The people around me are losing their minds.
And I’m starting to buy into the thing where this treasure might be real. I might actually know things I don’t know I know.
And Davis knows more than he’s telling me.
Which begs the question?—
Is he taking care of me because it’s the nice thing to do, or is he taking care of me so that I’ll be on his side whenever I start to figure out what I know that I don’t realize I know?
The question turns my stomach.
But given my history of taste in men…I can’t trust the answer that I want to believe.
19
Davis
This is officiallythe most time I’ve spent in one go with Aspen since Cash finally got over himself and told her how he felt last Christmas, and one thing is rapidly becoming clear.
I like her more than I like him.
I managed to keep my other buddies’ significant others at a distance far longer—Ellie excluded, of course, since we grew up together before she married Wyatt—but Aspen’s already wormed her way into a circle of trust.
Not the closest circle of trust.
Not even the circle as close as I’m refusing to acknowledge I’ve let Sloane into.
But definitely a closer circle, much sooner than the rest of them.
“Look, I get trust issues,” she’s saying to me as we weave our way around clumps of overgrown bushes to circle the dilapidated, condemned cabin on the acreage I moved to a month or so ago. We’ve spent all day trying to track a cell signal that pinged nearby using equipment I’ll forever deny I have. “But you can’t both have trust issues and also be frustrated when other people have trust issues. Okay. Okay. Youcan. But I’ll judge you for it.”
Cash nods. “I support judgment for hypocritical behavior. You know what I don’t get though? I don’t get why you’re suddenly obsessed with Thorny Rock’s treasure.”
He and Aspen are holding hands, more or less in matching flannel and boots now, since Aspen’s first outfit of the day wasn’t right for hiking in the woods all day.
They’rethatcouple. The couple who have to match to walk around in the woods, even if they might not have realized they were doing it.
And Istillappreciate Aspen more than I appreciate Cash right now.
“Not sudden.” I pause at the sound of an engine. Can’t see the driveway leading to my camper, just the back of the camper and the electrical hookup, but that’s definitely a car.
And it’s going in the wrong direction.
Leaving.
Fuck.
I run the last several yards to the edge of the camper, then slow, cautiously peeking around it to see who came to visit while we weren’t here.
Sloane’s sitting on one of the logs around the fire pit, and she definitely wasn’t before.
She glances at me, then back at the road like she doesn’t want to look at me right now.
Uh-oh.
Is this because she doesn’t want to talk about last night?
Or did something happen in town today?
