,” she said. It was the truth. Their encounters aboardThe Valentinehad always been brief. She didn’t mentionThe Valentineor the fact that Valerie was the engineer and that she had asked her father to fire her. Nor did she mention their first encounter when Valerie had fallen and Adrienne had heroically saved her, only to be treated like some irritating tick on Valerie’s arm. “I told her I was a fan.” This was technically true. “When I saw her on theSaints boat, I couldn’t think of a better person to play this game with.”
Was that true? Certainly not. But she knew how reality television worked. The editors loved a good full-circle narrative, and the viewers would lap it up like honey. It made her look gracious. It made her look humble and, best of all, if Valerie continued looking at her with that disgust on her face, it would make Valerie look like a total villain.
Vivian looked ready to ask another question, but then decided against it. Adrienne felt a little drop of disappointment in her stomach because she had a lot more to say. Her disappointment then turned to dread as soon as Vivian stepped to the side and flourished a hand toward the obstacle course of doom. “Let’s get to today’s challenge,” she called.
Chapter Seven
The last time Valerie had stood on someone’s shoulders it had been at theFlorence + The Machineconcert at Northerly Island in Chicago a few years back. Gustav—the captain of theMariner’s Chest, an eighty-foot Sunseeker Predator Valerie had worked on for less than a month—had hoisted her onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd. But after three hit songs Gustav’s hands had started roaming a little too far up her calves. Just as the chorus ofDog Days Are Overhad made its way across the stadium, Valerie had promptly climbed down, feeling terribly icky.
This time, however, it felt deeply satisfying.
“Stand on your toes or something,” Valerie barked.
She bit at her lip to keep herself from smiling. But who was she kidding? She was literally standing with her feet planted on Adrienne’s shoulders. In a way, she was above Adrienne for once. Out here on this island, social class, wealth, and that silly blue checkmark that somehow made you think you were more significant than everyone else, didn’t matter.
“I can’t!” Adrienne shouted beneath her. Valerie didn’t risk looking down at her face, but she assumed it was scrunched in agony. “And why the hell do you have to be so damn short?”
Beside them, Eden practically shoved Isla over the wall. Her arms were Hercules-strong. Valerie watched their chances at the reward diminish. Although they could probably still catch up. Strangely, she wasn’t feeling that devastated about it. The mere thought of being trapped alone on a luxury reward with Adrienne was mildly horrifying. Which didn’t make a whole lotof sense considering Valerie had spent many nights imagining exactly that. She had pictured herself and Adrienne stretched out on a gingham picnic blanket with a view of frolicking waves, drinking chilled mastiha-infused gin fizzes, eating grilled octopus drizzled with oregano, and talking about how to blindside one of the big threats in the game.
But that was before Adrienne had influenced her game with the whole swap thing, when she’d intervened withOutlast Her’sfate. Tlingit lore, old fisherman warnings, and the unpredictable nature of the Pacific Northwest had taught Valerie to respect the unseen rules of the world. She, for one, would never bring a banana aboard a boat. It was a death sentence. And she’d never ever mock the land otters or speak the name of the Kushtaka, or whistle at the northern lights unless she wanted them to swoop down and take her head off.
When Valerie had picked out that orange stone, she’d played along with the universe. She’d done everything right. Orange was the color of the sun after all and wasn’t the sun the exact meaning of new life? Wasn’t that the sign of new beginnings; of growth? Orange had felt like her second chance. A chance Adrienne had taken from her.
“I’m not that short!” Valerie huffed back.
Then she pushed her weight down against Adrienne’s shoulders and launched herself up. Her fingers gripped the side of the ledge, and for one terrifying second, her shoes scraped uselessly against the wall before she managed to swing a knee over the top platform.
“THROW THE ROPE!” Adrienne called impatiently from below.
Valerie was just about to do that. But Adrienne shouting at her was irksome. Which was why Valerie grabbed the coiled rope lying on the platform, tossed it over the side of the wall, and then, because she was being petty, she jumped off the platformand let Adrienne maneuver up the wall all by herself. Clearly, that was the opposite of camaraderie. It was possible that the viewers would think she was being an unsupportive teammate.
Did Valerie care? Yes. But just enough for her to glance back over her shoulder. And she was glad she had. The way Adrienne scrambled over the wall, well, Valerie couldn’t exactly stop herself from grinning. The sleek, manicured influencer whose entire Instagram profile was perfectly curated was suddenly reduced to a scrambling, wide-eyed mess. She looked like a cat trying to escape a bath, and Valerie savored every second of it.
“What the hell?” Adrienne spluttered when she caught up. Her breath was ragged and her honey-blonde hair was dark and matted to her forehead. “You could’ve helped me.”
“Oh,” Valerie said sweetly. “I’m so sorry, I thought I was too short to help.” She was well aware that she was acting like a child. A petty, petulant child for that matter, but she couldn’t help it. Nor could she help the little satisfying spin she did before she raced toward the next station.
The hamster wheel was a monstrous, open-faced cylinder made of thick timber and iron brackets. It sat suspended inside a long but shallow track filled with ankle-deep water, and as Vivian explained, each pair would have to stand side-by-side and work together to push the wheel to the other side. Which was a lot harder than Valerie had expected.
At first, nothing happened. The hamster wheel didn’t budge even an inch.
Valerie threw her weight forward, her palms pressing against the rough wood above her head until her shoulder blades burned. Beside her, Adrienne dug her manicured nails into the slats. She had her teeth bared. Valerie caught sight of her briefly. Then Adrienne turned toward her, and Valerie couldn’t snap her head away fast enough. Instead, she focused on the other contestants. Sienna and Tamera were already at the rope swing.Close behind them, finishing off the hamster wheel, were Eden and Isla. Amy and Niko were the only ones behind them. But where did that put Carmen and Safiya, or Hallie and Stevie? Valerie was just about to whip her head around to look when Adrienne shouted, “PUSH!”
Irked, Valerie countered, “I am pushing. You push.”
“If I push any harder, my eyeballs are going to pop out of my head.”
Valerie had to admit that was somewhat funny. She didn’t think Adrienne had it in her to be funny. In fact, she’d assumed the only humor Adrienne possessed was mean and usually targeted at people who didn’t have the latest Fendi Spy.