Page 37 of Wreckage

And now she was crumpled. Hurt.

And I fucking hated it.

“You’re quiet,” Troy muttered, breaking the silence as we worked.

I glanced at him. He looked just as wrecked as I felt—his face bruised, his hands scraped up from digging through the wreckage, his movements stiff with exhaustion. But he was working through it, the same as me.

I returned to the pile of broken seats we had pulled free. “Just thinking.”

Troy let out a short laugh. “That’s dangerous.”

I scowled at him, kicking at a loose chunk of debris. “I’m thinking about how we’ll get out of this mess and keep her from freezing to death. How we’re going to keep ourselves from freezing to death.”

Troy grunted, hauling a broken seat to the fire pit we had started. “No use in thinking too much about it. We do what we can and hope like hell someone sees the fire.”

I exhaled sharply, watching my breath mist in the frigid air. “Hope, huh?”

Troy smirked humorlessly. “Yeah. You should try it sometime.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue. Hope had never been something I leaned on. It felt like a frail thing, easily crushed to bits under the weight of a harsh reality.

We worked silently, stripping whatever we could from the wreckage. The fire pit was built as best as we could manage, a mix of airplane debris, wood from broken seats and surrounding forest, and anything remotely flammable.

I wiped at my forehead, my breath heavy. “What if no one finds us?”

The question hung in the air between us.

Troy clenched his jaw and looked away. “They’ll find us.”

“But what if they don’t?”

He turned to face me, meeting my dark gaze. “Then we figure it out.”

Troy studied me for a moment before letting out a rough chuckle. “You always have to have a plan, huh?”

“It’s better than just waiting to die,” I snapped.

Troy’s expression darkened, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he looked toward the plane. “And what about Elena?”

The tightness in my chest worsened. “What about her?”

Troy exhaled, glancing at the darkening sky. “She hasn’t eaten. She’s barely spoken. If she loses hope, we’re screwed.”

I swallowed hard, my stomach twisting. “She’s hurting. She’s scared. Anyone would be.”

Troy nodded, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Yeah.” A pause. “We don’t have much food left.”

“I know.”

We both stood there, silent, facing the reality neither of us wanted to admit.

If rescue didn’t come soon, we were fucked.

Troy shifted, glancing at me. “Fire’s lit.”

I followed his gaze to the small flame that flickered in the pit. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Hopefully, it would be visible from the sky once the night fully settled in and be seen in the morning.

Hope.

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