Page 14 of Noctis | AllFreeNovel

“Sounds… thrilling.”

I’d told myself I wasn’t going, that I was far too cool to be marched around a forest as though I’d traveled back in time and joined a school trip. But once the Librium had kicked in and I’d eaten lunch, even wandering through a forest seemed preferable to staring at the same four walls. Besides, after the events of the previous night, whether real or imagined, my room no longer felt much like a refuge.

That was how I found myself tramping through the mud in the company of three women and two men, all of us following Edward. Judging by his exuberant reaction to every leaf and flower we passed, he’d only gone into nursing after his dreams of a David Attenborough-style career had failed to materialize.

He brought our little procession to a stop beneath yet another tree, plucked one of its leaves and held it aloft. “Who knows what kind of tree this is?”

“Oak,” someone said without even looking at the leaf.

From the way Edward screwed up his nose, you’d have thought they’d insulted him. “Oak leaves have rounded lobes. Do you see any rounded lobes on this leaf?”

No one answered. I stared down at my brown Ralph Lauren Purple Label boots, which had cost me nearly a grand, and wondered whether I’d ever get the mud off them.

“This leaf is oval,” Edward continued, “and it tapers at one end. Can you see that?” This time, he was wise enough not to wait for a response. “This is a beech leaf.”

“Can you smoke it?” someone asked, prompting laughter from the rest of us, myself included.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Edward said earnestly. “But, interestingly enough, beechwood”—he tapped the tree trunk with his knuckles, presumably in case any of us were stupid enough not to know where the wood came from—”is used in Europe and North America for smoking foods like chicken, pork, and fish.”

“I don’t think that’s going to give us much of a high,” someone else commented.

“Probably not,” Edward admitted. “Which is just as well, considering where you are.”

Thankfully, we moved on after that. I quickened my pace to catch up with the woman whose back of the head I’d been staring at for most of the walk. “Laura, right?” I asked as I fell into step beside her.

She gave me a sideways glance. “I’m not interested. Rehab romances are extremely problematic. Ask me how I know.”

“How do you know?” I parroted obediently.

She grimaced, apparently regretting the invitation now that I’d taken her up on it.

“I’m not chatting you up,” I assured her. When she continued to look skeptical, I added, “My boyfriend wouldn’t like it.”

“Oh.” She nodded as though something had been confirmed. “I see.” After giving me another careful once-over, she asked. “What did you want, then?”

Approaching her had seemed like an excellent idea when we set off. I’d spent most of the walk waiting for the opportunity to get her alone, but now that I had, I wasn’t sure how to begin without sounding either nosy or insane.

“The day I got here,” I said, “you were pretty upset.”