I suddenly have an old song that Waverly played for us once back in my head. A song about a guy named Earl.
“I—I don’t have your number.”
He sets his phone down, pulls a notepad out of a drawer, scribbles a number, and hands me the paper. “That’ll work. Use it ifanyoneyou don’t want to see shows up.”
That’ll work.
Notthat’s my number.
Anduse it if anyone you don’t want to see shows up?
What does that mean?
Aside from the fact that it makes him fascinating and dangerous.
And aside from the fact that if my gut says I can trust him, which it’s actively telling me right now, I absolutely should not.
“Thank you. Again. I know you don’t have to do this. I should handle my own problems.”Shut up, Sloane. Don’t be an overly apologetic ninny.
He nods once more.
And that’s that.
Davis Remington and I will see each other again only when necessary until we get fake married in five days and convince Nigel to go back to Iowa, and then I’ll go back to therapy to discuss my first crush on a guy since I gave up on men.
Yippee.
6
Davis Remington, aka a man finally ready to do a little bit of talking, if he must
Most of Shipwreckis still sleeping when I swing my leg off my bike, softly stride down the alley, and then climb into the passenger seat of the black SUV parked behind the Thorny Rock Historical Museum after a long night of trying to ignore my own hero complex while studying the pictures of the journal that Sloane took for me.
Not the same as holding the real journal.
Not even close.
And that’s what I’m focusing on.
Not on the haunted expression in her bright blue eyes when she talked about the expectations her grandmother and other people from her past have of her, or the way she kept twirling her copper locks while she talked too fast, like I made her nervous.
I don’t want to make her nervous.
I want for her what I want for everyone—that she be safe and happy and healthy.
The end.
I don’t ever let myself want anything more because it will inevitably end in hurt, because it always does.
She’s a project. That’s it.
A project unfortunately related to the reason I’m climbing into this SUV in the pre-dawn hours, which means that no matter how much I want to not think about her, I’m going to think about her.
“Anyone see you?” I ask the woman in the driver’s seat.
Even in the dim pre-dawn light, I know she’s pinning me with a look that she’s been perfecting since before we were born. “You know this is why people ask you if you’re a spy, right?”
Says the spook herself.
