Chapter 29
29
Davis
Sloane watches me make a bed on the floor after Sarah leaves and after we’ve both had separate quick showers, but she doesn’t say anything.
Out loud anyway.
Her eyes are saying plenty as she sits there in the middle of the mattress.
So is her tongue.
It keeps darting over her lips.
I flop onto the pile of blankets with my back to her and come face-to-butt with her cat. “You should’ve stayed inside. I won’t go treasure hunting without you.”
“If that mortar ball randomly exploded and took out the cabin and your trailer, would you miss it?”
“No. You can shut the light off whenever you want. Or leave it on all night if you sleep better that way. Doesn’t matter either way to me.”
“What’s Denver?”
“Nothing.”
“Bro Code was supposed to play in Denver the week before I had my tickets in Charlotte.”
Huh.
There is, apparently, something that can solve the boner situation.
I roll over and look at her. “Band broke up in Denver. You remember correctly.”
“Why?”
“Off-limits.”
“To protect one of your friends?”
“No.”
“To protect you then. That’s why Sarah doesn’t know either.”
I don’t answer.
What happened in Denver—no one talks about it.
For me.
To protect me.
“You don’t have to tell me.” She shifts on the bed and flips off the light. I hear shuffling, which I assume is her taking off her pants.
And there goes the boner again.
The bed creaks. “I know you probably have enough information to find the treasure without me now. And I wouldn’t hold it against you if you snuck out and went looking for it by yourself. I really wouldn’t. Coming face-to-face with bones and an old cannonball—sorry, mortar ball …spies hiding in my museum…my ex trashing my house…raccoons launching a terror campaign… This is a little more than I signed up for. I know you like to take care of people. That you’re keeping me as safe as you can. Which is very nice. But you don’t have to take care of me. Even by letting me come along on the hunt. I’ll be okay. I’ve been hurt before and gotten this far in life pretty happy overall. I’ll keep going.”
Is she—is she breaking up with me? “What are you talking about?”
“Just—life’s weird, and sometimes you end up having to make fast friends with someone that you know won’t be around in your life forever, and it would be nice if, after this is all settled, and the sheriff finds Patrick and you find your treasure, if you ever come back to town, if we can just, I don’t know, say hi and be normal and maybe play darts or pool again. Not every time. Just every once in a while. Like super casual friends.”
Goddammit.
I do not want to be super casual friends with Sloane.
I want?—
Nope.
Can’t want.
Because the bare, undeniable truth is that I don’t date because I don’t talk about Denver.
If I’m not willing to tell someone what I did when I was at my absolute lowest, then I have no business having relationships.
You don’t keep secrets from the people who matter most.
From the people you’d theoretically raise kids with. Share a life with.
It’s why my last relationship ended over ten years ago, and why I’ve never tried another since.
Because I didn’t trust her with my darkest secret.
Maybe that’s why I like Sloane so much.
She’s had the courage to face her demons.
She didn’t cause them herself, but she’s worked hard to get over them. To live a happy life despite what’s likely a constant nagging in her head.
The shit you learn in childhood—it sticks. It gets in there before you’re in control of your own brain, and it doesn’t let its claws go.
“How did you learn to let the guilt go?” I ask in the darkness.
“The I’m going to hell for breathing guilt?”
“Yes.”
“Distance from my grandmother. Helping save people’s lives at work. Being there for victims’ families when we couldn’t. Realizing how big the world is and how small I am. Making friends with good people who were happy. Watching them make mistakes and forgive themselves for it. Joining a book club that picked the right nonfiction book about shame exactly when I needed to read it. It wasn’t just one thing. It’s been many, many things over many, many years.”
“Your guilt wasn’t your fault.”
“The overbearing, soul-crushing guilt? No, it wasn’t. I’m not perfect, but when I finally realized that was okay, it made it easier to own up to my own mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and truly forgive myself for them too.”
“You still battle the demons?”
“Not as often as I used to. Distance helps. Nigel being here, Grandma being mad at me…that doesn’t help. But they’re the problem. Even when I don’t feel it, I remind myself of that. I don’t owe them what they want for me. I owe me what I want for me. Good people aren’t perfect people. Good people are imperfect people who do their best and give other people grace and the gift of freedom to be who they were meant to be.”
Tell her. Tell her what you did .
I want to.
I want to say it out loud for the first time in fifteen years.
I want to confess. I want her to tell me how I can let go of the guilt.
Of the shame.
Of the constant need to do more and more and more good in the world to balance the scales.
I want to let her in.
I want to trust her.
And that has never— ever —happened before.
My pulse is riding a rocket ship to terror land. My mouth has gone dry.
What if I let it go?
What if I let go of my own old guilt and shame?
What if I let myself take a chance at being happy with someone instead of insisting I’m happiest alone?
What if I take this leap?
What if I trust her?
“Sloane—”
“Maps. Maps .” The lights flicker on, and she stares at me wide-eyed, her legs tucked in under the quilt, her breasts hanging free beneath her T-shirt. “Oh my god, maps . On the computer. Technology. Internet maps. Internet maps! Street view! Street view! Where’s your computer? We don’t have to hike out to see Chicken Rock. We can look at it on the computer. We can look at it right now .”
She starts to get out of bed, but pauses, shirt riding up, showing off a strip of smooth, bare skin over her panty line.
She tilts her head and frowns at me. “Davis? You okay?”
Nope.
Not even close.
I’m having a panic attack about wanting to confess a very old crime to her, and she’s sexy and alluring as a siren, and I am not okay .
Rather than answer, I spin to rise, trying to hide how fast I’m breathing, and the cat yowls and takes off under the bed. “Shit. Sorry. Sorry. Usually more aware of my surroundings.”
“It’s late. We should sleep. We can internet in the morning.”
We can sleep after we find the treasure, and we can internet now. “Can’t sleep until we look. Check on Peggy.”
I retrieve my bag from the front room, spot Rafael lounging in a deck chair with an eye on the pool house door, and I stifle another sigh.
Doesn’t help to tell myself he’s watching out for Sloane.
Feels like he’s watching to make sure I don’t leave either.
Not that I want to.
Even if I should.
When I return to the bedroom, Sloane’s hanging off the side of the mattress, legs mostly covered, but her pink panties are peeking out in back as she looks beneath the bed. “Peggy, that’s not a kitty toy.”
“Need me to?—”
“ No .” Sloane straightens and smiles awkwardly at me. “I’m going to assume Beck and Sarah let all kinds of random people stay here regularly, so that there’s zero chance we’ll ever know who Peggy’s new toy belongs to. Ooooh, computer! Does it connect to the internet? Will someone be spying on what we’re doing when we pull up a map? Is that a thing? That’s a thing, right? That people can remotely hack into your computer and watch what you’re doing on it?”
I peek under the bed despite Sloane’s squeak of protest, and I snort softly to myself.
That dildo I actually recognize, which is still not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened in my life.
And it’s twice the size of Sloane’s largest dildo.
And now I’m thinking about Sloane’s dildo collection.
Again.
Peggy’s gnawing on the tip of this one like she’s a dog, and she has to open her mouth wide to do it.
“I told you not to look,” Sloane says.
“Ellie used that as a weapon to try to bean me in the head when I came out here to save her ass once.”
Sloane looks at me. Then leans over and peers under the bed again. “She attacked you with a dildo?”
I settle onto the side of the bed, telling myself this is just a bench to sit on and that Sloane will want to look too. “Before Sarah, Beck had some…interesting guests. They left things behind.”
She swings back up to sitting. “Why did you have to save Ellie’s ass?”
I stare at her.
She stares back, but only for a minute before she blinks. “Never mind. Not my business.”
“There was a weekend, eight or nine years ago, that all of us got together. Beck—he’s very in touch with his inner child, and he has a lot of games. Board games, table games, arcade games. Loves games. All games. He set a record on his Frogger arcade game, and we all?—”
I cut myself off as I catch her gaze drifting to my chest.
To where my Frogger tattoo is.
I nod. “Yeah. That weekend. Good weekend. He was fucking proud of his high score. So when Ellie broke the game when she was here for the goat wedding?—”
“Patrick’s brother’s wedding. The one where—the one where I found out I was the other woman.”
“You weren’t the other woman. The blond caveman’s a dick. When Ellie and Wyatt were out here for that wedding, she broke the game. Called me to fix it so Beck wouldn’t know.”
“Does he know now?”
“No.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Just Wyatt and Ellie.”
“How’d you fix it?”
“You want me to geek out right now about circuits and switches and code?”
She grins. “Yes.”
“No.” I open the laptop, disconnect from the internet, and launch the global map program that’s stored on my hard drive. She’s not wrong. We’re doing this without the possibility of being traced. “We’re looking for a chicken-shaped rock.”
“Can you geek out about how this program works?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
I cut another look at her.
She grins bigger and scoots closer, the quilt still covering her legs, then leans into the laptop and points. “Oh, is that Shipwreck?”
I actively ignore my brain filling in all of the details of what her legs look like under that quilt, and I zoom in and move the map until we can see the old cabin—the one neither of us will be going back to until I drop Vanessa a note that’ll wreck her entire month—and then pass her the laptop. “You know the maps better than I do.”
“How do I do that zoom thing you did? I’m better with people than I am with electronics.”
I demonstrate the keypad for her, not at all sad when our hands touch as I’m showing her how to operate the software, and then she’s off.
Exploring the Shipwreck-Sarcasm area virtually.
While I keep my arms tucked over my crotch so she can’t see the effect she has on me just by breathing.
I have such a fucking problem.
Peggy sticks her head out from under the bed and looks at us.
I cluck my tongue once, getting a look from Sloane as the cat leaps into my lap.
She turns her attention back to the computer. “You’re a cat person.”
“Watched Sarah with her cats.”
“Dog person?”
“Ellie and Wyatt and Tripp and Lila have dogs. Levi’s considering one, but their kids can’t agree on what kind of dog they’d want. They preferred having a squirrel. Would probably adopt the raccoons that attacked us if it wouldn’t make Giselle want to set Levi’s hair on fire.”
She winces, then gasps. “ Oh my god, it’s the chicken! ”
Peggy gives her a death glare.
“Don’t even,” Sloane tells the cat. “You’re that loud half the nights of the week too. Yeah, I hear you singing for the goats in the middle of the night. Davis. Look. Look . Doesn’t that look like a chicken?”
I follow where her finger is pointing at the screen, and I don’t even have to look hard to see the chicken.
That rock is definitely shaped like a chicken. Like a chicken walking somewhere, but on its side.
“That’s an overhead view,” I point out. “They wouldn’t have had overhead views.”
“We’re in the mountains, and it’s in a valley. They could’ve climbed and looked down on it. But look. Look . Its beak isn’t pointed south.”
I lean in.
Sniff subtly.
Inhale cinnamon.
Fuck, she smells good.
She scrolls, and then she pauses and grabs my forearm. “Davis,” she whispers.
“What?” I whisper back.
“It’s pointed at the Blue Lagoon Nature Preserve.”
I’ve hiked there before.
“And?”
“Look. Look . It’s here somewhere… Where is it…” She fidgets with the map, clearly looking for something, and the entire bed shakes when she does that butt wiggle she does when she’s excited. “ Yes! ”
I’m staring at a waterfall. “Blue Lagoon Falls?”
“It was formally renamed when the high school opened eighty or ninety years ago. First time the kids from Shipwreck and Sarcasm had to go to school together.”
“What does a waterfall have to do with that?”
“It was one more thing the towns argued over, and the county officials were trying to find something everyone could agree on that felt kinda neutral. Everyone from Shipwreck called it Thorny Rock Falls, but everyone from Sarcasm…” She squeals and bounces again. “ They called it Crow’s Shade Falls . And look. Look . Those are oak trees. Oak trees all over the top of the waterfall. And the journal talked about the ravens. Remember? Think about it. Crows. Ravens. People get them confused all the time. And shade. Like curtains. Curtains give you shade. And it’s a waterfall . And pirates . Pirates would hide treasure near water. Wouldn’t they? Or would they? Crap. Now I’m second-guessing myself. This is crazy. It’s too far-fetched.”
“It’s pirates.” I take the computer, holding it out over my knees so I don’t disturb the cat, and zoom out. Then out a little more.
Until Chicken Rock is in one corner, its beak pointing directly at the other corner, where the waterfall is.
I zoom in on the waterfall.
The wide waterfall.
That looks like curtains.
Sloane gasps softly like she’s realizing it too. “Oh my god, that really is it, isn’t it?”
I look up at her again. “You’re magnificent, you know that?”
She shakes her head. “I’m just a girl who likes history and sometimes puzzles too.”
“You are so much more than that.”
Her cheeks go ruddy, and she tucks her hands into her lap, staring at them while she tangles her fingers. “People have been hiking all over those falls for centuries. And the landscape would’ve changed some in two hundred years. If the treasure’s there—I don’t know where around the falls. Where it could be that someone wouldn’t have already found it. You know?”
I set the computer aside.
Lift the cat off my lap.
And I give in to what I’ve wanted to do again all day.
Sloane excited turns me on. Sloane solving puzzles turns me on. Sloane turns me on.
Kissing her is so fucking easy.
Running my fingers through her hair—bliss.
Tasting her—heaven.
I’m falling, and I don’t want anyone to catch me. I just want to fall with this bright, glorious rainbow of a woman.
She doesn’t pull away from kissing me. Doesn’t tell me to stop.
Doesn’t push me away.
She melts into me, looping her arms around my neck and turning into my body until we’re both splayed across the bed with our feet hanging off the side. She’s half on top of me while I grip her hips like she’s every lifeline I’ll ever need.
I touch skin.
Soft cotton.
And I know what’s under there.
She’s tugging my flannel off, and then my thermal over my head. We break the kiss long enough for her to get the job done, and then I’m kissing her again.
No apologies.
No hesitation.
Just everything my body has craved all day long.
I push her shirt up and flick my thumb over her nipple, and she moans in my mouth.
Yes.
She keeps saying she misses kissing. Touching.
Intimacy.
I haven’t, but now it’s all I want. To be close to her.
She’s my missing puzzle piece, and I need to stop. I need to tell her to stay here, stay safe, and go live a happy life.
But I don’t want to.
I want to suck on her pretty nipples and stroke her between her legs and curse the fucking day I decided not to carry condoms everywhere with me.
“Davis—” she gasps as I indulge in my fantasies. “Nightstand.”
Fuck, yes .
I hope.
Shit.
I haven’t done this in a goddamn decade.
What if?—
What if she’s slapping for the nightstand while she rocks her pelvis against me and I need to shut my mind up and just do what we both want?
What feels so right.
Inevitable.
I roll her beneath me, flip open the drawer and grab a strip of condoms from inside, and then we’re kissing again.
I fucking love kissing her.
The way she tastes.
The little noises she makes in the back of her throat.
The way she yanks my beanie off to grip my hair while holding my mouth to hers.
The glide of her tongue over mine.
The press of her hips into my hard-on.
I fumble with the condoms, and she shoves at the waistband of my jeans.
Desperate.
Hungry.
No thinking, just doing.
Touching. Stroking. Stripping.
She reaches under the waistband of my boxer briefs and strokes my cock. My hips flex into her touch.
Jesus.
Fuck.
Angel.
Heaven.
Torture.
I break free of the kiss with a gasp.
“Too much?” she whispers.
“More.”
She squeezes me and strokes harder and longer, balls to tip, rolling her fingers over the pre-cum leaking out of me, then circling my head with her thumb and stroking me again.
I bury my face in her neck, breathing through the desperate need to come.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold— fuck, her hands are magic.
“Wait,” I grunt.
“Sorry. Sorry, I?—”
“No sorry. Just—been a while. I don’t—I want?—”
“This?” she whispers, taking the strip of condoms from me.
“ Yes .”
Foil rips, and then her hands are on me again, rolling the condom down my length.
“You weren’t kidding about that biological weapon thing,” she murmurs into my hair.
“Hashtag blessed,” I force out, which makes her laugh.
I love her laugh.
And I love that she’s laughing as she kisses me again, slower, softer kisses that gradually build to desperate, hungry kisses while she shifts beneath me.
My cock nestles between her thighs, oversensitive already, as she wraps her legs around my hips, tilts her pelvis just right, and my tip brushes against her pussy.
My balls tighten.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe .
She tightens her legs around me, pulling me into her depths, and fuck me fuck me fuck me don’t come don’t come don’t come .
I can last
I can last.
I can do this.
Her hands glide down my back while her tongue strokes mine and she angles her hips up higher to take me deeper inside her pussy.
So tight.
So hot.
So slick.
Don’t come don’t come don’t come .
I try to breathe and hear my own ragged breath. “Feel—so good.”
“So good,” she agrees.
I let myself sink fully into her, my eyes crossing as she pumps her hips against me, stroking and squeezing me with her inner walls, and I can’t—it’s been too long—I just?—
“ Fuck ,” I groan as I come hard and fast inside her.
There’s no stopping it.
No holding back.
Just everything I have, all of it, jerking out of me in one spasm after another after another, because I’m a fucking lightweight when it comes to a woman’s touch.
This woman’s touch.
She squeezes me tight, holding me with her arms and her legs and her body while I let go.
I’m not even a one-thrust wonder here.
I didn’t make it that far.
Probably a good thing.
She won’t be sad to see me go.
Except as the tension from my orgasm leaves my body, she strokes soft fingers down my back and kisses me on the forehead.
Like she’s glad I’m here.
Like she did this for me.
Like she knew I wouldn’t last, and she wanted it anyway.
Dammit.
Dammit .
My heart’s still pounding, yet I feel like a jellyfish.
Completely boneless.
Including the rapidly softening bone still buried inside her.
“Sorry,” I mutter into her clavicle.
“For being human?”
I pull air into my lungs. “Yes.”
“You don’t need to be sorry for that.”
It takes more effort than it should, but I shift so I’m not crushing her, then slide a little down her body, my dick flopping out of her, and I nip at the pretty pink bud sitting at the top of her plump breast.
Her breath catches.
I do it again.
Her hips arch into me.
Once more, and this time, I order my heavy-as-fuck arm to move, and I stroke between her wet thighs, looking for that other sweet little bud?—
“Oh god,” she gasps.
“Hardly,” I murmur.
“You—I— there ,” she whimpers.
I swirl my tongue around her nipple and flick at her clit, following the patterns of her gasps and moans, letting her body guide me, until I slip two fingers into her channel and feel it clench hard around me as she throws her head back with a cry.
“ Oh god oh god oh god yes yes yes yes yes .”
I press on her clit with my thumb while she pumps her hips in my hand, and I watch the glow of her skin and the unfocused way her eyes stare blindly above.
Fucking gorgeous.
I want to make her come every day. Every morning. Every night. In the light. So I can watch.
She shivers a whole-body shiver that I track from her shoulders to her toes, and then her body goes limp. “So good,” she murmurs. “Thank you.”
I kiss her nipple again.
“Won’t—fall—so…”
She trails off, her eyes drifting shut.
“Dammit,” she whispers.
And then she’s out.
Just like last night.
Her chin dipped to her shoulder. Eyelids peaceful. Copper lashes brushing her cheeks. One deep breath. Then another.
So damn beautiful.
So damn complicated.
And so damn perfect.
Which all leaves me so damn fucked.