Chapter 13
NOAH
Shock at Xavier’s announcement rendered us all speechless for a moment. Someone was dead? Surely he was just being dramatic to scare us all…but then why were his knees stained with blood and his expression so grim?
Z was the first to find his tongue. “Sorry, I could have sworn you just said—-”
“Someone’s dead,” Xavier repeated, really enunciating his words to clear up any miscommunication. “One of the girls from Team Tiger. Nikita found her out in the archery field with an arrow through her eye.”
My lips parted in horror. What the fuck?
“How?” Skye asked, sitting up and removing the ice pack to stare at Xavier.
“Fuck, dude, that looks painful.” Xavier winced as he stared at Skye’s nose, which was already turning deep blue. “You ran into a tree?”
“Branch,” Skye corrected with a sour glare. “It was a low--hanging branch, and Noah distracted me by tripping over a tree root.”
I grinned, remembering the comical moment despite the grazes on my knees. They both stung, but it was through my pants, so no one had noticed that I was also injured—-and I sure as shit wasn’t going to fess up.
“Wait, circle back,” Z interjected. “Dead as in…”
“As in not alive,” Xavier replied with an eye roll.
“She has like four inches of arrow inside her skull, so yeah, dead dead. Ace took the body to the infirmary, and I asked Sakura to help Nikita in the shower because she was fucking covered in her friend’s blood.
It was a whole mess, but I’m failing to see how it was an accident. ”
That was alarming, and my chest tightened with the memory of my attack just a few weeks ago. “You think someone deliberately killed her?”
Xavier’s dark gaze shifted to me, making my breath catch. “I think if it was an accident someone would have fessed up to firing the arrow, don’t you?”
I wrinkled my nose, seeing his point. “Yeah, I guess. And after Cat Kay’s murder… Fuck, what if it’s the same guy?” That idea gave me chills, because if he was targeting influencers, then we were all in danger. Unless…unless he was targeting female influencers, and my deception made me safe?
Not that it made it okay to kill the other teams off, of course, but my immediate concern was myself and my team.
“It’s possible,” Xavier agreed, shocking me simply by agreeing with me on anything. “Either way, we all need to be really careful until the killer is found. That means no wandering off into the woods alone at night.” His eyes narrowed on me, and my mood shifted sour once more.
But it was a valid point, so I forced a brittle smile and gritted my teeth as I nodded.
Torin burst into the cabin, his gaze scanning the room. When he locked on me, his whole body sagged with what seemed to be relief, and before I could ask what was going on, he’d launched himself at me.
“Oof,” I grunted as he knocked me backward on Skye’s bunk bed where I’d been sitting. “Tor, you good?”
The way his arms locked around my body and his face buried in my neck said he was not good, and worry filled my chest as I hugged him back.
“Hey, Tor, what’s wrong? Did something happen?” I stroked my hands down his back, shifting farther back on Skye’s bunk to allow Torin’s much larger frame a little comfort.
“He thought you were dead,” Xavier offered with a grunt. “We couldn’t find the two of you when the screams started.”
Because I was too busy crying behind my new favorite tree, and Skye was trying to cheer me up. But considering how early I’d left the cabin, followed by my altercation with Ace…I would have been “missing” for more than long enough to be dead in a field somewhere.
“Oh,” I murmured, hugging Torin a little tighter. “I’m fine, Tor. I was just talking with Skye in the woods, and then he broke his nose, so we came back here.”
That made Torin lift his head to stare at me in bewilderment. “He what? How?”
“Hey, shouldn’t we be checking on Nikita?” August asked, climbing down from his bunk still in his loose sleeping pants. “And seeing if Ace needs anything? Or literally anything that requires us leaving the cabin right now?”
Skye chuckled, putting the ice back on his face as he got up and gestured to Z. “Come on. I need aspirin or something. My face is killing me.”
Z didn’t even question it, hopping up to follow Skye and Augie out of the cabin, leaving Xavier glaring at me while Torin still hugged me tight, his face buried once more.
“Xavi, can you go find Minho?” Torin asked without raising his head. Somehow he just knew Xavier hadn’t left with the others. Godzilla had that effect. “He went to the lake to look for Noah and Skye.”
Crap, I’d worried Minnie, too? Now I felt extra shitty.
Xavier glowered a moment longer, then grunted a quiet “fine” and stomped out of the cabin, leaving us alone.
“He’s gone,” I murmured once the door swung shut.
“Finally,” Torin groaned, raising his head from the crook of my neck and crushed his lips to mine in a bruising, hungry, possessive kiss that shocked me harder than a live wire.
Not that I was complaining. Butterflies erupted within me with such intensity I could have sworn my whole body quivered as I shifted my hand to the back of his neck to hold him closer.
For a few delicious moments the two of us existed in that perfect little bubble, totally ignoring our surroundings or how risky it was to be kissing in full view of anyone who might walk back in. I was also finding it hard to remember why the fuck I cared. Let them find out.
Unless it was Minnie. I’d rather body roll over hot coals than intentionally hurt him.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, Short Stack,” Torin whispered as I reluctantly pulled away from his drugging kiss. “Shit, I totally messed this up. I let my fear get the better of me and—-”
“Wait, why are you apologizing?” I cut him off, startled and confused. Did he have regrets already? But he’d kissed me before, at the hospital, and I was sure he’d said he was actually into me like that, but maybe things had changed? After all, he hadn’t tried to kiss me again. Until now.
Torin licked his lips, his gaze dipping to my mouth as he shifted his position on the narrow bunk to give me a little space. I didn’t want space, though. I liked how he’d been hugging me before, sort of squashing me with his weight. Space felt cold and lonely. Like a rejection.
“I was trying to be a gentleman and let you make the first move, if this was something you wanted, but I just… I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t have pushed the issue. I was just so fucking relieved that you’re okay.
That girl with the arrow…” He shuddered dramatically, and I took the opportunity to scoot closer. For comfort.
“You were trying to be a gentleman?” I repeated, amused. Just a second ago, I thought he regretted kissing me because he wasn’t into me like that, but he was trying to be a gentleman. It was stupidly cute. “You wanted me to make a move?”
Torin dragged his lower lip through his teeth, an absurdly distracting and sexy move that was frankly unfair given the conversation was literally about kissing.
“Yeah. I realized that I sort of took advantage of the situation in the hospital, and I thought if you…you know…if you were interested in being more than friends, then maybe you’d bring it up. But you haven’t. So yeah. I’m sorry.”
Well, fuck, I’d read that whole situation totally wrong.
To clear things up, I grabbed the back of his neck once more and kissed him.
For a moment, he seemed to freeze, but then he was quick to reciprocate, coaxing my lips apart with his tongue so he could kiss me even deeper while my body melted into his.
“…should probably get an x--ray or something, don’t you think, Ace?” Skye’s louder--than--necessary voice reached my ears through the cabin door, and Torin hissed a frustrated sound as he smoothly rolled out of the bunk and dropped on the edge of his own, opposite Skye’s, where I lay.
“Why are you yelling at me?” Ace replied as he opened the cabin door and Skye’s wide, panicked gaze flicked from me to Torin and then eased with relief.
“Is there something wrong with your ears, too?” He shifted his gaze from Skye behind him to me and Torin, then frowned.
“Good, you’re together. I don’t want anyone wandering around the camp alone until this murder gets solved, okay? Stick together in pairs at a minimum.”
“Can do, Boss,” I replied quickly, forcing a smile to hopefully cover the undoubted flush to my cheeks and lips. Kissing did tend to have that effect on my complexion, unfortunately.
Ace’s gaze narrowed with suspicion as he stared at me a little harder, filling me with nervous energy. It didn’t fucking help that I was so hot and bothered from Torin that Ace’s intense scrutiny made me squirm, flashes of his skillful hand buried between my legs flashing through my mind. Crap.
“Are you okay, Noah?” Ace asked, jerking me out of my panicked little daydream as he took a step closer. “You seem…” He trailed off, pursing his lips as he frowned harder.
“What were you just telling me about the dead girl, Ace?” Skye interjected, physically stepping in front of Ace to break his line of sight and giving me a moment to catch my breath.
As subtly as I could, I snuck a look at Torin, who was watching me right back with a mischievous little smile on his perfect lips.
I was in so much trouble. At least Minho already knew about the first kiss, so this didn’t feel quite as shady as it had…but it was still unfair that Minnie didn’t know I was a girl. That was a huge omission to keep from someone for whom I had developed very real feelings.
“The phone lines aren’t working and literally no one has a mobile phone here,” Ace replied with a frustrated growl.
“One of the producers in the counselor cabin fainted when she saw the body; the other vomited. I’ve sent them both into town to get help anyway, and I made them take the body with them, seeing as I’ve already fucked up the crime scene as it is. ”
“Wait, why aren’t the phones working?” Torin asked, his whole demeanor shifting to alarm. “Isn’t that somewhat suspicious?”
Ace nodded. “In my world, yes. But the only logical course of action was to send for help.”
“Wouldn’t the ClikByte techs have seen everything on the video feed?
” I asked, shuffling out of Skye’s low bunk and ruffling my hair with my fingers.
Hopefully that helped to shake off the freshly kissed look that Ace had undoubtedly just noticed.
Maybe he couldn’t put a finger on it, but he’d seen that look on me once before, when he was the one who’d been doing the kissing.
Ace shrugged, shifting slightly so Skye wasn’t still awkwardly standing between us like a human shield.
“If they did, I’d have thought there would already be some sort of rescue or contact.
I briefly discussed with Yeosang from Alphabet Crew, and he theorized that due to the number of cameras, they could be closed circuit and contained within the camp here, relying on daily uploads to cloud servers. ”
I nodded slowly, understanding his meaning thanks to Miles filling my head with film recording information over the last few years of my NoFear platform.
“And if phone lines are down, then it’s likely the internet is too.
Meaning nothing gets uploaded and they are none the wiser until someone notices the scheduled upload hasn’t happened. Whenever that is.”
“Exactly,” Ace agreed. “So in the meantime, I want everyone to stay close. Stay in here, if possible. I don’t think what happened was an accident, and I’ll be damned if it’s one of our team next time.”
“What about the camp challenges?” Skye asked, as he put his fresh ice pack on his nose. “Aren’t we supposed to be going kayaking or some shit today?”
Ace shook his head. “Fuck the challenges. Our team’s safety comes first.”