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He clambered to his feet and brushed himself off, both of us setting about filling our backpacks with as much fruit as we could carry.

“Bike parts?” I asked.

“Bike parts,” August confirmed with a nod. He squinted up at the sun to orient himself and then set off in that direction. There was a far nicer atmosphere between us now we’d talked, and with my stomach full of fruit, I was closer to happy than I’d been for some time.

It was mid-morning, and we were making our way through the forest when August stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into him. I’d been lagging behind under the pretense of drinking water. In reality, I’d been checking his arse out, my attraction to him only having grown since the hand job.

Now I knew what it felt like to have his hands on me, I wanted more. I wanted to see his cock. I wanted to know what kissing him felt like. Those things had consumed my thoughts for the past few miles, August seeming happy to walk in silence.

He pointed to the thing that had made him stop, the bizarre sight making me frown. A machete was embedded blade first in the ground. We looked at each other and then back at the machete. “Someone got attacked?” I suggested. “And in the ensuing panic, they left their weapon behind?”

“Like that?”

“Maybe they were going to come back for it, and they wanted to find it again. Only they got turned around, or they haven’t made it back yet.”

August stepped closer, and I followed. “It’s too shiny to have been here long.”

I shrugged, not interested in how shiny it was. Unlike August, I wasn’t part magpie. I suspected he was already thinking about what he could get for it, while my thoughts were much more practical. A weapon was a weapon, and I wasn’t about to leave it here for someone who may or may not be coming back for it.

I stepped forward and reached for the handle, August’s “wait” coming a beat too late, my fingers already wrapped around the handle to pull it out of the ground.

And then the world tipped and stopped making sense, the forest floor no longer beneath my feet, and the sky rushing up to meet me. It took a few swings before I grasped what had happened, August and I in a net dangling at least ten feet off the ground.

“Bait,” August said.

We were squashed together, the trap—because there was no calling it anything other than what it was—presumably designed for one. And instead, whoever had set it had gotten themselves a two for the price of one deal.

“Can you get to your knife?” August asked, his voice carrying an urgency that was new to me.

I tried, but all I accomplished was making the ropes dig into me hard enough that breathing, never mind anything else, became difficult. I still had the machete in my right hand, but I couldn’t move that hand. It was trapped down near my feet. “No,” I finally had to admit. “You?”

The ropes dug in more as August wriggled around, trying to force his hand down to where he kept a knife in his boot. I tried to think of anything but the pain, because if he could get to it, we could cut our way out of here and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I could handle short-term if it meant long-term gain, especially when the alternative was being stuck in here.

August’s answer came in the string of curses he let out. “No can do.”

“Fuck!” His attempt to rearrange himself had left an elbow digging into my ribs, and now, try as I might, I couldn’t shift it. “Who?” I asked. “And for what purpose?”

The pause before August answered lasted far too long for my liking, and I didn’t much like his answer when it came. “I don’t know. But I’m guessing we’ll find out.”

Chapter Eleven

August

I’d thought face down on a bed with my hands tied behind my back was the worst sleeping position. I’d been wrong. This was far worse, sleep proving impossible. But then, as day turned to night, staying awake proved equally difficult, meaning I existed in a murky area between the two, both states just as unsatisfying.

Keaton wasn’t faring any better. I could tell from the way he kept jerking awake, and from the quiet groans he let out when he tried to shift position, only to remember it wasn’t possible. I sympathized, lack of circulation rendering my own limbs numb.

I’d preferred last night’s groans. In fact, I’d preferred everything about the previous night, which was saying something when I’d been called every name under the sun.

At least it hadn’t rained.

That would really have been something to be trapped in here with the version of Keaton from the previous night. Someone had once told me that if you looked hard enough, there was a silver lining to every shitstorm, and it seemed I’d found one.

I startled awake for what felt like the hundredth time, but given the lack of light on the horizon, probably wasn’t. Something was different this time, though.

A noise. I listened more carefully.

Footsteps. Coming this way.