Ishepanting like he just ran a marathon?
Also no.
He’s standing there holding five firewood logs under one arm—how?—and catching me inspecting his camper.
“I was efficient.” I almost manage to not stutter at all.
Now that I’ve committed a crime for this man, I’m feeling less sure of myself than I did two nights ago when I convinced myself this could be a harmless trade to get myself a fake husband.
He doesn’t answer.
No, the man simply sets his firewood down, then walks up the steps and opens the door.
Opens it.
Not locked.
I’ve never seen his former bandmates without a security detail—and yes, I’ve seen all four of them in Shipwreck, including two days ago at Cooper and Waverly’s wedding—and here Davis is, staying in an unlocked camper just outside of a town with residents nosy enough to break in and have a look around.
Or is he the one breaking into someone else’s camper?
He didn’t have any problems breaking into the museum the other night, did he?
Thisisthe real Davis Remington…isn’t it?
I shake my head and follow him.
Of course this is the real Davis Remington. An entire town of people wouldn’t have gaslit me about that.
I don’t think, anyway.
Would they?
No. Absolutely not. I don’t matter enough to gaslight about something like this, and if it was a prank on the newbie when I moved here, they would’ve cracked by now.
Plus, Iknowit’s him.
The first time I ever saw him was that week I was here for the other wedding. I was supposed to be digging for buried treasure in the town square with the wedding party, including my boyfriend at the time—the one Davis called the blond caveman the other day, the one who had a girlfriend he didn’t tell me about when we started dating, the wedding where my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend was maid of honor to his best man—and I looked up, and there Davis was.
The notoriously reclusive fifth member of my favorite boy band from my teenage years.
My secret crush.
The guy whose posters I hid beneath my old school workbooks and piles of papers that I told my grandmother I kept because I wanted to make sure I never forgot everything I’d learned.
The guy whose concert I finally got tickets to while I was in nursing school in Copper Valley but never got to attend because the band called it off a week before they were supposed to do the show that I was going to.
When I saw Davis that day, I second-guessed myself.
What was the likelihood that he’d just be strolling down the main drag in a small town an hour north of the city where he grew up without security or anyone else with him? I’d just seen a tall, slender, tattooed, bearded, man-bunned man, and my brain made the connection without any real evidence.
Not like pictures of him were still all over the tabloids so I could see how much he’d changed in the decade or so since the band split up. How he’d aged. How many new tattoos he had. What he’d done with his hair.
I heard a bit about him here and there, since the guys in the band all grew up in Copper Valley and you can’t spend two weeks in the city without someone mentioning its most famous residents, but I’d never seen him in person.
Yet I was still so sure it was him.
And then I saw him on the balcony of the restaurant across the way, talking to his friends, and I knew.
