“Depends on what it is.”
“Why does the scavenger hunt matter so much to you?”
I’d been waiting for that question since the Pancake House. Part of me had hoped he wouldn’t ask, because as long as he didn’t know, I could keep being the woman with the maps and the plan—competent, in control, chasing a prize for the thrill of it. The truth was less polished.
The truth was desperate.
But he’d shown me his bypass trail. He’d shown me his flame azalea. He’d told me about quitting his job and sleeping on an air mattress while eating ramen. He’d been honest with me. I owed him the same.
“My mom had cancer,” I said. “Breast cancer. She was diagnosed two years ago. She’s fine now—she beat it. She’s healthy. She’s back to teaching second grade like nothing happened.” I picked at a loose thread on my hiking pants. “But the treatment bills are still there. Insurance covered a lot, but not enough. There’s about fifty thousand dollars in medical debt, and it’s compounding. She makes payments every month, and the balance barely moves. She sold her car. She took on tutoring jobs on weekends. She pretends it doesn’t keep her up at night, but I’ve heard her crying over the kitchen table when she thinks I’m asleep.”
I hadn’t planned to say that last part. It slipped out, and once it did, the air between us shifted.
Evan didn’t rush to fill the silence. He didn’t reach for platitudes.
“The grand prize is fifty thousand,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And you came here to win it.”
“I came here to win it.” I looked at him. “I know that probably changes how this looks. The maps. The research. The way I signed up for your tour. I wasn’t here to enjoy wildflowers. I was scouting.”
“I figured that out this morning. You were checking GPS coordinates while everyone else was taking selfies.” There was no accusation in his voice—just observation. “It doesn’t change how it looks, Paisley. It makes you someone who’s fighting for her mom. That’s not something I’d ever hold against you.”
The sincerity in his voice loosened something in my chest that had been clenched tight for months. I’d carried this alone—the worry, the late-night math, the research, the contingency plans. Hartley and Brooklyn knew about my mom’s diagnosis, but not the debt. My mom didn’t know I was here chasing prize money. No one knew the full picture.
Until now.
“Then we’d better find the rest of them,” he said.
There it was again.We. Like it was already decided he’d be part of this.
I started to tell him he didn’t have to do that, that I’d been handling it on my own and could keep handling it on my own, but the words stalled in my throat.
“There’s a place I’ve never shown anyone,” he said. “A meadow past Thornberry Gap, through an opening in the rock face that looks like it goes nowhere. The rarest wildflower onBobbi’s list grows there—the pink lady’s slipper. If you’re going to win this thing, you’ll need it.”
My heart thudded harder. Not just because of the flower. Because of what it meant for him to share it.
“When?” I asked.
“Now, if you want. It’s about a forty-minute hike from here.”
He stood and offered me his hand again—the same hand that had steadied me on the rock ledge.
“The meadow’s something you should see.”
I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. He held on a moment longer than necessary. This time, I knew the warmth that spread through me had nothing to do with the sun or the hike.
It was him.
Specifically him.
We hiked. He led me through dense rhododendron thickets and across a creek that required stepping on rocks that shifted under my weight. He caught my elbow when I slipped on the second crossing, and his hand slid down to my wrist, staying there until we reached solid ground. Every brush of contact lingered.
The opening in the rock face was exactly as he’d described—a narrow gap between two boulders that looked like a dead end until you turned sideways and squeezed through.
On the other side, the forest fell away—and I forgot how to breathe.
