Her hand is still plastered with the bandages I put on last night—this is probablynotabout the ring, then.
I hope I’m far, far away whenever he finds out she lost it.
“You can have my tent,” Thorn offers after a moment.
“Your tent?” Joshua repeats, like the English language isn’t quite computing with all the other noise in his head.
Thorn shrugs. “I like sleeping outside, especially in places like this. It’s yours if you want it.”
Joshua just sort of blinks at him.
Thorn claps his hands together. “Right. Okay. I’ll go get it and be right back, yeah? Sadie—want to help me?”
He doesn’t have to ask me twice.
I follow him back down the trail to our clearing.
“I’m glad we’re sleeping way over here,” I say under my breath.
Thorn gives a little half laugh. “Seriously. I don’t envy Matteo having to spend the night near them.”
We each take a corner and start pulling tent pegs out of the ground.
Attemptingto pull them out, anyway, in my case.
“Did you secure these with cement?” I ask, breathless between efforts. “They—aren’t—budging—atall.”
He comes around to meet me, then slides the stubborn tent peg out with ease. “Just needed the magic touch, I guess,” he says, his flirtatious smile making an appearance once again.
“I must have loosened it up for you.”
He smirks. “We’ll go with that.”
“You must really like sleeping out under the stars,” I say as he kneels to fold his tent into a small bundle. “And here I thought I was special when you gave me yours on the first night.”
He glances up at me, eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
If this were a romance novel, he would say something like, “Youarespecial, Sadie.”
And for a split second? I honestly think he might.
But he just grins and finishes packing the tent, leaving me to wonder.
I’m on a yacht, sunbathing and eating grapes straight from the vine against the backdrop of coastal Italy, when a boom of thunder rips me right back to reality.
I sit straight up, panting.
A few fat raindrops land on my tent, and it isn’t long before the patter becomes a full-on downpour.
Thorn.
Thorn was in my dream, I realize—he was the one feeding me grapes.
And now he’s probably soaked to the bone.
I turn on my LED touch lamp and unzip my tent just enough to peek out. Wind and rain whip against my face; I spot him immediately,huddled under his sleeping bag, a poor excuse for an umbrella. I can just make out the scratchy sounds of a weather report coming from a radio somewhere.
“Hey,” I say, loudly enough so that he can hear me over the storm and the forecast. “You should come in here!”
