Chapter 28
“Backseat Confessions - worst reality show ever.”
-Aaron
Ryker was taking no chances with Camellia slipping away from him this time. This is why he’s in the driver’s seat of a bulletproof SUV as we take a circuitous route toward a remote cabin in the forest. Camellia and I are sitting in the backseat like celebutantes or flight risks.
The Saber Security guard is a man of few words. If it weren’t for the hint of eye movement while he checked for tails, I’d swear he was a cardboard cutout behind the wheel. Or an automaton.
“Maybe our team was cursed,” Camellia’s voice brings me back to the present.
“Cursed?”
“Yeah, cursed. When our teammates started dying, the rumors began. We’d been cursed. I wrote them off because we work in a high-risk profession. Well, you and I don’t, but the others did.”
I raise an eyebrow at that. “You don’t work in a dangerous profession? You were in a house that blew up.”
Ryker sucks in a breath from the front seat but gives no other indication that he’s eavesdropping.
Camellia waves away my concerns. “And you’re the Fire Chief in Flamingo Cove.”
“A lot less hands-on than I used to be, trust me,” I answer. “How do you explain the other so-called curses?”
“Bumble was in perfect health, training for a marathon, and collapses while running?”
“Heart arrhythmia,” I counter. “Those can go undiagnosed for decades.”
“And what about Misty? She tries to get pregnant for years, and her fetus dies in utero. When doctors try to remove it - a procedure they do thousands of times a day - she dies on the table.”
“Patients die, Camellia.”
“And her husband having a heart attack three days later?”
I shrug. “They say people die of a broken heart.”
“Fine. Fine,” Camellia points at me. “But what about your curse?”
“My curse?”
“Choosing the wrong woman.”
“Ouch!” I clasp my heart in mock protest. “Burn! Okay, smartypants, if everyone’s cursed, what about Owen?”
She folds her hands in her lap, and I swear the air around us drops twenty degrees.
I touch her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t seem to understand. I didn’t love Owen.”
This is news to me. “But you were engaged.”
“Only because of my curse.”
“Which is?”
“Always being the consolation prize,” Camellia turns to me. “Second choice. Never good enough.”
Ryker’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, then back to the road.
