Something Wilder(47)

Leo and Bradley unloaded the packs and tents. Nicole and Lily worked to dig out a safe campfire spot while Walter went off in search of anything resembling firewood. When the fire finally crackled in the fading sun, they gathered around a flat rock nearby and laid out all of the materials, planning their route deeper into the Maze the next morning. Lily traced their path with the tip of a pen, indicating how long each section should take, where they’d stop to rest, and where they’d camp before making the final push into the more treacherous caverns. With luck they’d find what they all desperately hoped was still hidden there.

“I need you all to promise you’ll do exactly what I say,” Lily told them.

“We will,” Leo assured her.

She scowled and he could only guess she had taken the be mad later part of his advice to heart. He’d feel bad about stealing the photo if… well, he wasn’t sure what would make him feel bad after a dude she’d hooked up with chased them out of town with a loaded shotgun. Frankly, Leo wished he’d taken a few bottles of booze, too.

“We’ll go down here,” she said, indicating a spot on the map that looked a lifetime away from where they were currently camped. “If I’m right, the cabin should only be about two miles upriver once we’re in.”

Holy crap. Suddenly, his life in Manhattan felt remote to the point of fiction. His days spent at a desk, sitting down every morning to create a new unhackable algorithm, home every evening to his little apartment, the constant rumble and hum of a city beneath his feet—all of it could not feel more foreign. He looked over at Lily’s profile, and a cord pulled tight from his throat to his gut. He hadn’t felt this present in so long. Air hit his skin differently, landed in his lungs with more of a punch. He was aware of his pulse pounding and the handfuls of times he’d laughed out loud in the past few days. Here was color, and sound, and heat. She was here. He wasn’t sure how he would manage to leave her at the end of the trip.

But when he took a breath to calm his vibrating nerves, he realized the air was actually electric now: lightning flashed on a vista in the distance, and the heavy gloom of a storm loomed, unsettlingly low, hovering like a swollen, alien spacecraft. It was wild to see the actual momentum of a cloud: the gray mass blotting out the sun as it charged closer, dropping rain like a curtain of silver from sky to earth.

Lily had noticed, too. “Shit. That one is going to hammer us.” She looked to Nicole, and then around the group. “Okay. Get your stuff set up and get in your tents. We’re not going to be able to cook tonight, so grab a few energy bars from the Jeep—but don’t go crazy. Whatever we have has to last us two more days.”

They scrambled to stand and dispersed to find their packs, pull their tents open, and start erecting them. Lily helped Walter, and by the time Leo’s was up, she was just reaching her own pack. He jogged over to her, helping her tug it from its storage bag.

“I got it,” she said, jerking it out of his grip. She flattened the tent on the ground, dumping out the narrow sack of metal stakes. Picking up her small mallet, she began anchoring the corners of her tent into the dry earth.

Crouching beside her, he pulled one corner tight and used his own mallet to pound in a second stake, quickly reaching for another.

Beside him, he sensed that Lily had gone still, and did a double take when he glanced over to find her glaring.

“What?” he asked.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m helping,” he said, confused.

She reached forward, yanking the stake from his hand. “Do I look like someone who needs help putting up a tent?”

“Of course not.” Carefully, he reached for the last stake. When he paused, their eyes met, and he had to tamp down the longing in his voice. “I’m just helping you get it done faster.”

Slowly she stood and stared down at him. There was an oddly charged scent to the sky; it felt like the sizzling humidity of the thunderstorm was settling directly on top of them.

“Can I have a word with you in private?”

He looked down at her tent—still just a pile of fabric and poles on the ground—and then at the gray clouds barreling in on them. “Now?”

“Now.”

Without waiting, Lily turned and stalked away, disappearing into the dusk behind a large rock formation.

He jogged after her, rounding the corner to find her farther away than he’d expected, pacing in the space between two hulking red boulders. She stopped when he approached, wheeling on him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He paused. Somehow, he suspected they weren’t talking about the tent anymore. “What do you mean?”

“The stunt at the jukebox?” she said. “Rubbing my neck in the car? Coming over to help me with my tent?”

“Is it that unheard of for someone to help you?”

“You know that isn’t what I’m saying. It’s the way you’re helping. What are you doing, Leo?”

The tight set of her jaw and angry vulnerability in her eyes told him she knew exactly what he was doing. He might as well admit it. “I want to be near you.” She gaped at him, and he added, “I still have feelings for you.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“No?”

“No,” she said again. “Stop it.”