It’s about how little time I have alone with Sloane all day.
And how much all of my friends and family are competing for her attention.
Ellie and Sloane have a long talk while standing over a rock, and they hug when Beck calls Ellie to help him look under a different rock.
Tripp offers Sloane baseball tickets six more times.
My mom peppers Sloane with questions about when she moved to Shipwreck and how she likes it here and when the best time to visit is.
Sloane thanks Levi and Ingrid for sending Giselle, and before I realize it, Ingrid and Sloane are trading phone numbers so Ingrid can help make book recommendations for Sloane’s neighborhood book club.
Vanessa asks Sloane if she’s ever been arrested.
Sloane asks the same back.
We eat lunch outside in the late afternoon, and I don’t get to sit next to Sloane. Beck and Wyatt monopolize her time, with Levi and Ingrid hanging close enough to hear the things I can’t.
I’m getting cranky about it.
And worried too.
Is this because I came too early last night?
Is she avoiding me?
Is it really just about the treasure?
Fuck. I don’t even know how this is happening. It’s been five days since she asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend, and I feel like I’ve lived five lifetimes in that span.
Good lifetimes.
And today is another lifetime.
A lifetime where we spend the whole day using state-of-the-art equipment, underground detection devices even better than metal detectors, with large digging machinery and extra lights on standby if we need them, but still can’t find the damn treasure.
No matter how much we scour the area around the waterfall.
Tripp and Lila do a real photo shoot closer to the lake in the preserve to sell the cover story. Vanessa doesn’t give me shit when she catches me using a device I shouldn’t have to keep trying to ping Dixon’s cell signal.
Went dead sometime yesterday, nowhere near the preserve.
No cameras have caught him near the museum again.
As the sun dips lower in the late afternoon, everyone but my mom, my sister, and Beck and Sarah leave to head back to Copper Valley to pick up kids from school and go about their normal family routines.
And eventually, with the darkness winning, we call it quits too.
An entire day, spent all around the waterfall that should be where the treasure is, with nothing to show for it.
But it means I get another day with Sloane.
To do what, I don’t have a fucking clue.
Clearly won’t be finding a goddamn treasure.
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe it doesn’t exist.
