Hopefully, they figured it was someone’s nearby TV on full blast. Or a young couple getting it on in the woods close to where the officers were and weren’t so discreet as to run off to their cabin before getting frisky.
There were plenty of excuses I could come up with to deflect the heat off of Blake and save his poor reputation among his coworkers. The only real problem, it seemed, was Talos being completely immune to bullshit.
It was hard to tell from the way he was staring at me behind those dark sunglasses what exactly he knew. In retrospect, he could’ve not made the journey up to Blake’s office at all and stayed down with the rest of the guides supervising the fires and called it a night once the last person packed up and headed in forthe evening. Or, he could’ve come around long after we’d picked up and hurried back to my cabin to hunker down, giving him no reason to suspect either Blake or I had had more than a passing conversation exchanged along with the ice pack.
Either way, both situations kept us in the clear.
While the first option was most likely the real timeline of events, that meant Talos no doubt noticed I never returned last night after dropping off the ice pack. On the one hand, he could’ve chalked it up as me retiring early for the evening. Or two... well.
That stamped a big old GUILTY mark across my forehead.
“What’s on the agenda for today, teach?”
All he gave me was a single quirked eyebrow before unfolding the clipboard from under his arm and flipping a few pages. “You’re signed up for the overnight hike.”
“Pardon?”
He flipped one more page. “You signed up for it Friday. We’re taking you all up to Craigleith’s peak and camping up there. It’s about a day’s walk there and a day’s walk back. We’ll be gone from base camp for about three days.”
Trying to keep my jaw from dropping at the news was a Herculean effort. Especially, when it occurred to me how Friday I’d been a complete yes-man to whatever the fuck the guides were throwing at me in order to get them to let me duck out early to start my weekend with Avery and Silas.
Fuckme.
“Anyway, I can postpone that to next week?”
Talos slowly lifted his head up from the clipboard. “Afraid not.”
“What about yanking my participation altogether?”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Seeing as how we all spent the entire weekend painstakingly assigning your entire group to specific sets of hiking partners and matching theathleticism as closely as we could with each of you so neither of you in your group will fall behind, I’m going to have to say no.”
Holy shit, this had to be a joke.
Right?
Was this Talos’s way of fucking with me because he was suspicious I had the hots for his boss and was trying whatever tactics he could to steer me away from him?
There was no way I was being forced on this fucking camping trip, especially when all of the other activities were a completely voluntary venture.
“So, what happens if I say I wasn’t prepared to go on a journey like that today?” If this man could, for once, give in to my charm, that would be great.
He sighed—oh boy—and then tucked the clipboard underneath his arm again. “Look, I can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re an adult and are capable of making your own decisions. I’m not here to parent you. But what I will say, is that if you pull out, you’re fucking over your hiking partner. Like I said, we spent all weekend making these teams and if one party backs out, we don’t have a backup that can just slip in seamlessly to take their place. That’s why on Friday we had you sign all that paperwork todouble checkthat you were good with making a commitment like this.”
He was laying on the guilt real thick. I had to admit, it was totally working. If not for the fact that he was making me sound andfeellike a total asshole for signing a bunch of waivers and forms without paying an ounce of attention, it was definitely him piling on that I’d be disappointing my hiking partner, too, who was probably incredibly excited about going on this trip.
I was probably the only dumbass that signed themselves up for an intense excursion like this without reading the fine print. Friday was such a blur with how strung out my emotionswere from Blake leaving, I hardly remembered anything before I climbed into Avery’s car and jetted off to the closest dive bar.
Shit, how the hell was I going to let Blake know?
My stomach knotted at the thought of him waiting outside of my cabin, knocking in that quietly polite way of his, wondering why the hell I wasn’t opening up the goddamn door and sweeping him off his feet.
The last thing I wanted was for him to think I ditched him when that couldn’t be further from the truth. He was likely to jump to conclusions, figuring I went off and got distracted with my swinger friends and ended up at their cabin instead.
That would then start our whole vicious cycle from last week over again where we had to gain each other’s trust back when we just fucking got it.
I blew out a long breath.
Three days.
