Chapter 2 Three days before the wedding
Three days before the wedding
Beckett: Pretty sure sloths do nothing but wait.
Sara: Also don’t forget to wear comfortable clothing and close toed shoes for ziplining!
Marcus: We got it, babe. The instructions were clearly detailed on the itinerary
I tuck my phone in my belt bag after not responding to the group text. Anyone who knows me knows I hate nothing more than a group text.
Scratch that. I can think of one thing I hate more than a group text, and it’s the thought of zip-lining. My heart squeezes in my chest as my brain imagines all the ways zooming through the trees on a freaking rope could go terribly, horribly wrong.
Actually, zip-lining might be an apt metaphor for this whole damn trip.
But I school my face as the rest of the crew joins me in the lobby and we make our way outside to the van waiting to shuffle us off this mortal coil.
I met Mei and Tarak last night as we all trekked from our suite out to the resort’s main deck for the welcome party.
Sara and Marcus kept the guest list for the wedding small, so only about thirty other people will be attending in addition to our group, mostly older family members.
Hence why it’s only the six of us climbing into the van and bounding off to our inevitable doom.
I can see the headlines now: Tragedy strikes wedding party as young woman falls to her death in the jungles of Costa Rica.
I end up in the back of the van, and because there are only three rows of seats, Beckett ends up plopping down next to me. Note to self: Do not go on a trip with two other couples when not a part of a couple. Especially not when the only other single is the first guy I ever had a crush on.
The van roars to a start moments after I buckle in, lurching out onto the road.
Mei and Tarak are seated in the front row, heads turned to chat with Sara and Marcus in the middle row.
Marcus and Tarak were roommates in college, started some sort of business that involves money, and now are on the Fortune 500 or something equally impressive and capitalistic.
Though given Marcus and Sara met when he was volunteering at her school, he’s clearly not a complete douchebag.
From what I can tell, Sara and Mei became friends due more to forced proximity than anything else, but Mei seems incredibly smart and hilarious, and she won me over after about five seconds in her presence.
“Sleep okay?” Beckett asks me once it becomes clear we won’t be able to hear the others’ conversation from the back row.
I stretch my neck, attempting to work out an impossible kink. “Just peachy.”
He chuckles low under his breath. “I can’t remember the last time I slept on a twin-size bed.”
“At least you didn’t have to climb a ladder to get to yours.”
Beckett had offered to take the top bunk, but we both agreed it wasn’t built for a man of his size, and the only thing worse than sleeping on bunk beds would be getting crushed by the top bunk.
“Listen, Lucy, I wanted to apologize again for yesterday. For not recognizing you, I mean.” He lowers his voice so much I’m forced to lean to the side to catch his words.
I shrug as if the humiliating encounter didn’t replay through my brain the entire night, as if it didn’t stir up all the emotions about Beckett Thatcher I had thought were long resolved.
“It’s fine. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.
I doubt I ever crossed your mind in the past ten years. ”
“You did, though.”
My eyes dart to his, and they’re right there, waiting for me. My lungs tighten, and I force a deep breath.
“I thought about you a lot, especially in the beginning, wondering how you were and what you were up to,” he continues, never dropping his gaze from mine. “I thought about you a lot.”
I swallow down the giant ball of feelings lodged in my throat. “Oh.” It’s all I can manage, and it squeaks out of me in an embarrassingly high pitch.
The corner of his lips tilts up. “So how have you been? What have you been up to?”
“You want me to catch you up on the last ten years of my life in one car ride?”
He shrugs. “Give me the highlights.”
“All right, then. I graduated from UCSD with a marketing degree. Started working for a small firm in LA. Needed a change of pace, so I moved, and now I mostly freelance and work with a small group of my preferred clients.” Huh.
It sounds so sad summed up like that, ten years of my life boiled down to work.
I swear I have friends, and a life. I still have a good relationship with my parents.
I go on dates and even had a long-term relationship or two.
But it doesn’t escape me, how small it all sounds.
Beckett frowns. “I can’t believe you left California.”
“I can’t believe you left California.” I gesture to his whole aura of surfer-ness. “How can you stand being so far away from the ocean?”
“I’m not far away from the ocean, it’s just a different ocean.”
I know from experience that it’s not nearly the same thing. When I miss the beach, I don’t head out to the Hamptons. I book a flight home.
The van rolls to a stop, and we pile out, landing in what looks like the middle of the rainforest. The ground beneath my feet is soft and spongey, and we’re surrounded by green on all other sides, the trees towering over us, seemingly bending toward each other, creating a canopy that nearly blocks out the summer sun.
But it’s the sounds that overwhelm me. Birds and monkeys chattering unseen up in the trees.
I feel like I walked into a sound machine.
A guide comes to collect us, and we follow behind her in a single file line until we reach a small clearing where there’s a ramshackle-looking wooden building, though shack might be a more apt descriptor.
Our guide starts going through the plan for the day, the zip-lining and then the sloth sanctuary.
My eyes stray from her to the leafy green stalks in the sky, an alarmingly thin metal wire cutting through the clearing and heading off god knows where.
I know I should be listening, as I’m sure there are important safety instructions being delivered, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off that fucking wire.
Am I hallucinating, or is it even slimmer than I originally thought?
Who was the first person to decide it would be fun to fling oneself into the trees, held up by nothing more than thoughts and prayers?
I’d like to find out who invented this specific kind of torture and pen them a very strongly worded letter.
An elbow nudges my side, and my attention snaps to Beckett. The rest of the group is in motion, gathering helmets—nothing safe requires the use of a helmet!—and stepping into harnesses, nothing but smiles and laughter among them.
“You never told me where it is you moved to?” Beckett hands me a helmet before strapping on his own.
“What?” I attempt to latch the buckle of the one thing preventing my brain from splattering all over the forest floor, but my fingers don’t seem to be cooperating, stiff with tension and anxiety.
Beckett steps closer, calmly taking the buckle, latching it, then tightening the strap. “You left California. Where did you end up?”
Words are still failing me, though I’m not sure if that’s due to impending disaster or the fact that Beckett Thatcher has invaded every one of my senses.
He smells like coffee and sunscreen, and I have to force myself not to lean into the warmth of his chest, the comfort those arms seem primed to provide.
“Brooklyn,” I finally say.
He arches an eyebrow at this, though he doesn’t comment on the proximity of our chosen homes. “Interesting. And you like it? Freelancing, I mean, not Brooklyn. Or also Brooklyn, I guess.”
The guide comes over and helps me maneuver into the harness. All the while Beckett stands at my side, looking at me as if I can be expected to keep up a normal flow of conversation when I am minutes away from plummeting to my death.
“Yeah, it’s great. I love it.” I turn my focus to the stranger who is taking my literal life in her hands. “Can you triple-check all those buckles?”
She offers me a kind smile. “I promise, everything looks just as it should. You’ll be safe.”
“Right.”
She does a seemingly cursory check over Beckett’s equipment and then gives a nod of approval. “You two are cleared to head on up.” She nods in the direction of a ladder reaching high into the trees and culminating at a wooden platform smaller than the average tree house.
I don’t know where the rest of our group has gone, but shrieks—could be joy, could be terror—now punctuate the calls of monkeys and birds high in the trees.
With a warm hand on the small of my back, Beckett guides-slash-pushes me in the direction of the ladder. “Good thing you got all that practice in last night.”
“Not funny,” I grumble. “You go first.” I may or may not be planning to run back to the van as soon as his feet step onto the wooden planks of the ladder.
Beckett plants his feet and crosses his arms over his chest. “If I climb up that ladder right now, what are the chances you actually climb up after me?”
I cross my arms right back, furious he was somehow able to discern my plan. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Oof. It’s like being back in his presence has acted as some sort of time machine, sending me right back to petulant adolescence.
He smirks. “I think you only want me to go first so you can check out my ass.”
I scoff. “You wish.” I hadn’t actually thought of that, but now it provides an extra layer of motivation. “Maybe you only want me to go first so you can check out my ass.”
“Oh, I most definitely will be.”
Any retort freezes on the back of my tongue. Did he just say he wants to check me out? Beckett Thatcher? After everything? How fucking dare he.