Heat creeps up my chest.
I hate how much I’ve been second-guessing everything I know since Saturday.
And now I’m wondering if I’ve accidentally put myself in danger by believing I know Davis because I developed a parasocial relationship with him in my teenage years, then saw him as a real person—but still mostly out of my sphere of existence—once I moved to Shipwreck.
One game of darts does not make a friendship.
Nor does a year of telling lies about him being my boyfriend.
I sneak a glance around the interior of the camper, looking for any evidence of blood or dead bodies while telling myself I’m being overly paranoid.
There’s a galley kitchen with 1990s-style oak cabinets and ivory Formica countertops. No food on the counters. Across from the kitchen, a closed computer sits on the beige dining table with built-in brown benches on either side. No stickers on the lid, very much unlike my small laptop, which I’ve decorated with stickers from all over Shipwreck and Copper Valley.
Beyond that is a door that I assume leads to a bedroom. To my other side, there’s a small sitting area with a tan leather couch along the side wall of the trailer.
Maybe it’s not a bedroom back past the kitchen.
Maybe it’s a special operations spy center.
Am I breathing heavily?
Or am I breathing too light?
Davis shoots me a look. “Do you need a paper bag?”
“Are you going to murder me?”
No answer.
I do getquitethe look though.
This one involves his eyebrows and his mouth and a little tic high on his cheek, high enough to see it over the beard, not high enough to impact his eyelids.
And a small part of me dies a little.
I had such a crush on this man when I was a lost and lonely teenager feeling like everything I did was wrong and that I was definitely never going to be a good enough person to escape the pits of hell.
And I could have a crush on him again if I wasn’t over men and if he wasn’t clearly as annoyed with me as every other man I’ve ever dated has ultimately been.
“That wasn’t a no,” I point out.
He hands my phone back without a word, but I get the feeling if hewereto use his words, he’d say something like,Thanks for coming, get the hell out now.
I open the photo app.
The pictures of Thorny Rock’s diary are gone. All sixty-four of them.
I got every page that he wrote on.
And I made sure they were clear too.
None of my other photos appear to be missing.
Not even the photos that I took at the wedding and realized later that Davis was in.
“Are we still getting fake married?” I ask.
He’s head down over his own phone. “I don’t back out of my promises.”
