Chapter 21
If Fletcher hadn’t been so distracted, she would have noticed the tree house. It wasn’t some boyish construction with mismatched edges. Tree house surely wasn’t even the correct terminology. This was an arboreal chalet. A timber mansion.
The wood-slat exterior had been stained and weather-sealed a rich brown, and the roof shingled with flat green slate. From way down here, it was impossible to discern its floor plan, only that it had one, which was more than her apartment could say.
Climbing the roots as pathways up the trunk, Waylon swung himself up onto the lowest branch and used the knife for its true purpose—to cut a rope that had been knotted around the base of the tree. A ladder loosed itself from the canopy, made of uneven rungs and frayed knots. Real reassuring.
Fletcher obviously let Waylon climb it first. At the top, he nudged open a hatch. You couldn’t be afraid of heights when you worked on the sixty-fifth floor, but Fletcher’s arms didn’t get the memo. They shook all the way up.
Inside, Fletcher fought gravity as her jaw threatened to drop.
Unlike the estate with its gaudy grandeur or the staff building, which felt more like a Hilton than a home, the tree house conjured a whole suite of adjectives Fletcher never imagined she’d find on the island. Cozy, inviting, and sunny somehow, despite the ongoing storm.
“One of my grandfathers built this as a hunting cabin, I think. My dad never bothered with it, so my mom used it occasionally as her studio.” He ruffled the damp curls at the back of his head. Bashful, almost. Another adjective she hadn’t expected ever needing to deploy in Waylon’s presence.
This wasn’t just a tree house. It was a hideaway, a sanctuary. A priceless reprieve from the dangers awaiting them beyond the four walls, and he’d been willing to share it with her. The intimacy stuck to the back of Fletcher’s throat and made it harder to breathe.
“All right, MTV Cribs,” she said, an elbow ribbing him, anything to touch him again. “Give me the tour.”
Most of the tree house was one room: an open-concept kitchen, dining, and living space.
Windows mapped across the far wall, right up to the pointed roof, offering an unimpeded view of the canopy.
There was a sunroom off to one side, where an easel and some dried-up watercolors had been forgotten, and a glass door walked out to the wraparound balcony.
On the other side, a spiral staircase wound to a loft where she imagined a bed.
(Wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets, she hoped longingly.
One night of glamping was plenty to satiate her morbid curiosity.)
Waylon walked her through the amenities, a hand tethering to the small of her back the whole time.
The kitchen taunted a propane stove squished between the cabinets.
A solar-powered generator fed lamps Waylon flicked on as they went, avoiding the Big Light altogether.
Best of all? A rain catcher and a filtration system meant that—
“Holy shit, is there a bathroom?”
Waylon laughed, buttery. “There very much is.”
A tiny yolk-yellow attempt at a bathroom, but a bathroom nonetheless. Fletcher would never look a gift shower-tub combo in the mouth.
As Waylon padded off to hunt down linens, Fletcher was forced to face the reality of her reflection. She didn’t know where to start: the tangles in her hair, the hollow look in her eyes, or the way her lips were still plump with the aftertaste of Waylon.
Desire threaded through her skin at the thought, her fingers lifting to her lips like she might still feel him there, but it dissipated at the sight of the dirt caking her nails.
Tiny lacerations marred her arms from the jungle.
A ring of purple laced around her throat, bruised from the telephone cord.
Her clothes hadn’t fared any better. Blood—hers, others, it was hard to keep up—crusted the fabric. Mud stained her shirt within an inch of its life. Grass and twigs and those prickly seedpods burrowed in the weave of her skirt. No washing machine in the world would be able to salvage it.
The thought of scrubbing her skin within an inch of its life under scalding hot water and then sliding back into her grimy clothes was horrifying enough to keep her awake for weeks.
This was who Waylon had kissed?
In the end, it wouldn’t be one of her rabid colleagues or a dangerous wild animal that would keel her over. Mortification would do the trick.
Fletcher yelled, “I have to get out of these clothes immediately. Do you mind if I—” Waylon appeared back in the doorframe, entirely too close for her to be yelling about nudity this loudly. A cough, clearing her throat and dropping her voice. “Um, do you mind if I hop in the shower?”
“Ladies first.” Waylon set a stack of things on the counter—a couple towels and washcloths, a T-shirt, some boxers, and a pair of khaki pants. “Faucet’s a little tough. Let me help.”
Nervous hands fidgeted with Fletcher’s shirt buttons as Waylon twisted the shower knobs until water gurgled out of the fixtures. Slow at first, then with water pressure that put her apartment to shame.
She’d managed a whole two of six buttons by the time Waylon turned his attention away from the shower. His lips flicked upward into a faint smile. Being in such close quarters with him couldn’t possibly be good for her cardiovascular health. Her heart thumped and thudded. Stopped altogether.
“Should be all set.” Two confident steps brought Waylon in front of her, pulled by a magnetic force. Waylon’s fingers found the buttons she fumbled with. “Sorry there’s no silk robes here.”
“How will I ever survive?” Fletcher asked, and it occurred to her again, in the milky light of the too-yellow bathroom that she might not. That this moment could be the last of hers before falling prey to a biting blade, a wayward bullet, or any number of wild beasts.
“It’ll be hard, but I’m sure you’ll find a way.” Button by button, Waylon worked toward the shoulders of her shirt. Only one remained. His eyebrows thinged in silent question. Waiting for permission to make the next move.
After high school gym class, Fletcher used to change in the bathroom stalls.
She didn’t have sisters who wandered around in sports bras or best friends to share changing rooms with.
This kind of closeness, this kind of casual vulnerability was uncharted water.
Something that used to be reserved for Kent alone, and even then, sparingly.
But what part about this week had been charted?
Her heart a bubbling cauldron of anticipation, Fletcher cupped her hands around his, sliding the last button through its hole.
Damp fabric dripped down to her elbows, revealing the beige lace of her bra and the divot of her belly button.
Fletcher’s skin buzzed as he digested her, dissecting every slope, every line.
Suddenly, she grew entirely too aware of each rounded curve of her body, the dimples and freckles she usually kept hidden beneath polyester blazers and secondhand linen.
“Is that another tricky zipper?” he asked, eyeing her skirt.
Electricity thrummed under Fletcher’s skin. “One of the many plights of womanhood.”
Spinning her to face the mirror, Waylon’s knuckles grazed past the band of her bra, down the ridges of her vertebrae, until his fingers found the zipper of her skirt.
Loosened, tweed spilled off her hips, lower and lower until it joined the fabric pooling on the pale tiles.
Waylon’s hands hovered near the trim of her seamless panties.
Nude. Practical. On sale from Target. But severely lacking in the sex-appeal department.
It didn’t seem to matter. Any embarrassment she’d felt before vanished. Waylon looked at her the way a drowning man looked at dry land. Eyes roaming and ravenous. How long they stood like that, she wasn’t sure. Seconds? Minutes?
Finally, his Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow, throat working when he said, “You’re gorgeous.”
Fletcher fussed with her matted hair. Pretty sure there was a caterpillar in there somewhere. “Oh, I don’t—”
“It’s not up for debate.” His eyes roved down the length of her once more, scanning her like a Xerox machine.
Committing her to memory. When he looked up, their eyes met in the mirror.
The blues of his, the greens of hers. A dangerous mix.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you, Fletcher Spence. ”
Waylon kissed her once, hard, and then inched back. Leaving Fletcher grasping, head pitched back to watch him watch her. He knew exactly what he was doing to her. And she hated him for it. She also didn’t hate him even a little bit.
Tension rippled between them. As fog gathered at the edges of the mirror, Fletcher considered the proper etiquette for asking someone to ignore the fifty-two layers of grime on her skin and thoroughly ravish her. Instead, she stood dumbly, lips parted and pink.
At her silence, Waylon tucked his hands into his pockets with a nod.
“Water’s hot. Here’s a towel. Change of clothes.
Everything else should be in the shower.
Carlotta usually kept this place stocked.
” His voice strained, trying to stay even and calibrated, and his lips thinned into a thoughtful line, something tucked unsaid just behind them.
The door closed. Latched. Leaving Fletcher alone, half naked and flushed. In the shower, steam rose in rivulets around her, and she let herself think about Waylon as she lathered, rinsed, and repeated.
I think people who order Manhattans are too afraid to ask for what they really want. That was what he’d said on the pool deck, days ago but also a lifetime ago.
Things were different now. She was different now. And she wasn’t afraid anymore.