Chapter 8
chapter
eight
MILES
By Monday morning, Daisy has officially developed camp habits.
Not useful ones, but habits nonetheless.
For example: she steals everyone’s chargers despite owning fourteen of her own.
She leaves half-empty coffee cups in places that defy both logic and physics.
She narrates things under her breath when she thinks nobody’s listening, which, unfortunately for her, is impossible because she talks to herself like someone recording bonus commentary on a DVD.
Which might be one of my favorite things about her.
I've always been a commentary-track guy.
My shelves at home are lined with old DVDs, not because the picture quality's better, but because I like hearing how people think.
The little observations they make. The jokes that never made the final cut.
The reasons behind the decisions nobody else notices.
Daisy does that in real time. None of it's for anyone else. Half the time she doesn't even realize she's saying it out loud. I've spent years hiking through some of the quietest places left in the country because I love the silence. Now, for the first time, I might not hate someone’s chattiness.
And this one catches me off guard a little: she’s trying. Actually trying.
I notice it Monday morning when she climbs out of the bunk before anyone else besides me, hair a complete disaster, oversized hoodie swallowing her whole.
She squints at me from across the Machine, still half asleep, and something in my chest gives way. It shouldn't matter that I'm the first person she sees in the morning. It really, really does.
“Why are you always awake before the sun? It’s supposed to be my time,” she groans.
“It’s called discipline.”
“It’s called unresolved issues.”
I grin despite myself and hand her coffee. Her fingers brush mine, and the rush wakes me up more than my coffee ever could.
She takes a sip without questioning it first.
Then pauses.
Looks down at the cup.
Then at me.
“Is this oat milk?”
I shrug like I didn’t notice after exactly two diner trips.
“Oat milk with one sugar.”
Her eyes narrow. “You know how I take my coffee.”
“I remember things.”
“That’s boyfriend behavior for a man who I know is reading comics at night.”
“That feels unrelated.”
But the truth is, I did remember. Not intentionally. My brain just cataloged it somewhere between her making fun of me for labeling spices and her almost falling asleep at her laptop on the floor last night.
Oat milk. One sugar.
Tiny details attaching themselves to me before I can stop them. Before I can tell her to run before we both fuck up our careers. Or to run because I’m not relationship material.
By the time the rest of the crew wakes up, Daisy’s already perched beside Maya at the dinette reviewing maps. Well. “Reviewing maps” is generous.
She’s mostly asking questions while Maya tries to explain topographical markers without sounding like she’s teaching a geography class against her will.
“So these lines mean elevation?” Daisy asks.
“Yes.”
“And these?”
“Water access.”
“And these?”
Maya looks up flatly. “More elevation.”
Taylor wanders out of the bunk area mid-conversation, wrapped in a blanket.
“Morning, goddesses,” she says. Neither of them reacts. Daisy’s adapting.
By the afternoon, I keep catching myself looking for her even though she’s never more than ten feet away. She’s helping Jax organize memory cards while he explains drone-footage stabilization as if he’s teaching a college course titled Adrenaline Problems 101.
“No, see, the issue is most people overcorrect movement,” he says, pulling up footage. “You gotta let the shot breathe.”
Daisy leans over his shoulder. “That sounds very LA.”
“It’s art.”
“You fly cameras into canyons for fun.”
“Exactly.”
Strangely enough, watching Daisy mesh with the others settles something in me.
Because I expected resistance. Distance. Maybe judgment.
Instead, she’s folding herself into the rhythm of the team piece by piece.
She’s even cracking jokes the entire time, which seems like a way to deflect from what’s really happening here.
It’s not lost on me that Daisy being with us is a steep departure from the content she’s known for.
I haven’t asked her why she chose this, and why us. But I want to.
Especially when I watch as Taylor starts teaching her how to maneuver off-road. Badly.
“Okay,” Taylor says, crouched beside a tire track in the dirt. “See how the ground feels?”
Daisy stares at her. “No.”
“You gotta feel it spiritually.”
“Absolutely not.”
Taylor groans. “Girl… you can’t tell me you lack intuition. I heard that interview with Megan Cox. You were able to get her to open up in a way she never had before.”
From the window of the Mystery Machine, I can see Daisy's mouth pop open. She’s speechless.
“She’s from LA,” I call out from the cracked window, trying to save her. “Her instincts are calibrated for parking structures.”
Daisy flips me off without looking up. Progress.
I know she’s tough, but I keep expecting her to quit. Sure, life out here can be hard, but more than that, chasing Bigfoot is a whole lot more tedious than people assume. It’s just not that interesting.
Being in the middle of nowhere, 500 miles away from basic civilization markers like chain restaurants and same-day shipping, wears on people in ways they don’t understand till they’re in it.
Especially in the high desert like we are right now.
Dry heat during the day. Bitter cold at night.
Dust in everything. Constant movement. Constant uncertainty.
And Daisy… Daisy is soft in certain ways. Not emotionally. God, no. But physically. Her hands blister when she helps unload gear. The back of her neck is always sunburned because she refuses to wear a hat correctly. She complains every time we hike uphill.
Instead of annoying me, her softness and vulnerabilities are things I seem to have started subconsciously tracking.
Making sure she drinks enough water. Slowing the pace over rough terrain without calling attention to it. Positioning myself downhill from her during climbs because she still slips here and there even though she’s improving.
Tuesday afternoon, it gets bad enough that Maya notices. We’re crossing a rocky wash toward a scouting point when Daisy’s boot catches wrong on loose stone. Her balance tips sideways sharply, and I catch her arm before she goes all the way down. Instinct. Fast enough that I don’t think first.
Her body bumps against mine as she steadies herself, and the feel of her against me sends shivers up my spine.
“I’m fine,” she says through gritted teeth.
“You almost face-planted into sandstone.”
“I got it.”
I let go of Daisy’s arm once she’s stable again, but my hand lingers for half a second too long.
Her eyes flick away. Then back to mine. Something shifts in the air between us again.
Maya appears beside me two minutes later while, ten paces behind, Daisy argues with Taylor about whether “desert ankles” are a real thing.
“You’re hovering.”
I keep my eyes forward. “I’m not hovering.”
“I told you not to start something here.”
“That feels dramatic.”
“Miles.”
I exhale sharply. “I’m not going to. I just… like her.”
“I told you. We need this to work. If this podcast takes off, we’ll get the exposure we need to raise funds to keep this going. Without it, we’re running out of options, Miles.”
“I know, I know. Don’t worry about it.” I glance back despite myself.
Daisy is laughing at something Taylor said, cheeks flushed from heat and exertion, hair escaping her braid.
Maya cuts through my thoughts. “She needs to start doing some one-on-one interviews, and I need you to be okay with that.”
“I am.”
It wasn’t a lie—I wanted more time with Daisy. It felt like she had been working to earn a place here. Not through performance, but through persistence. And it’s sexy as hell.
Tuesday night, the crew ends up crowded around the tiny dinette during a thunderstorm.
The desert rain slams against the roof hard enough to rattle the entire Machine while lightning flashes through the windows in sharp white bursts.
Jax is editing footage.
Taylor’s painting Daisy’s nails a glittery red for reasons nobody fully understands as she answers Daisy’s “Would you rather?” questions. I catch Daisy asking if Taylor would rather “bone the Moth Man or El Chupacabra” and chuckle to myself.
Finding these little glimmers of her weirdness is becoming my favorite part of every day.
They're never performed. I can feel her getting comfortable letting this side of herself show.
Just Daisy, saying whatever ridiculous thought wanders into her head, completely unaware she's handing me another reason to fall for her.
I’m pretending not to listen as I start making grilled cheese sandwiches. It seems that thunderstorms activate my Midwest comfort-food instincts.
“Do you guys ever feel too close? Because this is super intimate,” Daisy says, directing her question at the group.
I glance up from the stove. “The grilled cheese?”
“The whole thing.” She gestures around the Machine. “This.”
Taylor nods solemnly while painting another nail. “Trauma bonding.”
“We are not trauma-bonded,” Maya says without looking up.
“Yet,” Jax adds, arching an eyebrow.
The thunder cracks overhead, loudly enough to shake the windows.
Daisy flinches.
I slide the plate with the first grilled cheese toward her.
Her eyes flick to me.
“Thanks,” she says, taking a bite. Then groans softly. And just like that, every coherent thought leaves my body.
The problem with kissing Daisy Bennett once is that now every absentminded smile, every laugh, every bite of food draws my attention straight back to her mouth.
And there's a dangerous, primitive part of me that wants to be the reason she makes that sound again.
I know how easily she fits against me. How naturally my hand found the back of her neck. How instinctive it felt to pull her closer. How her lips felt on mine. I can only dream of where else her mouth might—
“That’s embarrassing,” I mutter, cutting the thought short.
Of course Daisy hears me. “What is?” she asks.
I fumble for an answer. “The… the sound you just made over grilled cheese.”
“Take it as a compliment, Adler.”
I laugh quietly despite myself and turn back toward the stove before I can stare too long. Again.
By Wednesday morning, Daisy is pretty integrated into the routine.
Not seamlessly. She still complains every time Taylor wakes up with “rise and grind, sluts.” She still gets dirt in places that should be physically impossible. And she still records voice notes at alarming intervals.
But now, she knows where things go. She refills the coffee filters without asking. She hands Jax batteries before he realizes he needs them. She and Maya have developed some terrifyingly efficient system for organizing field notes that involves color-coded tabs and mutual judgment.
With each new habit she picks up, a piece of the podcast persona slips away a little, revealing more of her. And sometime around the afternoon, I realize the Machine feels wrong when she’s not in it.
The realization hits me while she’s outside with Taylor learning how to identify animal tracks.
I’m inside recalibrating thermal software when I catch myself listening for her laugh.
The second I realize I’m doing it, I freeze.
That is not a healthy development.
Then, because the universe hates me, Daisy climbs back inside two seconds later, flushed from the sun and grinning triumphantly.
“I identified coyote tracks,” she announces with pride.
Taylor follows behind her. “After guessing ‘rabbit’ six times.”
“Learning curve.”
I look over with exaggerated shock. “You got one right?”
She points at me. “Offensive.”
“You called hoof prints ‘horse hands’ yesterday.”
“Tell me I’m wrong, though.”
Jax nearly falls off the bench laughing.
Daisy shakes her head and moves toward the coffee station.
The Machine hums softly around us, and the others keep arguing about receipts in the background.
Daisy pauses when she sees the afternoon coffee I made for her and looks at me.
Because, as ashamed as I am to admit it, I do know she always has two a day.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” she says.
“What?”
“Making me coffee. Being nice to me.”
I shrug. Meanwhile, my heart rate is thumping like I’m being chased.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I try to make light of it all with a joke, but it comes out lower than intended.
She’s staring at me, those plush lips slightly parted.
There it is again. That pull. That almost-exciting little feeling as the space between us keeps shrinking, whether we mean it to or not. I lean down, Daisy’s breath ghosting my chin and lips. Her eyes meet mine through her lashes. For a moment, we’re about to kiss again.
Then Taylor yells, “Can you guys ever not bicker?”
The moment shatters.
Daisy laughs first.
I drag a hand down my face.
Because every time she smiles at me, some possessive part of my brain starts making very convincing arguments to grab her by her waist, set her on the counter, and claim her. Make her mine.
Let everyone else figure it out.
The only thing that keeps me planted where I am is the fact that Daisy Bennett still has every opportunity to break this crew's heart.
Including mine.