Thanks for reading chapter one and continuing on with this, chapter two; I really appreciate your thoughts/feedback if you have any, and hopefully chapter three will be up soon too! :)

Chapter Two

With every step we took I felt Catherine become less steady on her feet. I knew that walking was not helping her dizziness and the endless dark road was becoming tough, I had tried to make her eat the candy bar I had found but she had refused. My watch read 3:30am and I figured we must have been walking for an hour or so already.

"I can't walk in these shoes any longer." Catherine spoke quietly, coming to a stop.

"We have to keep going, Cath." I urged. I knew as cold as were now that when the sun came up it would be unforgiving in its heat.

Catherine slipped her heeled boots from her feet and tossed them to the side of the road.

I couldn't let her walk on the roads without anything on her feet. "What shoe size are you?"

"Eight."

"Well I'm a ten, but these will have to do." I pulled my boots from my feet and knelt down to put Catherine's feet inside them, tying the laces a little tighter than I had had them in the hope it would make the fit a little more comfortable for her. We started walking again, my eyes constantly scanning the distance for the light of a building or a vehicle as I held the flashlight shakily in front of us.

It was 5am and I struggled to put one foot in front of the other as my dehydrated body fought against the relentless tarmac. We must have only walked ten or so miles but it felt like a marathon. My eyes squinted into the distance, losing and regaining focus as I tried to make sense anything ahead of us.

"Sara, I…" Catherine's voice faltered and her legs gave way, her knees crashing to the road, her hands reaching out in front of her and landing on the tarmac too.

My heart sank as I realized how much of a bad state Catherine was in. We would have to stop. I pulled up back up to her feet and helped her from the road across the desert to find some shelter for us. "Come on, Cath, we're nearly there then you can have a rest."

Catherine only gave a whimper in response and I felt a lump in my throat at her distress.

We walked for another 30 minutes across the desert, away from the road, before we found a series of rocks, one of which had a gap big enough for us to sit in. It would keep the wind and eventually the sun off of us although we would never be seen from the road here. I helped Catherine sit down and placed the blanket she had been carrying over her body.

"Just rest now." I whispered, placing the flashlight on the rocky floor at an angle so that it shone at us both, and swept a trail of her long, blonde hair from her face to re-examine the plaster I had applied to her head. The bleeding had stopped and there wasn't much swelling, one blessing for the night.

"I'm so cold." Catherine looked at me.

"You'll warm up now we've stopped." I smiled, although I worried that us being sat still would make the cold night seem worse.

Catherine reached out and took my hands tightly in hers, "Keep me warm."

I shuffled around to sit behind her, letting her head rest gently on my chest, my arms wrapping around her body and my legs spread out either side of her. I could feel her shivering lessen as my body warmed her. "It's okay, Cath, I've got you. You're alright now."

Eventually I felt Catherine fall asleep against me. I wanted to cry, desperately, but I couldn't bare to let it happen. All I could think as I looked out at the dark desert was that we were going to die here.

It was 8am when Catherine began to stir, rubbing her eyes as she opened them to the sunlight.

"Hey." I still had a tight hold on her body from keeping her warm overnight, but even though it was still early morning I could feel the sun's heat begin to build. It worried me that we would face an even tougher walk to find help now than we had done in the night.

"Morning." She looked up at me, turning her body slightly. Her lips were so close, even despite the tiredness I felt, I wanted to capture them with mine.

"Let's eat." I moved away from her body, taking position opposite her on the other side of the small cave. I rustled through the rucksack to find the candy bar and passed it to Catherine. "Please eat this, then we can get going again."

"Aren't you going to have any?"

I shook my head. I felt nauseous.

Catherine frowned. "I'm not eating any unless you do." Stubborn, as always.

"Fine." I watched her break the chocolate into 2 halves and she passed me my bit.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as we both tried to make the small amount of food we had last us as long as possible. I studied Catherine's face - her mascara had smudged a little under her eyes from having been asleep, and her hair had lost its shine; her jeans were torn at the knees and her palms were scabbed from her fall last night. She still looked beautiful.

I looked down at my feet - my once white socks were now a mixture of dirt from the road and blood where the soles of my feet had caught sharper areas of tarmac. My mouth was bone dry and I knew that a few more hours in the desert without water and Catherine and I would be in serious trouble.

"I'm really sorry we haven't gotten on very well in the past." Catherine broke the silence.

"It's not your fault." I replied. We'd both made each others lives quite difficult at times.

"I don't think I ever really gave you a chance..."

"Don't worry about that now, Cath. Let's just get home."

She smiled at me, seeming to blink away tears.

I wanted to so badly hold her in my arms again but what good would that do? I climbed out of the cave space and helped Catherine out too, "We'll get back to the road and hopefully we'll see something soon." I told her.

Catherine slipped her fingers between mine and we began walking again.