Chapter 19
chapter
nineteen
DAISY
I wake up feeling victimized by nature.
Not metaphorically this time. Literally. As if the forest itself climbed into the RV overnight, sat on my chest, and whispered, “Remember when you ate it and got caked in mud from head to toe? Real cute.”
My throat burns. My head pounds. Every inch of me aches in that post-hiking, post-cold-rain way that feels less like soreness and more like betrayal.
Sleeping on the bunk mattress—or shelf, prison cot, emotional punishment device, whatever Miles insists on not calling it—did not help.
Neither did sleeping approximately zero inches from another human while trying not to think about the fact that said human has become essential to my emotional stability.
At some point in the night, it seems I kicked off the blanket.
At another point, Miles, half asleep, mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled it back over me without waking up.
Which should not still be affecting me.
And yet.
Here we are.
For one hopeful second, I think maybe everyone is asleep.
I crack one eye open, very aware that the nerdy hunk next to me is no longer there.
Gray morning light filters weakly through the RV window. Rain taps softly against the roof. The Mystery Machine smells faintly like coffee grounds, soggy clothes, and the sort of exhausted silence that only exists after a truly terrible field day.
Then I hear it.
A cough.
Deep.
Rough.
Followed by muttered swearing.
My stomach drops.
I shove back the blanket and stumble into the narrow aisle.
Miles is standing near the tiny kitchenette, wearing athletic shorts, glasses crooked, hair sticking up in six directions, staring into a mug as if it owes him an apology.
He looks as sick as I feel.
Pale. Sleep-rumpled. Mildly haunted.
His nose is pink.
There is a blanket around his shoulders, Superman-style.
I stop.
How does he still look hot, even when sick?
“You look terrible.” I lie to myself and him.
He blinks slowly. “You too.”
His voice sounds wrecked, all gravel and phlegm.
I feel myself soften.
Which is irritating, because I came out here fully intending to mock him. I’m running out of opportunities to be funny on this assignment, goddammit.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
“What happened to your face?”
“You first.”
“I think,” he says, pausing to cough into his elbow, “the mud won.”
I stare at him. “You’re sick.”
“I’m… not well.”
“You have a blanket cape.” I smirk.
“It’s purposeful,” he pulls the blanket tighter with all the dignity a sick superhero can muster, then takes a sip of coffee and grimaces.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
“What?”
“You’re dying,” I say dramatically.
“I’m not dying.”
“You love coffee.”
He looks down at the mug. Looks offended by it. Looks back at me. “This does feel concerning.”
Despite myself, I laugh.
Then immediately regret it because my throat hurts.
He notices. Of course he notices.
His expression shifts. “How are you feeling? Fever?”
“Maybe.”
“Body aches?”
“Yes, doctor.” I wink, making a joke of my miserable state.
“Headache?”
“Yes,” I groan, giving up on being funny.
He nods once like he’s confirming field data. “Cool,” he says. “We’re disgusting.”
“We?”
“You think whatever swamp illness I have didn’t come from you?”
I narrow my eyes. “Wow. That’s insulting.”
He just shrugs.
“You kissed me after I picked up the swamp illness, and you’re a smart man.” I whisper.
“You kissed me, too.” He whispers back.
The kitchen door bangs open behind us.
Jax appears wearing pajama pants, sunglasses for reasons unknown, and carrying a bag of pretzels like emotional support equipment.
He looks at us once.
Stops and points. “Oh my God.” Neither of us moves, and he continues. “You guys look like dying children in a Dickens novel.”
Miles sighs. “Good morning, Jax.”
“Are you dying?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Both of you?”
We both nod.
Jax gasps theatrically. “FINALLY. Shared suffering. The strongest intimacy.”
Miles chokes on coffee.
I cough.
Nobody wins.
By nine, the crew makes an executive decision to take a day off. Or, as Taylor calls it, an excuse to shop at roadside antique stores. She and Maya head into town in the 4Runner for supplies.
Jax announces he’s taking the dirt bike “to reconnect with joy” in the mud.
Owen vanishes with his truck to go scout something nearby.
No one says it outright. But somehow, suspiciously, everyone leaves.
Whether because they’re giving us space or because they’re afraid of our sickness remains to be seen.
Rain patters softly against the roof.
Miles and I end up on the couch.
Lots of blankets. Tea for me. Coffee for Miles, even though he continues to hate it today. Our laptops balanced on our laps, because when has either of us taken a day off?
I sit cross-legged under a blanket, laptop open, trying to cut together podcast clips for social when I’m not losing my train of thought because of Miles’s rattling coughs. “You need medicine,” I say.
He squints at thermal footage. “I need answers.”
“You need NyQuil.”
He points weakly at the screen. “That thing moved.”
“You’re hallucinating.”
“Probably.”
“You’re warm,” I say. He looks over. My hand is already against his forehead. I freeze. He freezes. Neither of us says anything. His forehead burns hot, and his glasses slip slightly down his nose.
And suddenly he looks—God. Like someone exhausted enough to stop guarding himself. He reaches and grabs my hand, pulling it away from his forehead, and resting it on his thigh, holding it.
“Fever,” I say quietly.
His mouth twitches. “You gonna make me soup too?”
“Don’t tell me you get man-sick.”
“I’m charming when I’m sick.”
“Lies.” I roll my eyes, but I don’t move my hand.
And neither does he.
The rain keeps tapping overhead.
Somewhere deeper in the Machine, the generator hums with its usual faint mechanical whine. The whole place smells like damp backpacks, peppermint tea, and whatever cold medicine Maya left in the cabinet labeled MEDICAL / MAYBE EXPERIMENTAL.
Outside, the forest disappears into mist.
Inside, it feels strangely suspended.
Like the whole world narrowed down to one couch.
Then my phone buzzes and I glance down. My stomach drops before I even unlock the screen.
Marissa was supposed to post the first teaser this morning. I knew that when I went to bed last night, and somewhere around midnight my anxiety got loud enough that I deleted every social app. If I couldn't obsess over the comments, maybe they couldn't hurt me.
My phone buzzes. Then again. And again. The vibration doesn't stop.
Notifications stack over one another faster than I can read them, swallowing my lock screen until there isn't a single patch of wallpaper left. I swipe Marissa’s message open.
Marissa
UM??????
Your clip is doing NUMBERS
I sit up.
“What?” Miles straightens immediately. “What happened?”
I turn the screen toward him. My heart is pounding out of my chest and I feel like I could throw up from nerves. “Numbers” doesn’t necessarily mean good numbers.
I open Instagram on my laptop’s browser and go to the teaser clip she posted this morning before the first episode goes live today at noon.
My voice over grainy forest footage.
What if belief isn’t foolish? What if it’s brave?
In the millions of views.
Comments stacking fast.
Shares climbing.
People tagging friends. Speculating. Arguing. Obsessing.
An actress I interviewed reposted it. My stomach flips, but it may just be the cold medicine.
“No way.” Miles leans closer as the sound of rain hitting the RV roof comes back into focus and the ringing in my ears fades.
Close enough that his shoulder presses mine. Close enough I feel warmth through the blanket. His sleepy expression shifts into something brighter. Proud.
“Well, there you go,” he says, smiling.
For a second, neither of us says anything. We just stare at my laptop.
“This has to be a glitch,” I say.
Miles squints at the screen through crooked glasses. “That’s a lot of comments for a glitch.”
I scroll.
One comment reads:
THIS IS THE FIRST BIGFOOT CONTENT THAT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A JOKE??
Another:
Wait, why am I emotionally invested in Daisy going on a Bigfoot hunt?!
And somehow:
Whatever Daisy does, I trust her
“Oh God,” I whisper.
Miles turns toward me so quickly the blanket slides halfway off his shoulder.
“What?”
“They like it. They trust me.”
He blinks.
Like that answer surprises him.
Then he does something deeply annoying, and smiles.
Like this outcome feels inevitable to him.
“Yeah,” he says. “Obviously.”
I stare at him.
“What do you mean obviously?”
He gestures with one hand like this should be self-explanatory.
“You’re good at what you do. You care.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an insult.”
“It’s not.”
His voice goes quieter.
“You care in a way people can feel.”
Something tightens painfully in my chest.
Outside, rain taps harder against the windows.
Inside, the RV feels too warm.
Too small.
Too much.
I look back at my phone because eye contact feels unsafe.
“Well,” I mutter. “That’s horrifying.”
He laughs once, rough from whatever plague we picked up in the swamp.
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The self-protective sarcasm thing.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’ve known me for, like, a few weeks.”
“Feels longer.”
The words hit, and my pulse skips in a way I resent.
To survive, I immediately pivot. “What does this mean for Strange Terrain?”
That hooks him. His whole posture shifts.
Even sick and wrapped in a blanket like a cryptid grandmother, Miles Adler cannot resist mission talk.
He tucks one leg underneath himself on the couch and leans toward me, laptop already halfway into his lap.
“Potentially?” The excitement between us sparks. Quiet at first. Then growing. “Well, your work matters. A lot.”
“How?”
“Because people care about narratives before they care about evidence.” He states it like a fact. Like he’s thought about it before. Obsessively, I’m sure.
I tilt my head. “Explain, conspiracy man.”
“I’m not a conspiracy man.”
“You own a mug that says I Want To Believe.”
“It’s vintage.”
I roll my eyes and he ignores me.
“The problem with this line of work,” he says, opening website analytics on his screen, “is everyone either treats it like comedy or certainty.”
I blink. “Okay?”
“Like, either Bigfoot is a punchline, or Bigfoot lives in a cave and the government has laser scans to prove it.”
I pause, considering that. “Do they?”
His expression stays serious for a beat too long. Then he coughs into his sleeve and sniffles. “No comment.”
I laugh despite myself, and my throat protests immediately.
He points. “See? Sick.”
“You are also sick.”
“Medium sick.”
“You’re wearing two blankets.”
“One is emotional support.”
I snort. Then regret it because my nose runs and my head throbs.
Miles reaches for the tea beside me without asking, checks if it’s still warm, and hands it to me.
The gesture is so unconscious it almost undoes me.
Like care is instinct.
“My point, though,” he says, settling back into the couch, “is that your clip makes it feel… human.”
“Human?” I repeat.
“Real,” he corrects. “You’re not mocking people for believing, and you’re not screaming at people to believe either.”
His voice roughens slightly around another cough. “You’re asking questions.”
The way he says it makes something shift inside me.
“You really think people care?” I ask.
He gives me a look.
A very Miles look. Half disbelief, half please stop underestimating yourself.
“Daisy.”
“What?”
He scrolls through his phone where the post is pulled up. “You’ve had strangers arguing in your comments for four hours over whether it is scientifically responsible to live with wonder.”
“That does sound kind of iconic.”
“That’s my point.”
He shifts closer so we can both see the laptop. Just enough that our shoulders touch beneath the blanket.
He clicks through engagement numbers.
“These saves?” he says, tapping the screen. “That matters.”
“Because it means they’re coming back,” I say, smiling. My marketer brain activates for the first time in weeks.
For one electric second, we’re both grinning. Lit up. Building something. Together.
“Honestly, I didn’t want it to go this way,” he says. “I didn’t want to feel like we were being characterized, but what you’ve done is so honest. If this is what it takes to tell our story, I’m in.” He smiles again, then coughs and drops his head against the back cushion.
“Okay,” he mutters. “I’m dying now.”
I snort. “You’re dramatic.”
“You infected me.”
“Did not.”
He laughs hard enough to cough again. Then winces.
I sigh. “You need medicine.”
“No.”
“You are a thirty-something-year-old man.”
“Not at heart,” he rasps.
“You need DayQuil.”
“I need to review thermal footage.”
“You need to chill and eat soup.”
His expression turns deeply offended. “I’m very resilient.”
“You’re more pale than usual.”
“I’m mysterious.”
“Jax was right. You look like a Victorian child.”
He stares at me, then says, “You’d visit me in a tuberculosis sanatorium.”
I burst out laughing. Instant mistake. We both end up coughing, miserable and half-dying, then collapse at opposite ends of the couch like exhausted idiots.
The truth is, I would absolutely visit him in a tuberculosis sanatorium. I’m falling for this sick, sweet nerd of a man, and there’s not much I can do about it right now.
The rain keeps pattering loudly on the thin roof of the Machine as sounds of us typing and coughing fill the space.
And at some point between podcast analytics, thermal footage, soup debates, and arguing about whether Death Cab is still relevant, Miles falls asleep.
Not dramatically.
Just slowly. Mid-sentence. Head tipped toward me. Glasses crooked. Blanket slipping. One hand still resting near the laptop.
I stare at him for a long second.
At the unfair softness of him.
The way his face finally lets go of all that tension he carries around like muscle memory.
My chest aches.
Because all of this. The couch. The red rock outside the window. The work. The stupid domestic softness of all of it feels like something someone like me isn’t supposed to want this fast.
And yet. Without thinking, I pull the blanket back over his shoulder.