PROLOGUE
Marlow
“You’re actually goingthrough with it?” My best friend’s straightforward tone, while normally charming to a fault, was beginning to grate on my ears.
Save for the fact of this being the third time he was bringing up the same subject, I was beginning to wonder how many times it would take for me to repeat myself before Silas finally gave up and accepted the fact that I was doing this.
Coming from his perspective, I supposed I could understand the bewilderment to a certain extent. After all, sitting behind a desk while staring at numbers on a screen all day, every day, wasn’t exactly screaming extreme sports enthusiast.
I was a fit man and took care of my health as much as I could given my work schedule, but even that had its drawbacks. There were only so many trails in Ellington Heights I could run before I began to go stir crazy.
Hence the need for a change.
“For the millionth time,yes. Can you get off my dick about it?”
On the other end of the phone, Silas scoffed. “You can’t expect me not to worry about you. You’re going to a fucking wilderness camp where there’s mountain lions and bears around. It would be shitty of menotto worry about you.”
While he had a point, his loud opinion about it certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear. This year, I was on a mission to better my health—to get myself into the best shape of my life and have fun doing it. As wild of a concept as it was to do just that at a wilderness camp, I didn’t care.
Not if it kept me from keeling over like my late pops.
“Thank you for caring about me,” I said.
The zipper to my bag only barely stayed together, the opposite side of it bulging with how much stuff I’d managed to cram into the small carry-on sized case. In the welcome packet that had been sent to me a week prior, there were hardly any specifics on what I was supposed to be bringing along with me, outside of the basic toiletries.
Which left liberty for creative freedom.
“Wow, try not to sound like you’re being held at gunpoint next time.”
“Don’t you have lives to save? An organ to stitch back together perhaps?”
“Nope.” He let out a grunt that slowly morphed into a deep sigh. “Got the next forty-eight hours off. Lucky me.”
Was it really luck if he’d been on a nine-day rotation before this?
While I admired Silas’s work and his chosen career path, the life of a surgeon typically sounded like torture to me. Even on the good days where he got to brag about attaching some kid’s limb back onto their body.
“Though, I’m sure you’ll be calling me your first night there,” he said, his tone slipping from that usual nonchalant tone to one that never failed to instigate me. “You’ll see one bug bite onyour skin and end up losing your mind because you’ll convince yourself it was a snake bite instead.”
What the hell was with the stray balls?
I got that he was pissy I was leaving him for six weeks, but damn, he didn’t have to go for my jugular like that. At least Avery had the decency to sound happy for me, even if he, too, didn’t get my decision to go.
I wasn’t looking for understanding, I was looking for support. Simple as that.
“How much?” I said.
“What?”
“How much are we betting? Seeing as you’resoconfident I’m going to come crying to you on day one.”
“Night one,” he corrected. “And you definitely will. Or at least, in the first week.”
“How. Much,” I gritted through my teeth.
The other end of the phone was silent for a moment, allowing me to finish the rest of my packing while he continued to devise what was probably a very diabolical punishment for me if I was to actually lose this.
Ironic, seeing as how my toxic trait was being competitive as fuck. Turning it into a superpower for my job was the ultimate fuck you to the universe and subsequently everyone else who dared to think they’d be good enough to win against me.
