Page 32 of Unfinished Desire
Vivian smiled, clearly enjoying this twist. Tamsyn often wondered how much satisfaction Vivian got from watching the contestants suffer, and she almost always concluded that it wasprobably an alarming amount. “Do you want to know what the advantage is?”
“YES!” Barra, Josie, and Aggie shouted in unison.
“The winners of this challenge will have the chance to change the game entirely,” Vivian said slowly. “They will be able to rearrange the pairs. Any pairs into new pairs. If they want, they can rearrange every single one of you. But they don’t have to. They could choose to swap just one pair with another.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s entirely up to them how much chaos they’d like to cause.”
There was silence.
Then the words hit Tamsyn physically. She felt a jolt deep in her stomach, like she watched her phone slip from her hand and plummet into the ocean in slow motion. Like she missed a step in the dark or that moment right before impact in a minor fender bender.
Tamsyn’s gaze snapped to Isla. This was monumental. Not only could they win and change the entire structure of the game, but they could lose. Which meant they’d be at the mercy of whoever won, which frankly sounded worse than swimming in an ocean infested with jellyfish. If they lost, there would be no more shared rewards. No more strategizing together because they’d be strategizing against each other. And worst of all, when Tamsyn pictured that final ceremony, she wasn’t sure she could stomach the idea of standing there beside someone else. In fact, the thought sent such a chill deep into her bones that she shivered despite the heat.
“Now let’s get into the challenge.” Vivian gestured to a red dirt clearing where a web of thick, sun-bleached ropes stretched between several wooden posts. Each rope was snarled into tight, complicated knots. At the far end stood a narrow balance beam with a triangular pile of sandbags at the base, and beyond that was a raised wooden platform.
“Each pair will race to untangle a series of knotted ropes stretched across the course in a web. Once freed, you’ll retrieve a set of weighted sandbags and carry them across a balance beam. First pair to land all sandbags on their platform wins.”
When Vivian instructed everyone to get to their positions, Tamsyn had to do everything in her power not to take Isla’s hand and squeeze it. Instead, she leaned in close and whispered, “We’ll win it. We just have to win it.”
“Of course we’ll win,” Isla replied quickly. But even so, Tamsyn had heard a tiny tremor in her voice that didn’t belong.
A horn blared, and Vivian shouted, “GO!”
Everyone lunged for the ropes at the exact same time, and it was only when Tamsyn got close enough that she realized the whole thing was a layered mess. There were three or more thick anchor points at different heights, and each one exploded outward into smaller knots. It looked like a giant crocheted nightmare.
“I’ll get the big ones,” Tamsyn said, at the same time Isla began working on the smaller loops near the base. She tugged hard on the knot, hoping that somehow it would magically loosen.
“Don’t yank. You’re tightening it,” Isla said.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Isla countered, her thumbs pressing into the tiny gap between two coils that sat close to her knee. She twisted, lifted, and suddenly one strand loosened. “Now pull.”
Tamsyn did. This time the knot shifted enough for the rope to slip loose. Then another, and another. Tamsyn caught Isla’s eye and winked. Then she felt a flutter in her stomach that was way more powerful than any flapping butterfly wings when Isla smiled back. A feeling she hadn’t ever experienced before Isla.
They ducked through the opening they’d made and stumbled straight into the second web. This one hung lower, forcingTamsyn to crouch while Isla threaded an arm overhead to work through what could only be a particularly stubborn knot, because Isla was hissing like a snake.
But then they got through the second one at the same time Barra and Dominique did. Josie and Aggie were trailing behind. So too were Kendall and Frankie, who were still on web number one. There was no way they could catch up.
“These ropes are killing my fingers,” Isla muttered just as they got onto the third web. “My poor, delicate fingers.”
Tamsyn knew all about Isla’s delicate fingers, though they weren’t that delicate when they were...
She pushed that thought to the very back of her mind.Concentrate. Focus.
Which she did. Or at least tried to when they burst through to web number four, which was, frankly, monstrous. The ropes were sun-stiffened and crusted with red dust. The knots were pulled so tight they looked fused together. It was less web and more barricades.
Tamsyn resisted the urge to swear, especially since a camera had practically been pushed right up against her face. The viewers could probably see her pores. She wiped her palms on her shorts and then jammed her fingers into a gap that barely existed.
Behind them, Vivian shouted. “Barra and Dominique are out of the web!”
“What?” Tamsyn muttered, snapping her gaze sideways.
But Vivian was right. Dominique and Barra had just broken through their final knot and were running toward the balance beam. “Shit,” she added under her breath, feeling her stomach loop. And then loop again, which didn’t help even one bit. Instead, the stress of falling behind made her fingers inept. She fumbled the knot just as Isla undid hers.
“We can catch up,” Isla said, sounding positive. But Tamsyn felt neither positive nor hopeful, not because she was a pessimist––on the contrary, Tamsyn was a full-cup kind of person––but because Dominique had already heaved a sandbag over her shoulder. Even the most positive person in the world could see that they would never catch up.
UGH!
Finally, they pried their last rope free and sprinted toward the beam.
