Chapter 1
Marlow
Wakefield was as lush as it was mountainous with the small town about an hour outside of Ellington Heights.
Remote and nestled right in the valley of Mt.
Craigleith’s incredible and towering peak, it was a hidden gem that not many tourists were familiar with, leaving it withstanding the test of time and its annoying insistence on constant change.
Charming brick shops were woven between the narrow streets of Wakefield’s downtown district, making it hard for our travel bus to cruise through the budding traffic that was already starting to congest the main drag.
Aside from the early hour, there were plenty of residents wandering the sidewalks, coming and going from businesses that were just beginning to open their doors.
This town seemed to have the kind of Hallmark charm that my own possessed without any of the snotty rich folk who tended to meander the well-kept streets with their designer clothes and over the top attitudes.
Although a bit hypocritical on my part, considering I was also of the wealthy majority of assholes back in Ellington Heights, I liked to see myself as not quite part of the pretentious lot that were obsessed with going to country clubs on the weekends and bothering the poor drink cart girls while shooting birdies with my five thousand dollar club set.
My brand of fun was in the form of dragging my friends to lounge clubs and getting a taste of whatever hot piece of ass came waltzing by with a tight set of jeans on and a drink order already waiting on the tip of their tongue.
Or so it went before Avery had to go and get himself hitched on us.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for the guy because out of the three of us, he deserved to find his happiness the most, but damn did it kill what little time Silas and I had barely gotten back from him after his self-imposed exile to the city.
Despite that, I wasn’t one to look down on him for it—avoiding Ellington Heights at all costs. As someone who had a hard time staying in one place myself, what was the point in coming back to old stomping grounds you’d far outgrown?
Unless, of course, it was in the form of a cute little mechanic catching your eye.
Funny enough, getting the phone call late one afternoon by a nervous sounding Avery, pestering me to come down to a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant over in Edgewood sounded like some kind of weird scheme to get back at me for the hangover I’d inflicted on him last time we went out together.
However, the moment I’d stepped into that restaurant, I knew things were changing. Avery’s life had undoubtedly—and with no pun intended—become much more colorful since the last time I’d seen him.
All thanks to a humble mechanic from Edgewood.
It gave Silas and I plenty of fodder to poke fun at Avery for being such a late bloomer.
Though, now with Avery off living his happily ever after and Silas buried in work like usual, I was ready for some kind of change of my own.
Drastic enough to eat up all six weeks of my stored vacation in one go, along with packing over a grand and half’s worth of gear tucked safely inside my weekender.
Having never been the type to sit idly while my life continued to pass me by, I was confident that with these upcoming few weeks, I was going to change my life one way or another.
This was all a massively impulsive idea—one spurred by the slow ticking time bomb that I heard rattling off inside of my head every single morning I stared in the mirror while I brushed my teeth and contemplated if I was just seeing things or if there was in fact another wrinkle creasing my forehead.
At thirty-five, I was staring down the barrel of middle age and while I’d never had the idea of kids or a husband locked and loaded to pull the trigger on when I was good and ready, I was also starting to feel that weird, niggling of an annoyance that my life was passing me by while I had nothing to show for it.
Ridiculous, of course. I was a fucking millionaire.
But I digress.
Out the window, a rickety old wood sign was the first thing I spotted once the bus pulled off from the main drag and headed past a break in the tree line.
The thick canopy of pines shaded us while my ass bruised from the potholes, the descent into what was going to be my home for the next month and a half ripe on the horizon.
My eagerness to prove Silas wrong was a burning pit in my stomach.
Mainly because if I had any chance at putting that asshole in his place, I’d take it.
We’d been friends for long enough at this point that any sort of competition placed before me on a silver platter would be taken with the utmost sincerity and treated as an official declaration of war.
Especially, when it could end with a big old ‘fuck you’.
My stomach lurched with the bus’s sudden slamming of the brakes once we reached our destination, bringing us all to a hard stop that had the couple behind me slamming against the back of my seat.
“All right, everyone!” a voice from the front called out. “Welcome to Austin Adventures! We’re going to have you all stay in the general area until we can get beds assigned. Then you can get yourselves acclimated to the campgrounds before the welcome ceremony begins.”
Excitement boiled inside me. A whole big shindig, guaranteed to get me connecting with the people I’d be spending the next six weeks with. Not to mention, it gave me the perfect opportunity to scope out whatever single hotties had come on this expedition like me.
I wasn’t delusional to think all I’d be doing on my sabbatical was cruising for someone to fuck behind one of the pavilions, but it could be an added bonus. White water rafting and hiking didn’t need to be the only things that would help blow off some pent up steam.
Who would I be to pass up on something like that if it were offered to me?
I grabbed my things and headed off the bus into the awaiting sunshine, my body relaxing the moment the crisp mountain air hit my face.
Ellington Heights wasn’t smoggy by any means, at least not as much as the city, yet out here the world felt different—alive and brighter than back home in a way that was hard to describe.
The sun beat down on my uncovered arms, the makings of a tan—or what would be the more likely case: a nice, roasted burn in my case—were already underway.
Unfortunately, being locked inside of a financial building all day wasn’t exactly doing wonders for my complexion, other than leaving me looking like a sickly Victorian child during the winter months.
I wasn’t going to call Silas over it to complain. He’d take that as a marker under his column that he was winning.
“Morning, everyone! I’m going to start doing a headcount.” A man around my age waved a tablet in the air. His medium length blond hair was pulled back from his face with a bandana headband.
He was a fit man, his body clearly used to the stress and strain of outdoor activities, outlined with under the thin material of his tight clothing that he’d no doubt be stripping off once noon hit along with the heat.
He had that commanding way about him, a leader among the lost sheep he’d soon be guiding through the wilderness.
As his voice rattled off in the air, moving down the list, I let my gaze wander around the property.
We weren’t the only group in attendance from what I could see. Aside from ours of around fifteen or so, there were more moving about the grounds in small clusters, some of them already fitting with gear to go out for the day while others were taking their time absorbing the place like I was.
Austin Adventures was a popular tourist destination from what I’d researched.
Experts in the ways of wilderness exploring, river rafting, and tree top courses, among whatever else was buried under the tabs of options I’d grown bored of clicking through the last time I’d been on their website and had actually pulled the plug with signing myself over to their mercy.
Coming from a background of casual workouts to keep my body in shape and sitting behind a desk all day while only occasionally getting up to pace around my office while I convinced yet another client not to jump ship at the slightest drop in their stock value, I knew I was going to have plenty of sore nights ahead of me.
Which is the exact reason I’d stuffed plenty of topical cream and a travel sized heating pad into my bag before I’d left.
“Marlow Knight?”
My head snapped back, my hand raising automatically like a first year school boy. “Present!”
A few people around me laughed to themselves, which only led to stroking my ego and shooting them a wink.
I was used to being the life of the party, the class clown as it were, and proudly carried that title well into my adulthood while the rest of my peers were content with dampening their personalities in order to fit in with our homogeneous society.
I had a good chance at finding someone as high energy as me while I was here, and if not in my group, then among one of the several others.
How hard could it be to make friends among a bunch of outdoorsy extroverts?
“Thanks, everyone,” the man addressed us again. “Make sure to stick with your partner during the first day. There’s going to be a lot going on that you both will need to be present for before activities start tomorrow.”
Around me, my group began to break off into pairs without any of them discussing the logistics behind picking their partner. Almost like it was all preplanned and I was simply that idiot who forgot to put his name down on the signup sheet.
Huh...
I flagged down our guide. “So, what happens if you don’t have an assigned partner?”
“You didn’t come with anyone?” he asked, his brow perked up over the rim of his aviators.