Chapter 18 #3
“But you should know that I do like it. The possessiveness. It’s never been a thing for me before, but with you…” she pauses. “It just feels different. I like being yours.”
Then she reaches out of the shower, grabbing my glasses, and fixes them on my wet face. Her words, and then this—it’s so intimate that I almost break.
Daisy dries off and gets dressed in the clean clothes she brought while I try not to stare too long. She slips out first.
Which is good.
Because I need approximately forty-five seconds to remember how walking works.
When I finally emerge dressed in dry clothes, everyone is in different spots around the truck stop, grabbing makeshift dinners.
Owen is eating the largest jerky stick I’ve ever seen.
Daisy is at the beverage station making a coffee, face composed. Too composed.
Jax spots me and narrows his eyes. “That was a long shower.”
I walk past him towards the coffee. “There was a lot of mud.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He lets it go, but I spot Owen smiling around his jerky.
I ignore him.
We head back to the RV through the thick, humid haze that lingers after the rain stops. For the rest of the evening, we work. Because that is what we do.
Evidence is cataloged. Footage is backed up twice. The track photos are saved to a secure folder. Owen marks three new coordinates on the map but refuses to explain two of them until he can “verify whether or not they’ll get us arrested,” exactly the kind of sentence that piques Taylor’s interest.
Daisy interviews Maya about the print.
Then Taylor about the terrain.
Then Jax about the drone footage, though that mostly becomes a monologue about mud being “nature’s wet cement of despair.”
She does not interview me. Not yet.
I tell myself that is fine. It is fine. It is normal.
And it’s probably wise.
By ten p.m., everyone starts fading.
Maya disappears first. Then Jax, still complaining, follows. Taylor and Owen remain at the map table, arguing quietly over access routes with the intense hostility of two people who are too similar for their own good. At one point, Taylor gets fed up and heads back toward the kitchen for candy.
Daisy catches my eye from across the Machine. Just once. Then she slips outside the front door.
I wait thirty seconds.
Because I am strategic.
Without looking up from the map, Owen says, “You realize you’re doomed, right?”
I turn. “Excuse me?”
Owen looks up. “Just making an observation.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.”
“I’m going to check the exterior batteries,” I say.
Owen’s mouth curves. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
I point at him. “Do not start.”
“I started years ago,” he winks at me.
Which is true. Owen's been annoying me like it’s his job since the ‘90s.
I remember once when I was six. He was ten.
Mom had just made grilled cheese and informed him that, as the oldest, it was his sacred duty to take care of me.
He interpreted that with all the grace of a golden retriever handed military authority.
Thirty years later, he still treats my life like it's his favorite sitcom.
I swear he came out of the womb forty-five years old. He taught me to drive. Taught me to throw a punch. Taught me how to shave. Taught me how to survive losing our parents.
And apparently, somewhere along the line, he decided his newest responsibility was commenting on my love life. Not that I’m in love or anything.
“Seriously,” he says, softening. “She's got it bad, too, you know.”
I scoff. “She does not.”
“Miles.”
“No.”
“Miles.”
I bury my face in my hands. “Oh my God.”
“Honestly, you two are exhausting.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Can't. Mom would've loved this.”
I pause, because it’s like she's right there for a second. Mom, smiling into her tea. Dad pretending not to grin.
Owen catches it. He always does.
His voice gentles. “Go ‘check your batteries’, little brother.”
A smile pulls at my mouth. “Shut up.”
“Love you too.”
And because he's Owen, because some things don't need saying, I flip him off. He salutes. Taylor walks back in, looking between us, and I leave before either of them can say anything else.
Daisy is sitting on the RV steps with her knees pulled up, earbuds in, staring out at the dark line of trees.
Everything smells clean and wet and alive.
She looks over as I approach and pulls one earbud free.
“Exterior batteries?” she asks.
I sigh. “Am I that predictable?”
“A little.”
I sit beside her, leaving a careful inch of space between us.
She holds out one earbud.
My chest goes tight.
“What is it?”
“My next episode.”
I look at her.
Her face is turned toward the forest, but I can see the nerves in the set of her mouth.
“I want to know if it’s good,” she says. “And you’re annoying, but I know you’ll tell me the truth.”
“I am extremely annoying.”
“And?”
I take the earbud. “And I’ll tell you the truth.”
We sit there in the damp dark, shoulders almost touching, listening to her voice fill the space between us.
At first, she cringes every ten seconds.
Then less.
Then not at all.
Because she’s good.
She’s so good it makes my chest hurt.
Her voice is warm and sharp and curious. Funny in exactly the right places. Honest without mocking. Open without being naive. She talks about belief like it’s not a punchline. Like it is a risk. Like it is something brave enough that it’s worth enduring mockery.
I look at her while she listens.
Big mistake.
Huge.
The blue-white glow from the RV window catches the side of her face. Her lashes. The curve of her mouth. The tiny scrape on her hand from where she fell.
I want to touch it again.
I want to touch all of her.
I want to tell her that I have spent my whole life trying to prove something impossible is real, and somehow she is the thing that feels most impossible.
Instead, I sit there like an idiot with one earbud in for the next half hour.
When the episode ends, she pulls in a breath.
“Well?”
I take out the earbud and hand it back. “It’s not good.”
Her face falls so fast I almost panic.
“It’s great,” I say quickly. “Sorry. Bad pause. Terrible pause. I deserve consequences.”
She hits my arm.
I catch her hand before she can pull it away. Just for a second.
Her fingers settle against mine. “Taylor could walk out here any second. We can't.”
I look toward the dark trees.
Toward whatever is out there moving beyond the edge of proof.
Then back at her.
“I know.”
But my hand stays around hers. And this time, she lets it.
Then I nearly jump out of my skin as she lets out the loudest dad sneeze I've ever heard.