Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
JAMES
I wasn’t mad at Scarlett for leaving me with Camp. To be completely honest, I wasn’t mad at Camp, either. Wrong place, wrong time, or whatever that saying was. I never worried about it myself, because money always made up for poor timing. Or so I had learned.
Who I was mad at though, was Nash. He knew we had a schedule to keep. His pockets were heavy with the extra money I’d paid him—me, not Camp, not Scarlett, but me— in order to keep things moving on time. And instead of respecting the cash I had given him, and keeping to the goddamn schedule, we were now dealing with a freeloading stowaway before we’d even really gotten started.
Ridiculous. That’s what it was. You couldn’t even call Camp a stowaway, because he had jumped on the boat in plain view of everyone—Nash included. Full view. No one stopped him. No one discovered him hiding away in a cupboard beneath the floorboards. No. Instead, Scarlett encouraged him to leap on board, therefore screwing up my entire timeline.
But Nash was the one at fault, and he had only himself to blame now, as I held Camp up by his throat against the glass wall that surrounded the steering wheel. The younger man had a few inches on me, but what I lacked in height, I made up for in muscle.
A sleeper build is what I think I’d heard it called before. Unassuming. Until I wasn’t so unassuming after all.
“What the hell is going on?” Scarlett screamed, racing outside, large eyes looking even wider, if such a thing were possible.
I glared back toward Camp, who was swinging wild punches. “Why don’t you ask him what the problem seems to be?”
I didn’t like people who made assumptions. I never saw the purpose in entertaining fools. They weren’t worth my time, and they definitely weren’t worth the effort.
If they couldn’t see past their own limiting beliefs, how could I ever change their minds?
Unfortunately for Camp, he seemed to be one of those fools.
“Tick-tock,” I sang under my breath. “Our lovely companion is waiting to hear what could’ve made me so angry that I pinned you up against this wall.”
Camp’s fury was palpable, pulsing across the air between us. “I didn’t say anything wrong,” he spat.
“How about we let Scarlett decide for herself, hmm?” I dropped my forearm, and Camp slumped to the floor, grabbing at his neck.
“You’re a fucking prick,” he snapped.
I focused on my cuffs, wrinkled now from the effort of teaching Camp a lesson. “I’ve been called worse.”
Scarlett looked back and forth, unable to settle her eyes on either of us.
“Everything okay out there? I can’t dock this thing right now, so just tell me if anyone goes overboard so I can retrieve them later.” Nash’s voice carried over from the wheel, and I couldn’t be certain if he was serious or kidding. Knowing our captain, it was probably both.
“I’m not sure,” Scarlett called back, finally settling her narrowing eyes on me. “Let me get back to you.”
“I’m really not sure why it’s me you’re glaring at.”
“Because you were the one who had him in a vice grip.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, daring me to say otherwise.
I shrugged. “I can’t make you believe anything you don’t want to. But maybe ask Camp before you make your final decision.”
With one last searing glance at me, she looked down at Camp. “What did you do to piss him off so much?”
“Nothing,” Camp muttered, rubbing his neck. “It was a stupid miscommunication.”
I kicked his ankle. He rolled his eyes.
“Sorry, did I offend my lord ? Jesus. All I did was ask if you were taken already,” Camp snapped.
Scarlett coughed, trying to act like she was simply clearing her throat. I gave Camp another scorching glare. “Try again.”
The younger man shook his head. “Fuck. Apparently I jumped on the wrong boat. I might have said it along the lines of if you weren’t taken, then I stood a chance.”
“Let me help, seeing as your memory is a bit faded,” James drawled. “You asked if Scarlett was already ‘hooking up’ with one of us, and when I said no, you said that gave you, seeing as she was single, a good shot to hit that. Do you really think that is an appropriate way to speak about any woman, let alone one you just met, who saved your sorry ass?”
Scarlett held up a hand, using the other to point at me. “Let me get this straight. You were choking Camp because he made a slightly rude comment about me?”
“Well, yes. Was that not clear? I don’t know how he was raised, but I was raised to treat women with respect and kindness.” I sniffed, stepping away from Camp as if his attitude were contagious.
She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Listen, I appreciate you wanted to stick up for my honor or whatever, but please, don’t go hurting anyone over a comment you took the wrong way. I know we don’t know each other very well yet, but I can handle myself for the most part.”
I stiffened. I hadn’t considered Scarlett might not be grateful for my actions. “I apologize. I obviously made the wrong call.”
“Hey.” She rested her hand lightly on my forearm, a strange feeling creeping over me with the smallest touch. “I still appreciate it. Besides, no harm done. I don’t think, anyway. Camp, are you okay?” She held her hand out to Camp, who accepted, climbing to his feet once more.
“I’m fine. Although, I’m thinking I might have been better off in police custody at this point.”
“Is everyone still on board? Alive?” Nash called.
“We’re fine,” Scarlett replied.
Fine seemed too simple of an answer for everything that had transpired this morning. Fine seemed like a word we used to sweep everything under the rug. Fine was the bandage on the bullet hole, or the duct tape slapped across the crumbling foundation of a house. Or, you know, this damn boat.
Fine was never fine.
“Let’s try and hold it together for the next half hour or so, yeah? I haven’t ever had to file an incident report, and I’d kind of like to keep it that way.” I could just make out the back of Nash’s curly head as he turned his attention back to the river.
My eyebrows raised of their own accord, and before I could school my expression, Scarlett caught sight of my face. I tried to cover my disbelief. “Somehow, I struggle to believe our fearless leader hasn’t had an injury once before.”
Scarlett chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I think he’s more capable than he appears at first glance.”
“What gives you that impression? Just because someone is athletic and always lands on their feet like a goddamn cat doesn’t make them capable.”
She rolled her eyes. “Agree to disagree.”
I wasn’t used to people openly disagreeing with me. Most of the time, when people realized who my father was, they backed the hell off pretty quickly. Disagreements were rare, arguments even more so. And yet, somehow on this ship, I seemed to have fought with everyone so far.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the peculiar dynamic.
“Regardless of what we think, Nash is right about one thing. We just need to survive the next little bit, and then we can get rid of our problem here, and be on our way.” I jerked my thumb toward Camp, who was doing his best to blend into the background.
Scarlett mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out, her fingers untying the braids in her hair. I watched out of the corner of my eyes, captivated by something as simple as her fingering her hair. She pulled it all up into a bun on top of her head, exposing more of her smooth skin for me to admire.
She might be as argumentative as Eris, but she was built like Aphrodite. The way she spoke made her seem taller than her actual stature, and the lines of her body were fluid, curving sensually even through the practical clothing she wore.
The long, cool fabric made me only more aware of the stiffness of my own clothes—worn for status, rather than comfort. I had packed more sensible clothes, but they were carefully folded away inside my luggage and safely stored in my cabin. As much as Scarlett insisted that she could handle herself, I wasn’t about to leave her alone with a criminal.
Instead, I took a seat on one of the uncomfortable wooden benches that lined the walls of the boat, trying to focus on anything other than the heat slowly seeping through my clothing.
The three of us were silent, with only the odd interjection from Nash’s navigation to interrupt the quiet, rhythmic sloshing of the river against the hull.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed until the sloshing began to slow or until Nash’s steering grew less erratic, Carpe Diem barely swaying anymore. We had to be out of the hardest bit of the river, like Nash had mentioned earlier.
“The fork is just up ahead. I’ll dock us to the far side of the river, until we know what we’re doing. There’s a bit of a cove, so it’s pretty calm.”
We didn’t respond. Scarlett stared off into the rainforest, lost in thought, and I stared after her, wondering what she was thinking about so deeply. I wasn’t sure what Camp stared at. I also didn’t care . Soon enough, he wouldn’t be my problem. As long as Scarlett and Nash were smart, anyway.
Sure enough, the fork in the river loomed just ahead of us, both sides splitting off deeper into the rainforest. The dark greenery was foreboding, speaking a natural language long lost to civilization.
Nash pulled us into the small cove with ease, less than ten feet from the bank of the river. He killed the engine, and the clanking coming from below told me he had dropped the anchor, keeping us in one place. The trees twisted their roots into the mud, their branches spiraling up into the nonexistent sky. Vines stretched around the trunks, choking out any life it deemed unsatisfactory. Despite the dense overgrowth, I could just make out bits of smoke through the green. Conversation carried toward us, an entire life taking place without knowing we even existed.
Some of the villages deep in the rainforest could go decades without seeing an outsider, some even longer than that. I wondered what such a life would be like, to be so sheltered, and to have the opportunity to not concern yourself with the rest of the world.
Maybe it was simpler, to not concern yourself with all the outside noise. Where only the people in front of you mattered, along with the food you were growing, and the life you eked out for yourself amidst the trees and the mud.
Nash came toward the three of us, shrugging into a thin linen shirt that he—of course—left entirely unbuttoned. If I was expecting this man to suddenly develop modesty, I would have been sorely mistaken.
Nash clapped his hands together with a smile, all too cheerful despite the current situation. “Right. We’re safely in one place now. Let’s get to the matter at hand. What do we do about our new guest, Camp?”
“I wouldn’t really call him a guest,” I muttered.
Scarlett rolled her eyes again. “I think we should let him go, and not turn him into the village. Besides, even if we were to turn him over to the village, how are we supposed to know they’ll take him where they say they would? We don’t know what we’d be turning him over to.”
Oh, sweet Scarlett. She had no idea what she was arguing, truly, but the na?vety was endearing.
“He committed a crime. That makes him a criminal. I don’t know what it was like where you grew up, but in my city, we usually punish criminals instead of letting them go on their merry way.” I looked over to Camp, giving him a shrug. “Sorry, mate.” Not sorry at all.
Even if he hadn’t committed a crime, he had been extraordinarily rude to Scarlett, and that wasn’t a man I wanted to get away with anything.
Scarlett sighed. “Nash. You’re obviously the tie breaker here.”
Nash reached up, thoughtfully scratching his close-cropped beard. “Well, I think we should let Camp plead his case.”
“Excuse me?” I snarled. “We already know his case. He confessed to his crime. There’s no reason to have an entire court case when we have a schedule to keep, don’t we, captain ?”
Nash kept crossing lines, and I needed to remind him who was paying his bills right now, because it certainly wasn’t Camp.
Nash held up his hand. “I appreciate that, James. I do. But I’m not about to send a man to rot in a foreign jail if he has a good explanation for his crime. So let’s hear his explanation, and then we can vote.”
Anger flooded my veins, making me all too aware of every inch of my surroundings. I couldn’t explode and make a scene without Scarlett getting caught in the crossfire, and for whatever reason, I wanted her to think of me in a positive light—even if the odds of that possibility had already been shot to hell.
I forced myself to reduce my boiling fury down to a simmer. “Fine. But it better be good, and it better be quick.”
Nash nodded toward Camp. “The floor is all yours, friend.”
Friend . As if they had known each other for years instead of hours. As if Camp hadn’t boarded Nash’s boat without a ticket, forcing us to conduct court in the middle of the goddamn rainforest. I slapped a mosquito on my neck, even more annoyed.
Surreal was only one way to describe this entire day so far. The way things were going, I couldn’t be certain I hadn’t been dosed with some kind of drug during my time in town, only for me to wake up and realize this afternoon had all been some kind of horrible nightmare.
But I knew the chances of that were slim, and somehow, this vivid dream was my current reality.