Something Wilder(25)

Silence blanketed the campfire; even the embers seemed to go still. The alternate versions of their past branched out into fresh paths in her mind, and for a beat Lily let herself flounder: If I’d just kept my phone, or if Duke had driven into town to find me, or if the worst of it hadn’t happened and Duke hadn’t—

No. Lily shut down those thoughts. If they had spoken? It wouldn’t have mattered. Ten years older, Lily Wilder now understood that she and Leo never would have worked. It was a brutal truth, but it was what it was. They were from different realities.

She looked over at him. “I assume your dad never came back?” All she could remember him telling her was that his father left when Cora was little, that he hadn’t been in the picture since.

Leo shook his head. “One of my mom’s cousins in Japan tracked him down, and he basically said, ‘Isn’t Leo old enough to handle it?’?”

“?‘It’ meaning his daughter?” she asked, gaping. “What a piece of shit.”

Leo nodded, shifting beside her. “You got that right.”

Stillness—understanding—settled in the warm air. At only twenty-two, Leo had been tasked with raising his little sister on his own. “You stayed in New York?”

“Brooklyn. Our landlord was great. He didn’t raise our rent—I think he actually lowered it and then kept it there for years. I’m sure it would have been cheaper to move, but Mom was gone. I couldn’t leave the only place we’d lived with her. I couldn’t do that to Cora. Mom had some savings, and the life insurance money helped. I finished school and got a job as soon as I could.”

She blew out a slow breath. “And you raised her.”

A proud smile broke through. “Yeah.”

“That must have been so hard. On both of you.”

“She’s the best thing I’ve done with my life. She graduated from Columbia last week, did I tell you? She starts medical school in Boston in the fall.”

Lily whistled, impressed. “Wow. Good for her.” She looked over at him. “There’s a lot in the middle that you left out about yourself, did you notice that?”

“Yeah.” Leo glanced at her and shrugged, as if his own life were so inconsequential it was just an afterthought. “It feels a little like I’m only now coming out of a fog, to be honest.”

“That’s a long fog.”

“No kidding.” He laughed softly. “I had this realization the other night that for the past ten years I only had one goal—to take care of Cora—and I haven’t done anything to plan for what comes next. I’m facing that now: What is my life going to be?”

She could be no help. Lily didn’t even know what her own life was meant to be.

Leo bent, picking up a stick and tapping it against one of the rocks in a ring around the fire. She could feel him moving on, remembered the gesture, how he would change the subject with movement before words. His voice carried a new lightness when he spoke. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

His unsure smile was a slow-growing assault on her libido. “What exactly are we going to find at the end of this trip?”

This was not at all what she expected him to say. “You’re going to find yourselves,” she said with exaggerated sincerity. “Your love for the outdoors and sense of adventure.”

Leo’s playfully skeptical face made her laugh.

“The treasure is mostly stuff that local companies donate,” she relented. “But by the time the guests figure it out and crack the final codes, they’re so proud of themselves it doesn’t matter what’s in the cave.”

“So, you’re saying it’s in a cave,” he detective-murmured, pretending to write this bit of information down on the palm of his hand.

Lily laughed harder. “That might not be the exclusive you think it is. There are a million tiny caves everywhere.”

“Be honest,” he said. “There will be Mardi Gras necklaces and fake jewels inside a plastic treasure chest, right?”

Their gazes danced together. “There might be yo-yos and branded stress balls.”

Finally, she broke the eye contact, feeling too warm, and took her outer layer off, ignoring the way his eyes tracked her bare arms.

“Okay,” he said, “well, I promise to be a good sport and to keep Terry in line as much as possible.”

“What’s his deal, anyway?”

“We went to school together, but he’s more a friend of a friend, someone I see at weddings and stuff. He’s never usually invited on these trips, for obvious reasons. If he gets to be a problem, I’ll handle it.”

She nodded, leaning back and settling her feet on a big rock bordering the fire.

“One last question,” he said, “if we’re still clearing the air.”

Lily hummed. The fire was gently warm, and somehow it matched the energy between them. Calming. Thawing. Nothing was exploding and shooting heated sparks into the sky. “Go ahead.”

“Whatever happened with Duke?” he asked. “Did you two ever work it out? Where is he?”

Laughing wryly, Lily pressed a palm to her forehead. How many cans of worms would they open tonight?

But the first words of her answer were drowned out by the abrupt sound of Nicole hollering, “What the hell are you doing?”