Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
I zip my bag and slide the straps back on, grinning up at her as I start to climb. “As long as we don’t die of some kind of exotic poop-borne illness.”
She makes a gagging sound. “Oh God, I didn’t think of that. We should research that first. First, bat poop illnesses. Then the protocol for rabies shots.”
“Sounds good,” I grunt, pulling myself up the wall, wincing as my bruised hip twinges in protest.
“Actually, you have bars down here,” Tessa says from above me. “Crazy. What’s your passcode? I’ll start googling while you climb.”
“Five, four, three, two, one,” I tell her, earning a judgmental huff I deserve.
“Yeah, you’re going to have to change that,” she mutters. “A passcode like that is a good way to…” She trails off, going so silent that I call out after a moment, “You okay up there?”
“I’m fine,” she says, but her voice is tighter than it was before, all the fun, and even the anxiety, gone out of it.
I want to tell her that she doesn’t sound fine, but I’m currently using all my strength to cling to one rock while finding a foothold higher up the wall. The next few minutes pass in almost eerie silence, building the anxiety swelling in my chest. By the time I pull myself over the edge, I half expect Tessa to be gone, stolen away by those hungry ghosts she was worried about.
But she’s crouched a few feet back from the edge of the pit, my phone in hand.
As I emerge, she looks up, her wounded features illuminated by the blue light as she asks, “So, were you going to tell me that Darcy texted you and we were fine to go home? Or were you going to lie about that, too?”
Chapter 26
TESSA
We barely speak on the way back to the campsite.
Wes tries to talk, but I shut him down.
A part of me insists I’m overreacting—it wasn’t a lie, so much as a failure to share information—but the rest of me is already in lockdown. Finding out Wes is keeping things from me shouldn’t be scarier than having bats in my hair, but it is.
I was falling so hard for him, so hard that I’d let myself forget how much it hurt the first time he let secrets get between us.
Now, it all comes rushing back, making my head spin.
How much it hurt to learn the man I’d been making love to all night was in a relationship with another woman. How my heart shriveled in my chest when that break-up he’d promised didn’t come. How I wanted to jump through a wormhole to another dimension when I spotted Wes and Darcy at a table in my favorite café a few days after our night in the woods.
They didn’t look happy—not even close—but that didn’t matter. He’d still chosen her, not me.
It’s the story of my life.
For one reason or another, I am always the unchosen one.
If I were a character in a fantasy novel, I wouldn’t be the princess who learns she has magical powers or the slayer who has to save the world from zombies. I wouldn’t even be the spunky sidekick who assists the heroine with my encyclopedic knowledge of healing plants or weapons expertise. I’d be the mayor’s daughter who’s killed by bad guys in chapter three, a plot device to show how bad the bad guys are.
Back at the camper, I quickly clean up and change clothes, but when I cuddle Freya, she can obviously still smell that I’ve been getting up close and personal with other furry things. I endure her frantic sniffing of my hair patiently, wishing I had a similar skill set. If I could smell other women on my man, maybe lies wouldn’t feel like such a big deal.
But even as the thought drifts through my head, I know that’s not the real problem.
I’m not worried about Wes cheating. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I believe that he’s falling for me as hard and fast as I’m falling for him, and that he clearly feels terrible about keeping Darcy’s texts from me—regret is etched in every tense line of his face as he emerges from his own clean-up in the bathroom.
I just want to be able to trust my person. I need that.
And I need to know that he trusts me. I can’t live with this kind of uncertainty, always wondering if I’m being told the whole truth, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over time, even little white lies can come between two people, and Wes’s lies aren’t white. They’re an “I like to manipulate things behind the scenes without telling people” shade of gray.
At the Emergency Room, we learn we do indeed need to start the rabies vaccine protocol. Apparently, bat teeth are so tiny and sharp that we could have been bitten and not even know it. We’ll need to get one round of shots now, and then another shot at the three, seven, and fourteen days post exposure. The day three shots, we can get here at the hospital in Utah, the nurse says. Afterwards, she can send the vaccination records to our primary care providers in Bad Dog, so that we can finish the protocol when we’re home from our trip.