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I should have left Naomi at the lake site. The others would have found her eventually.

A flush hits her cheeks, making me feel like she’s lying, and I suppress the urge to resort to physical violence to get her to talk. If London is with Ezra and Nigel, Naomi is the only living person who can help me find her quickly. And she can’t help me if I suck the air out of her lungs.

I lean down so my mouth is close to hers. “Fucking. Tell. Me.”

She stiffens beneath me and bites her lower lip. “I don’t know. How the fuck would I know where London is?”

My eyes narrow. “So, why did you leave them?”

She blinks, keeping her gaze steady, her body warm beneath mine. “We ran out of food,” she admits. “I was trying to find the creek camp, but I didn’t make it. I’m not lying to you, Micah. I would never lie to you. You know how I feel about you.”

Feel… as in present tense.

I lock my gaze with hers, searching her eyes for any sign of lies, and remain silent. My jaw flexes, annoyed that her story is actually adding up. I can tell she isn’t totally lying, but she definitely knows more than she’s letting on, which gives me extreme pause.

She shifts her body and raises her knee between my legs.

Fuck.

I ease the tension and roll off her. She knows me well enough to know I’m turned on right now and is playing it to her advantage. I rise out of bed and pull on a sweater. Grabbing a piece of wood, I start carving. Anything to keep my hands busy and ignore this half-naked girl in my bed.

She pretends to ignore me as she pulls the blanket off her and leans over the bed to grab a new T-shirt that’s not sweat-stained from her fever. I can’t help but watch her change, and when she pulls up, she smirks at me.

It looks like the confident Naomi is back.

She lies down, resting her head on one of the bedposts, and picks at her nails. I side-glance her way as I blow wood dust off my carving, and she looks anything but impressed. Bored almost, even if she still looks pale as a fucking ghost.

“Do you want to fuck me right now?” she eventually asks, not looking up.

I cock my head, steadying my knife. “Nope. I want to know where my girlfriend is.”

“Liar.”

I scoff at her brazenness. “What about Ezra?”

“What about him?”

“Aren’t you with him, Naomi?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Does it look like I’m with him?”

Good point.

Fuck. Naomi will be the death of me.

I flip the knife in my hand, focusing on it instead of her. “I have a girlfriend, Naomi, so get any ideas you have out of your head. Despite her absence right now, I’m still loyal to her.”

She shakes her head. Sitting cross-legged, she begins to comb her hair with her hands. “So, suddenly, you’re loyal to only one girl? Is she the one, Micah? The one who finally tamed you? Because I call bullshit. I will never understand the two of you together. You don’t belong with her. She was Maison’s… and so was Olivia. Why do you go after Maison’s girls?”

This has my stomach turning in on itself. “Who the fuck do you think I belong with, Naomi? You?”

She presses her lips together, and her eyes glaze over. “Look around. You might not have a choice in that matter anymore. You can fight it as long as you want, Micah, but we always get pulled back to each other. No one put a gun to your head to bring me with you when you found me, but here we are. She isn’t here, and you seem rather surprised by that, like maybe she left voluntarily. So maybe you care about me a bit more than you think you do.”

My fingers clench. “You know nothing about my relationship with London, so quit pretending like you do.”

The hurt in her eyes is evident. All that emotion is bundled up and manifests into the look she’s giving me right now.

I never properly ended things with Naomi. I quit talking to her when I realized who I was in love with. I did the same to her when I broke things off with Olivia and tried to use Naomi to make Olivia jealous. I told Naomi I’d date her after I stole her virginity by the urinal to make her feel better.