Chapter 2
2
Sloane
There’s pandemonium behind me as I dash to the museum.
I heard Waverly laughing, so that’s good. I’ll have to apologize to Tillie Jean later.
Probably.
She’ll likely forgive me when she hears why I did it. And I’m going to owe her an explanation.
A very long explanation.
I regularly tell people I grew up in Copper Valley but sometimes visit distant relatives in Iowa so that I don’t have to answer questions that I don’t want to answer. Tillie Jean and a few of my other closest friends know more of the truth now, but not the full truth.
Colored lights rotate over the museum door as I hit the code to let myself into the building. I don’t look back to see if Nigel’s watching me.
The noise from the crowd tells me a whole glitter bomb party has erupted.
I hope Nigel gets glitter in his eye.
That would be poetic justice.
Not nice, Sloane .
Fuck off, conscience, and let me have this one .
I slip inside and find the foyer empty.
Maybe Steve needed to use the bathroom.
Why he couldn’t use a bathroom among the very nice portable bathrooms that feel like real bathrooms sitting in trailers on either end of Blackbeard Avenue and just off the other end of the square too, I don’t know, but maybe that’s why he’s here.
I head into the front room, which is full of artifacts about the pirate who ditched sea life to hide his treasure inland, thus founding Shipwreck over two hundred years ago. The Rock family had been keeping all of this stuff for literal centuries, and it’s a source of pride and joy for me to have it all displayed now.
Even in the relative darkness, with the room lit only by the gentlest glow from the illuminated light switches and the red exit signs, being around this much history is instantly calming.
Let’s be real though—being inside a locked building all alone, away from Nigel, away from having all of my lies exposed in front of the most famous people in the world, is also adding to the calming effect.
Even if I’m getting nervous about what I have to say to the man I’m looking for inside here.
I concentrate on inhaling a long, slow breath as I pass the shadows of a glass case holding a replica of Thorny Rock’s pirate ship that one of Tillie Jean’s great-uncles built. I stroll past the darkened silhouette of a painting that Tillie Jean herself painted of Thorny Rock pulling his ship into port in Norfolk back in the day. My shoulders relax and drop as I pass by the stand and case that I know holds a map depicting locations of sea battles that Thorny Rock waged to acquire his famous—and famously missing—treasure.
The museum has three open display rooms, plus a fourth that we’re slowly building for an interactive experience and a storage room where we have experts in occasionally to help us with restoration and preservation efforts. With Cooper and Waverly’s wedding being basically the biggest news on the internet in the history of history, there’s been a lot of interest in Shipwreck itself because of their carefully leaked wedding plans.
Tourism has increased something like five hundred percent over where it was last year, and Thorny Rock’s treasure has trended at least a half dozen times as a top search on Google in the past few months.
Everyone in the world wants to know everything about not just Waverly Sweet’s wedding to baseball’s most popular player, but they also want to know how they can find a treasure in said baseball player’s hometown.
All the extra attention is exactly why the whole town is locked down for the actual wedding today.
Once I verify that Davis Remington, the real former boy band member whose name is not Steve, isn’t in any of the display rooms, I head toward the little nook holding the bathroom, fully aware that stalking a man outside the bathrooms is weird.
Stalking a man outside the bathrooms to ask him to play along with a little charade that we’re engaged is weirder.
But if that’s what it takes to get Nigel to go home, to believe that this is real, then that’s what I’ll do.
Davis and I played darts at the Grog one night when I was a little tipsy. I’m pretty sure I let him win. I think. That night’s a little hazy thanks to the tequila—okay, very hazy—but surely the fact that we played a single game of darts once will count for something. He’s even nodded to me a few times since then, like he’s acknowledging that he remembers that I’m…fun.
Or something.
I’m halfway to the bathroom when I hear something in a different part of the museum though.
It’s a squeak.
And it sounds like it’s coming from the storage/workroom.
Like someone’s in there, opening a storage drawer.
A shiver ripples through me. “Hello—” I start, but someone’s hand clamps around my mouth.
“You’re safe, but you need to leave,” a soft, vaguely familiar male voice says in my ear. “I’ll handle this.”
That’s not a shiver rippling through my body now.
That’s a full-on panic attack.
Who says you’re safe and means it?
No one. That’s who.
I scream against the hand on my mouth and jerk my elbow back, intending to get him in the ribs or the side or maybe a kidney, but my elbow connects with air and I’m suddenly spinning, completely free, the man gone.
There’s a crash in the storage room as the door flies open. A flashlight from inside the storage room briefly illuminates a slender person dashing through the doorway, and my brain registers what it also refuses to comprehend.
That’s Davis. Steve to my grandmother.
I think.
But what—why— oh my god .
Something crashes. Something else squeaks.
There’s a shout.
A grunt.
Glass breaking.
Call someone.
I need to call someone.
Phone.
Do I have my phone?
Where’s my phone?
Fucking dress. Fucking dress .
No pockets.
No phone.
No phone .
I rush toward the storage room, heart pounding, and arrive just in time to see the back door swing open and a dark figure dash into the night as a second figure goes flying.
But not toward the fleeing figure.
No, this person is flying like they slipped on something.
Arms windmilling.
Body sailing backward.
Back hitting the floor.
There’s a grunt—a manly grunt—and I’m in motion again.
I slap on the light switch, and the man on the floor squints at me.
“What the fuck ?” I yelp as I confirm at least one paranoid suspicion.
Heat courses from my scalp, down my forehead and over my eyelids, from my nose to my cheeks and ears, then spreads to my jaw and neck.
My heart tries to hammer itself into my breastbone.
My knees wobble and my stomach rolls over at the sight before me.
Today was supposed to be the best wedding ever.
And it’s just gone completely sideways.
A wedding crasher who made me start a glitter bomb war. My imaginary fiancé wiped out on the tile after breaking into my museum. And a separate dark-clothed figure fleeing my storage room.
The exit door clicks shut.
“I’m safe ?” I yelp as a man I very much should not yell at blinks at me once more from the floor, then pulls himself to sitting.
He looks at the door to the outside world that the second person escaped through, then down, his gaze going toward the shattered coffee mug and the spilled coffee with a smear in it where his boot hit it, then looks at me again.
Swear he’s thinking about getting up and running after whoever just fled here.
You know. While he might have a concussion.
That wouldn’t be even more problematic than the break-in happening at all.
I order my sarcastic side to hush as I dash around him to the back door and fling it open, peering out into the night.
No lights back here. Just the shadows of the backside of the water park across the alleyway. It’s closed for the winter.
“Don’t—” Davis starts but cuts himself off with a grunt.
Dammit.
Dammit .
I have to pick between dashing into the night to track someone who could’ve gone any direction around the corner of the building and tending to someone who might have a concussion.
Davis’s brown manbun is lopsided. His beard is still thick, but less bushy than the last time I saw him, like he trimmed it for the wedding. And his brown eyes stare at me blankly.
I’ve decided after most of my occasional encounters with him over the past few years that his blank look doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on in his head.
Rather, it means he’s trained himself well to not give any clues as to what’s going on in his head.
But in this situation, I don’t trust blankness.
In this situation, I actively dislike blankness.
Nurse Sloane takes over from Freaking Out Sloane, and I squat beside him. “Are you hurt?”
He blinks, and a different blankness schools his features. This isn’t I’m knocked out blankness.
This is I’m letting you see nothing blankness.
“No.”
I study his eyes—definitely more alert, if still guarded—then make a quick visual inspection of the rest of the man who used to be my shameful secret boy band crush.
More heat courses through my body.
That’s not all he is now, even if he doesn’t know it.
I think.
Probably.
Rumor around town is that he just knows things.
That’s probably why I picked him. The risk of telling stories about a man who has a way of knowing things. That, and he only stops by Shipwreck occasionally to visit Beck Ryder, one of his former bandmates who’s had a weekend house up here for longer than I’ve lived here.
“Follow my fingers with your eyes,” I order, lifting a hand.
The blank look stays. “I’m fine.”
Great. Want to pretend to be my fake fiancé?
I shake my head and rise, aware that he’s tracking my movements as I begin to circle him.
The man could have a concussion. Now is not the time to ask him for a favor.
There’s no obvious blood anywhere. Pupils seem fine. Breathing normal.
Good. “What are you doing here?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Who was that?”
Again, no answer.
Just him watching me watch him as I pace around him, checking to make sure his movements are normal.
Until he flings an arm out. “Don’t step in the coffee.”
So I don’t fall?
Or so I don’t destroy evidence at a crime scene?
Oh my god.
What is even happening right now?
Breathe, Sloane. Breathe. “Who gave you the code to get in here? What are you doing here?”
His eyes slide to the back door again, then to the wide filing cabinet where one of the drawers is cracked, then back to me, like he’s saying following someone else who’s not supposed to be here, duh .
And like that’s all the answer I’m going to get.
But more questions are bubbling up.
Who was in here with him? What did they want?
The worktable’s crooked. There’s the broken coffee mug on the ground. That filing cabinet drawer—it’s bent, and there’s a crowbar on the floor next to it.
I suppress another shiver and look back at Davis.
“Did you pull any muscles? Strain anything? Twist anything?”
“You’re a nurse.”
Teenage me squeals in my head. He remembers who I am!
I tell her to shut up because when he finds out the other thing I’ve been doing, he’s probably going to have a restraining order filed against me.
Also, why is my imaginary fiancé in a place where a crime just happened? And in a place he shouldn’t even know how to get into?
Because you really know how to pick men, Sloane.
Even the imaginary boyfriends have questionable character.
Awesome.
Also, I am never buying another dress without pockets in my entire life.
Ever .
You don’t need your phone to be on glitter patrol, Sloane. There will be security people everywhere. Plus, Waverly and Cooper were pretty firm about not wanting people having opportunities to take pictures to slip to the paparazzi.
That’s what I told myself.
That I didn’t need my phone today. That I didn’t have to figure out how to shove it in my cleavage. That it would fall out and I’d lose it.
And now I’d give both of my boobs and all of my cleavage to have my phone on me.
I watch Davis watching me. “That’s me. Doc Adamson’s nurse. Does anything hurt? Should I go find him too?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Who was that?”
Blank stare.
“How did you get in here?”
“Security system needs an upgrade.”
“ Why are you in here?”
“You should change the code on the doors immediately.” He rises to his feet with the grace of a cat like he truly didn’t bruise, pull, or tear anything when he went down, navigating the slick spot on the floor without issue this time. He’s in suit pants and a long-sleeve button-up, definitely dressed for a wedding compared to what he’s usually wearing, though his pants are splattered with coffee that also shouldn’t have been in here. Hints of the tattoos covering his arms peek out at his wrists as he straightens his cuffs.
He pulls out his phone and starts snapping pictures like he’s the freaking sheriff.
And he still doesn’t answer.
It’s pissing me off.
This isn’t technically my museum, but after the hours I’ve spent after work and on the weekends to fundraise for the building, collecting display items from the Rock family and even venturing into enemy territory to get historical artifacts from people in Shipwreck’s rival town of Sarcasm just a little north of here, planning the museum’s grand opening, gathering volunteers, and volunteering myself now that it’s open, I feel an ownership of this place.
I’ve done a little more than drop a few twenties into the museum fundraising jars around town and stopped by to peruse the exhibits, which are about as much as Davis did.
Though he has been doing other charity work.
Namely, being the subject of secret pictures that I’ve snapped of him and sent to my grandmother for the past year, telling Grandma that he’s my boyfriend, Steve.
Because Grandma started making noises about sending Nigel to get me and bring me home and marry me and fill my belly with babies.
Yes, she actually says it like that.
All of it.
So can you blame me for telling the woman who raised me that I already had a boyfriend?
Slipping yesterday and saying that Steve had proposed though—that was probably a mistake.
Especially since Nigel’s here.
Calling me out on my lies and demanding that I come home with him.
I won’t—clearly—but my life will be infinitely more difficult until he accepts that I’m not moving back to Two Twigs.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” I ask Davis.
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t touch anything. Quit taking pictures . No one’s supposed to have phones here.”
He slides another unreadable look at me.
And unfortunately, I read a crap ton into that look.
You don’t get yourself a pretend boyfriend without knowing a little about him when he’s a real person.
And I know a little about what people say about him.
And I suspect he likes what people say about him.
But I don’t. Not right now.
“Don’t freaking start with that I’m doing my job thing. I don’t believe it. Sarah Ryder told me you work at the nuclear reactor down in Corieville and just like making people think you’re a spy. I’m going to get the sheriff. You need to give him a statement about what you were doing here and anything you saw or know.”
Once again, the man doesn’t answer as he goes back to snapping photos of the workroom.
But I do get a different kind of answer.
The kind that comes in the form of a swooshing noise near the front of the museum.
I know that swoosh.
Davis apparently does too.
His head jerks toward the front of the museum, then he grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of the workroom.
But unlike when Nigel grabbed me five minutes ago, this time, I get a full-body shiver at his touch.
The kind of shiver I have actively chosen to not ever get again in my life because I don’t want men touching me.
Not because I don’t enjoy physical activities between consenting adults—though that took me a few years to embrace after I left Two Twigs too—but because I pick terrible men.
But do I wrench myself out of Davis’s grip?
Nope.
Why?
I don’t want to talk about it.
“Bathroom,” he murmurs so quietly that it’s almost like he’s not talking. “Hide. Now.”
“Excuse you, no . If someone knows the code?—”
And that’s the last thing I say before everything goes from bad to worse.
Because Ray, one of the Rock cousins and fellow museum volunteer, is calling my name.
“Sloane? Sloane, you’re never going to believe this. I just found an old friend of yours who got all tied up in that glitter bombing! I saw you come in here, so I offered to bring him. Sloane? You in here?”
Davis stops and looks down at me, and for the first time since I realized who he was when I spotted him on my first trip to Shipwreck, the man makes a face that’s not completely straight and unreadable.
I don’t know what this face is, but it’s not good.
It’s full of suspicion.
Worry.
It looks like he’s connecting dots.
Like he knows.
He knows what I’ve been doing.
“Go hide in the bathroom,” I hiss at Davis. “Go! Now!”
He looks at me.
Just looks at me.
Doesn’t narrow his eyes, doesn’t scowl, doesn’t make an are you out of your mind? That’s what I just told you to do look.
Simply stares at me, straight-faced.
And I’m pretty sure this straight-faced look is saying fuck no , even though it’s not saying anything at all.
Possibly I took this pretend boyfriend thing a little too seriously if I think I can read this man’s mind.
Or possibly that’s the only thing a rational human being would think in this situation.
Footsteps come closer.
“ Please go hide in the bathroom, and I’ll explain later,” I hiss at Davis.
The man folds his arms over his chest and looks at me, and this look, for once, is incredibly expressive.
There’s no mistaking the fuck no on his face now too. “You knew the blond caveman was here?”
The blond—oh, crap.
Seriously?
He wants to talk about that ex-boyfriend?
The one who used to date Davis’s friend Ellie?
The one who was still dating Davis’s friend Ellie when he started dating me, making me the other woman ?
The one I still can’t think about without flushing with shame at knowing what I did to Ellie?
“What does Patrick have to do with this?”
Davis blinks.
This one’s actually a startled blink.
And we’re running out of time.
I need to come clean.
But more importantly, I need to get the damn sheriff because someone broke into my museum .
Except Nigel’s right here .
Even if he hasn’t said anything, I can feel him here, making my skin crawl and guilt and shame eke out of my pores, and that’s enough to make me shiver.
And that’s the shiver that tells me what I have to do next.
The footsteps get closer.
Nigel’s voice answers Ray, confirming I’m not shivering for nothing, and I shiver harder.
And then I take my life into my own hands—apparently again today—and I fling myself at Davis.
I can explain the Steve thing away.
Nigel apparently already knows who Davis really is, so I’ll tell Nigel I couldn’t tell Grandma that I was dating a guy who was in the boy band Bro Code fifteen years ago. That it was hard enough to tell her that I was dating a guy with tattoos and thick facial hair and a manbun, because Grandma doesn’t approve of any of those things.
I’ll say I made up a fake name for Davis to keep Grandma from having a complete heart attack, since we all know those boy band guys go around sleeping with everything on two legs and sometimes sheep too—yes, also Grandma’s words—and an innocent thing like me deserves someone who’s only had sex for practice with those loose women and not farm animals.
Also Grandma’s words.
As grateful as I’ll always be that Grandma stepped in very early in my childhood to raise my brother and me, I’m horrified that I used to think sentences like that were normal.
And I’m taking a special delight in what I’m doing now because it’s complete rebellion against the things she taught me to be afraid of.
I’m not just flinging my arms around Davis.
I’m also pressing my lips to his, squeezing the hug tighter than I should, waiting for him to shove me away—at least I’ll have a great breakup story and an excuse to tell Grandma that I’ve decided to go live in a convent or something—but he doesn’t.
That by itself is shocking enough.
But what he does next?
The man—my pretend boyfriend who doesn’t know he’s my pretend boyfriend—slips his arms around my waist, angles his head, and kisses me back.
Soft mustache and beard tickle my mouth and chin.
Warm, firm lips suckle at my lower lip.
I taste toasted marshmallow and smell pine needles.
One of his hands lifts to tangle in my hair.
My belly drops.
My nipples contract.
My vagina does too.
Oh my god.
I’m kissing Davis Remington.
I’m kissing Davis Remington .
I let one of my hands drift up into his hair too.
Davis’s hair is so soft.
Like, crazy soft.
No wonder he keeps it long.
Hair this soft shouldn’t be cut short. It should be long. Luxurious. Pettable.
Pettable ?
Fuck.
I go two years without dating, kissing, or even having recreational sex with a man, and the first time I need to kiss one just to keep up appearances of a fake boyfriend, I’m fantasizing about his hair and calling him pettable.
But also?—
God , I miss kissing.
The lights flash on around me, but I can only tell by the shift behind my eyelids.
“There you— oh . Oh, my. I?—”
Another unexpected voice joins us. “Ray, the museum’s —oh my god . Out. Out! ”
Tillie Jean.
Tillie Jean to the rescue.
Am I still kissing Davis?
I am.
I’m still kissing Davis.
And he’s still kissing me back, his tongue swiping over the seam of my lips, and oh my god , I haven’t been wet this fast when kissing a guy in—well, ever.
All because the boy band crush of my teenage years licked my lips.
“ Sloane ,” Nigel’s deep, chiding voice says, and that does it.
That jerks me back to reality.
I break the kiss, but keep my hand in Davis’s hair because apparently my hormones are still half in control of this situation now.
I blink around the room.
Tillie Jean is gaping at me, but it’s like a smile-gape.
She knows.
She knows all about my fake boyfriend situation.
She and another of our friends helped me learn to use photo manipulation software. They helped me take the pictures. They egged me on.
And we kept it a secret from the entire town—naturally, because it’s flirting the line of being against the unspoken town rule of being safe for celebrities—which is why Ray’s lip is curled up in confusion.
I mean, Ray’s a sweet guy, young but sweet, so he’d probably be confused no matter what, but this is extra confusing.
Until he starts to grin, like he thinks we’re perfect together.
He’s such a romantic.
He’d totally instantly go to shipping us.
But Nigel?—
Nigel is staring at me like I’ll be covered in a true crime podcast very, very soon.
Yes, her murderer says she had it coming. That saving her from herself was the only way to save her eternal soul .
I risk a glance at Davis.
And it’s official.
I’m fucked.