Chapter 29
“Is that it?” Oliver asked. We’d been driving on back roads, winding through grass-covered hills, past vineyards, and farms. My phone didn’t have directions to the abandoned silos, but there were several social media posts I’d found that gave vague clues.
On the journey so far, I’d taken lots of videos and pictures for Kari that she would love.
“I think so,” I said. “Pull over up there on that dirt turnout.”
He did just that and turned off the car.
There were cows grazing in a field across the street, but other than that there were no signs of life.
I approached the shoulder-high steel-mesh fence that was keeping us from the silos, which were a good hundred feet away.
Every twenty feet or so along the fence was a thick round wooden post. I assessed the scalability of one and found it lacking.
Running horizontally along the top of the fence was a long, thin wire.
“Do you think it’s electric?”
“You’re not climbing over this.” He pointed to the no-trespassing sign zip-tied to a section of fencing.
“Of course I am. Bree said the silos were abandoned. That probably means no power, right? How else do the rebel teens get in there?”
“Maybe there’s a back way or cut fencing somewhere.”
I wiggled my eyebrows at him, then stuck the toe of my shoe into one of the squares of the metal fencing. It didn’t fit well but it was good enough. But first I had to see if this thing was going to electrocute me.
I reached up only to be pulled back by my waist and wrapped up from behind in a bear hug by Oliver. “Are you serious right now?” he said by my ear, his arms pinning mine to my sides.
“So protective. My parents would give you a gold star.” I leaned against him. “It was just going to be a fast tap. The cows touch it, right? It can’t be that bad.”
“People have died from being electrocuted.”
“From a cattle fence? I doubt it. And even so, people have died everywhere,” I said. “Even during sex. We can’t live life in fear.”
“Some risks are worth taking,” he responded. “Some aren’t.”
“Which one of those examples is worth it? The fence? Or sex?”
“Funny,” he said. “At least find a stick or something.”
“For which one of those examples?”
His laugh vibrated against my back and I closed my eyes, soaking it in.
He held me for a few moments longer, perhaps weighing whether I was going to go straight to the wire again, like a child who’d been told no but couldn’t help herself. Or maybe he wanted to feel me against him for as long as possible. I wasn’t complaining; his arms felt good around me. He felt good.
Finally, he let go.
The ground surrounding us was just gravel, dirt, yellowing tall grass, and wildflowers.
Not a tree or stick in sight. While he continued to search, I had another idea.
I removed the thin hoodie I was wearing, moved to one of the posts, then flung my hoodie over the top wire so it draped down on either side of the fence.
By the time Oliver looked over with a protest, I was already scaling it, my hoodie acting as a buffer for any current that might’ve existed.
With the help of the post, I jumped down on the other side. “You coming?” I asked him.
He pressed a button on his key fob, causing the alarm on his car to give a single honk, tucked the fob into his pocket, and followed me over.
The grass we walked through now was thigh high and several foxtails clung to my socks as we traveled through it.
We reached the bottom of the first silo and I looked up.
It was much taller than it seemed from the road.
There was a rusty ladder on the side that led all the way to an opening at the peaked roof.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
I got out my phone and started recording for Kari. “It’s just a little rusty,” I teased.
He pointed to a door at the bottom.
“If this thing is full of grain, will opening that door result in us being buried?” I asked.
“I’ll take my chances with the door over the ladder,” he said, apparently knowing I was going to try one or the other.
“We should give Bree the MVP award. This makes a pretty cool backdrop for secret meetings.” I turned a three-sixty, zooming in on the cows and hills across the way and a caved-in barn next to us. I ended my spin back on Oliver, where I zoomed in on his ass.
“So cool,” he said, studying the door, oblivious to my gaze.
I turned the camera to my socks and the foxtails burrowing through the material, scratching my skin. I reached down and plucked them out, then held one up for the camera. “Include one of these, Kari,” I said.
A grunting sound had me swinging my camera back to Oliver, who was tugging on the door of the silo.
It finally gave way with a loud creak. No grain poured out of the opening.
I followed him inside. The smell was stale, and aside from a single beam of light shining down like a heavenly manifestation from the hole directly above us, it was dark.
I walked over to a pile of grain on the far side that was taller than me. “How does this get in here? From that hole?”
“No clue,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s fresh. It’s been here awhile.”
I turned so my back faced the pile, held my hands out to my sides, then did a trust fall backward. “Oof,” I said as I landed. “Not as soft as I thought it was going to be.”
“I wish I’d gotten that on video.”
A tickling sensation on my arm prompted me to scratch it.
That’s when I saw a small weevil crawling across my skin.
I shrieked, stood up, and began brushing myself off while spinning in a circle and chanting, “Bugs, bugs, bugs.” I flipped my head over and shook out my hair. “Are there any more on me?”
“Stand still and let me look.” Oliver turned on his phone’s flashlight.
I went very still.
He inspected my back, then circled around to my front, where his eyes took in every inch of me. He smoothed my hair as he searched there, then brushed a strand off my face and met my eyes. “You’re clear.”
His hand hovered near my face, his flashlight still on me like it was highlighting every thought in my head.
“Oliver…”
A gust of wind burst into the silo, disturbing the grain as the air followed the path of least resistance out the top. It was followed by the loud slamming of the door. I jumped with the noise and Oliver let out a nervous laugh.
“Maybe Kari can claim the silo is haunted and that’s what interferes with the signal.” His hands retreated back to their space.
“It could be a thriller/romance/horror/ghost story.”
He walked over to the door and turned the handle. “She’s already bending genres. Might as well add one more.” He pushed on the door but it remained closed.
I laughed.
He pushed again, with his shoulder this time. “It’s stuck.” He rammed his shoulder into it. Nothing.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, walking over to him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not.” He stepped aside to let me try.
I definitely didn’t think I was stronger than him, but this felt like a prank to me, so I tried. It didn’t budge.
“Good news,” Oliver said, looking at his phone.
“What?” I asked.
“You can tell Kari that inside a grain silo would be the perfect place for no cell service.”
I held up my phone. No bars. Then I laughed. It was a disbelieving laugh or a laugh that found this all very ironic.
“Speaking of books,” I said. “This is a well-loved trope in romances.”
“Getting stuck in a silo?”
“Getting stuck in general. It can be anywhere. A rooftop, an elevator, a library.”
“And then what happens?”
“Then the characters make out, which seems to either inspire them to figure out how to get out or sends some sort of signal into the universe to let some peripheral character in the book know they are trapped.”
“Are you suggesting we make out to bring order back to our world?”
I smiled. “Absolutely.”
His eyes collided with mine and his expression got serious. “It’s not, I uh… we…”
“What were you going to tell me in the car the other day? I stopped you, not wanting to hear it. But I need to know. Why don’t you like me back?
It seemed like you did at one point or at least wanted to try.
Am I too messy? Do you need me to be perfect before giving us a chance?
Because I’ll never be perfect. I’m not my sister. If you want someone like that—”
“I don’t,” he interrupted. “At all. But it’s complicated.”
“How? What is it? My past? My boss?”
“It’s my past,” he shot back.
“Your exes really screwed up your ability to trust, didn’t they?” I asked.
“My exes are definitely screwing me over here.” His eyes looked sad.
I wondered if there was anything I could say to convince a guy who had been cheated on twice before that it wouldn’t happen again. That I was a safe bet. “The past is in the past, Oliver. You can’t let it dictate your future.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I nodded.
“So what…” He looked around the dark circular space where we stood. “You want me to take you right here, right now, in this bug-infested silo?” He stalked toward me, a new intensity in his eyes.
My heart pounded heavy in my chest. I waited with bated breath for him to collide with me. I wanted him so badly. I was more sure about that than I was about almost anything in my life right now.
But then he stopped, his mind taking over, doubt clouding his face. “I can’t… We can’t.”
I crossed my arms in front of me, suddenly feeling vulnerable and embarrassed. Because right now, I was leading with my emotions, like I always did, and he was leading with his logic, like he always seemed to. “I don’t need to be somebody else’s mistake. I was that for two years.”
“You’re not a mistake,” he said.
“Just a bad decision?”
He finished his walk toward me. But instead of pulling me against him, he brushed past me to the stale grain and began climbing the pile, slipping and losing purchase with every step. Eventually, he was at the top.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Seeing if there is a signal up here.”
“Of course you are,” I muttered under my breath.
“There is,” he said after several minutes. “We’ll be unstuck soon.”
And it didn’t even require a makeout , I thought bitterly.