Leroy nods, setting his phone on the hood-turned-dinner table.
“Half hour,” he says, grabbing a shrimp by its tail then gesturing at us with it before biting the top off. Around his chewing: “You’ll trigger the alarm when you go in and come out. Go fast.”
Nash nods. “Let’s go.”
With a sharp exhale, I follow him, both of us jogging toward the tree. Within a minute, Leroy’s phone rings, and he answers with a muffled voice.
My pulse pounds at every nerve ending in my body. I’m breaking into a tree. I’m forty-two and turning to crime to fix my life.What is happening?
We assess the branches quickly and quietly, choosing the ones with the most gradual slopes to get us to the top of the trunk.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the old limb before climbing onto it. With my full weight, it doesn’t budge.
Nash climbs onto the one next to me and the whole thing shakes. Somewhere farther up, a crack rips through the quiet. We look at each other, stricken.
“Just you,” Nash says, gingerly sliding from his branch and coming to mine.
He’s right in front of me at eye level, just inches away, clicking a flashlight on and shining it at my face to make me wince. He laughs softly. “You scared?”
I snatch the flashlight from his hands and slip it into my front pocket. “Does terrified count?”
Because I am.
Bennie said treasure hunts require bravery, and dammit if this doesn’t feel like the bravest I’ve ever had to be in my life. I’m illegally climbing a preserved tree in the dark so she can go to the school she wants to go to, my mom can have the surgery she needs, and I can keep working at the place I’ve worked my entire life.
Nash’s dusk-light-painted face in front of mine, smiling like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing. We are in the middle of a heist without a single second to spare, yet I cannot move. I’m stuck staring at him like tarnish on an old penny.
He shines his light up the tree then moves it slowly down the branch. Where my hands grip the tree, the flashlight becomes a spotlight. The diamonds, pearl, and gold on my finger shine like a disco ball.
I am busted in a bad kind of way.
“That’s new.” His lips twitch.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I accidentally found this.”
“Accidentally found it?” I hate his tone as much as I hate the way I love the ring. “I see.”
Heat consumes my neck as I open my eyes. “And it’s stuck.”
At this, he laughs. Loud. So loud you’d never know we were doing something illegal and trying not to get caught. Like I just told him the funniest joke ever told and not that I was snooping in his bedroom and putting another woman’s ring on my finger that I found next to the condoms she’ll be impaled with later.
“Glad you think this is so funny.” I readjust myself on the branch. “Because I’m quite humiliated by the fact I have another woman’s ring stuck on my finger, thanks for asking.”
“Where’s your other one?”
Like a fool, I look at him. “My purse.”
“Ah.” His grin is dimly lit and completely unbothered by the fact I snooped in his bedroom or have his future fiancée’s ring held hostage on my hand. “So you like this one better?”
“Hate it,” I snap.
“Explains why you put it on.”
I huff an annoyed breath then redirect my focus to the tree and take my first crawled inches forward.
“Hey,” he says, stopping my movement while stepping along the branch. Once again, he’s close. “Earlier you said you didn’t know how to be around me.” His throat bobs with a swallow. “But I know how I want to be around you.”
His mouth is close enough to mine that I feel his breath on my lips. His heat. I’ll deny it later, but right now, I want this man to kiss me. I want to know if his mouth can still make me burn the way it once could.
