The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(43)
The water in January is warmer than LA’s in the height of summer, a pleasure to dive into, and when I emerge, Josh is beside me, water beading off his lovely chest and his perfect arms and suddenly this backpacking trip has gone from being the stupidest thing I’ve ever signed on for to the smartest.
We are too tired, too exultant, for this to be weird anymore. He’s shirtless and I’m stripped down to my jogging bra and shorts and we splash each other like children—bad children who ignore the dying light, the chilly breeze, and even the sharks that probably feed at dusk somewhere nearby.
By the time Chris shouts that dinner is ready, the air has grown cool. “Which of us gets the tent first?” I ask.
Josh’s eyes light up. “I’ll race you.”
“That hardly seems fair. You’re a foot taller. A gentleman would—”
“I’ll give you a ten second head start. Final offer.”
I take off with a screech. Even with the head start, I don’t have a chance of beating him and I know it and it doesn’t matter. I just want more of these moments with him, when he’s so happy and so free. I want to keep them coming as long as I possibly can.
He catches me easily but then slows at the end to let me hit the boulder in front of our tent just before he does.
“I won!” I shout, throwing my arms in the air, jumping around in the grass and very intentionally ignoring the fact that he let me win. “Vic-tor-y! Vic-tor-y!”
“You’re such a dick,” he says with a laugh, and I have no idea why I do it, but my leg swings up to deliver another roundhouse kick, just like it did the first morning we ran together.
And he catches it and flips me just the same way. Except this time, when my back lands in the grass, he’s above me, his hand bracing my fall, his eyes locked with mine. He’s shirtless, our shorts cling to us, and I can feel all of him, warm and hard and hungry. I can picture how this might unfold if we were other people, in another place—how his hand might slide from the back of my neck down to my waist. How it might move from there to slip inside the seam of my shorts. How he’d lower himself until we were pressed tight against each other.
My gaze dips to his mouth, his lovely soft mouth I’d give anything to feel against my own.
It’s only a second, but infinity rests within it. And I see exactly what we could have been. I see what he wants, what I want, and how terrifying it would be if it was at all possible. He would be more. He would be the long journey into the unknown. And I’m pretty sure, with him, I could be convinced to try.
27
JOSH
That night, we sit around the fire eating the food Chris made. We all laugh too easily, exhausted and slap happy. Drew and I have already set up our sleeping pads a respectful distance apart, and there isn’t anything to discuss, really, but I am painfully, intensely aware of the fact that I’m going to be sleeping near her tonight.
My brother is an idiot. If she were mine, I wouldn’t have let her come on this trip alone and I sure as hell wouldn’t be letting her share a tent with another guy. Maybe Joel assumes I’m safe, but I’m a lot less safe than he thinks.
We are all yawning once dinner is over. She is bundled up in sweats but she inches closer and closer to the fire as the wind picks up. Chris and Kai take turns playing the ukulele, but eventually even they are bothered by the gusts of wind whipping off the water. Rain, one of them mouths to the other, and we all head to our tents.
“You want to change?” I ask, not meeting her eye. I’m doing my level best not to think of her naked inside our tent at any point. “I can wait outside.”
She shakes her head. “I’m too cold. I’m sleeping like this. I just need to brush my teeth.”
We both climb in and I grab my toothbrush while she searches her backpack.
And then I hear her quiet, whispered oath. “Shit,” she says. “Shit.”
I turn. The contents of her backpack are spread all over the tent. For some reason she’s brought two sleeping bags and a pair of shoes that can’t possibly be hers. “You okay?”
“No,” she whispers. She buries her head in her hands, taking slow measured breaths, as if willing herself to calm. “Six moved our stuff. He put his sleeping bag in my pack, and he took my toiletry kit. My inhaler was in there.”
My stomach drops. We are eleven miles from civilization. No one has a cell signal. She’s already thought these things through, and right now she’s trying not to panic.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. I want to kill my brother, revive him, then kill him again but my voice is firm and calm. “You might not even need it.”
“What happens if I do?” She sounds breathless even as she asks the question.
I’m already planning, thinking. A part of me wants to get her out of here tonight. If we left the packs I could carry her, but that path along the cliff was treacherous on a sunny day. God only knows what would happen at night, especially if it’s storming.
“They must have a way to radio for help,” I tell her. It’s probably true.
She laughs, but it comes out sounding a bit more like a sob. “What good will that do? How long can I go without oxygen?”
My eyes squeeze shut. Fucking Joel. Fucking inconsiderate, useless, narcissistic Joel. How could he have done this? I want to rage at someone, but the only thing that matters right now is keeping her calm. If I can convince her she’s going to be fine, she might actually be fine.