20
Jack
By the time we get back to the lodge, I’m spun so tight everything makes me jump. A voice in the lobby. A light turning on. Water running in the kitchen as I make myself a coffee I definitely don’t need.
“Are you okay?” Marci asks when my fork clatters to my plate. We’re eating dinner with a couple of the staff—Ben who works in facilities and Iris who works in housekeeping—and I’ve been trying to keep up my end of the conversation, but every time I’m not speaking, my attention shifts back to the boat. To David. The fine hairs on his tanned thighs. The slight sting of pain as he held my head down.
“Jack?”
I jump again as Marci nudges me.
“Sorry,” I say, giving everyone a tight smile. “Maybe I got too much sun on the water this afternoon.”
They don’t make any further comments on it and mostly talk among each other, which leaves me to my imaginings and plans and fantasies for tonight and—
Oh. That’s a problem.
As we’re leaving dinner, I tug at Marci’s hand, holding her back as everyone else leaves.
“Something wrong? You’ve been weird all evening.”
“I need a favor. A big one. I’d do it myself, but you know everyone, and I don’t. But you have to swear you won’t tell a soul about it. Ever.”
Her eyes get big. She glances around us and whispers, “Is this about... your VIP?”
I need to vanish. Disappear entirely so all that’s left of me is a heap of clothes on the floor.
“I think we need to take a plausible deniability approach here,” I say, and she nods excitedly.
I might actually learn to like working with Marci this summer.
David and Mr. Morgan are in the dining room as I walk through the lobby. Okay, I pace through the lobby, after I’d paced down to the dock and upstairs to the lounge. I can’t sit still. It gets worse when David catches my eye over his dinner, and I can only hold his gaze for a split second before I have to look away because otherwise I’ll walk into something and hurt myself when I want to be at the top of my game.
I call Stef to kill time.
“Hello?” She sounds impatient. I deserve that.
“Hey, just wanted to see how it went with Graham?” The words are weak and I grimace.
She growls. “Don’t even. I don’t want to talk about the day I’ve had.”
“What’s wrong?” I have plans tonight, but if Stef needs me, I hope David understands. If Graham hurt her or upset her, all bets are off.
“Graham’s not here.”
Of course he isn’t. “Where is he?”
“Well, he’s not hereyet.His flight from Dallas to Seattle was delayed, and he missed the connection to Anchorage. So we spent all day hanging around at the airport and now we’re stuck in a hotel for another night waiting for him to show up.”
My first instinct is to tell her to go home, but I don’t want to start another fight with her.
“Is Robbie okay?” He’s not great at sleeping in places he doesn’t know.
“He is now. The drive yesterday was hairy. About forty-five minutes from home, he realized we’d forgotten his fish journal, and he absolutely melted down. I tried to help him recover, but in the end, we wound up going back for it because I couldn’t—” Her voice wobbles, and my throat tightens.
“Stef, I’m sorry.” She shouldn’t be doing this alone.
“No, it’s fine. We’ve got the journal.”
