Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle (ebook offline reader .TXT) 📕

all these ideas for how guests can have fun during their stay. Having lofty goals and something to prove is a combination that’ll get results.”

I can’t believe he isn’t mad. “I lied, though.”

“I lied about the cabin being a two-bedroom,” he points out. “I didn’t tell you right away that the jewelry was fake.”

“Those are nice lies.” I should stop pushing, but I can’t stop. It’s incredible: messing up and not having the other person automatically go away, leaving me for dead. “My lie was self-serving.”

“But you were right,” he argues. “Falling Stars would make a great hotel.”

“Maybe the only reason I wanted a hotel is because my subconscious internalized that postcard long ago.”

“Maybe you saw the soul of Falling Stars and knew what it wanted to be, even before you found that old newspaper.”

Stress makes me theatrical. I fling an arm across my face, resolved never to get up again. “Stop being nice, I can’t handle it. Take the whole thing for your animal sanctuary,” I declare. “Even the ballroom. We’ll put pigs in it.”

He grabs my arm. Pulls me up. “C’mon, drama queen. There’s treasure out there for us.”

“Aren’t you weirded out?” I can’t help asking. “I mean, I thought I dated your picture.”

“Weirded out?” He releases a long-suffering sigh. “How do I say this?” He tips his head back, searching the dark sky for answers. “How do I say this.”

I slide him a questioning look.

A hand hovering at the small of my back makes direct contact, urging me forward. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Absolutely nothing. I’m deeply, terribly flattered that you would have swiped right on me.” Turbulent eyes cut to mine, then into the grass. “Makes me wish I’d had a real Tinder profile that day.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •

“WONDER WHERE THE TREASURE could possibly be,” I say wryly as we approach the mailbox erected on a post in the middle of nowhere. Its red flag is up, parcel ready for collection.

He gestures for me to do the honors. I’m inexplicably nervous as I open it, revealing spiderwebs and a brown waxed-paper envelope.

“Are you going to take it?” Wesley asks when I hesitate.

I pull it out; it’s light, containing a sheet of paper at the most. There’s a saddening finality to this—I’ll open the envelope and then . . . it’s all over. These one-sided interactions with Uncle Victor that Violet should have experienced instead, and this mutual adventure Wesley and I are on. I’m not ready for it to be over.

“Can we wait until tomorrow to open it?”

“Sure.” Wesley doesn’t press with questions. He simply clamps his flashlight between his teeth and unzips my bag to tuck this treasure among the others.

Then he hits me with the question that makes my stomach drop. “Ready to set up camp?”

The long answer to this is an internal shriek that lasts approximately ten minutes. The short answer is a deceptively (I hope) casual “Yep.”

This is fine. I am fine.

I am totally fine, never better, as I hold the flashlight for Wesley while he sets up the tent for us, clutching the hunk of metal in both hands so the stream of light doesn’t wobble and give me away. I’m freaking out and he’s focused on his task, infuriatingly calm. Unless he’s freaking out, too, but hiding it better than I am. I remember what he said about masking his panic attacks and narrow my eyes at him. He could be having one right now for all I know.

Or maybe it’s no big deal to Wesley that we’re going to be lying next to each other all night. Or two nights, if we happen to get a freak snowstorm that strands us here in this field. I mean, it’s seventy-ish degrees and a snowstorm is unlikely, but stranger things have happened. We could be stuck here for days together—a rogue porcupine could shred my sleeping bag, forcing us against our wills to share a single sleeping bag. What a shame that would be. I can’t even entertain the thought.

I entertain the thought in vivid detail with half of my concentration, the other half funneled into maintaining my cool and collected composure, an I don’t even care expression. I’ve known all week that this was coming, but imagining and experiencing are as far from each other as the North and South Poles. Nothing could have prepared me for this panic, this flustered, thrilling, scary spiral. Nothing is going to happen tonight, I know.

I realize I haven’t shaved my legs in four days and respond to Wesley’s chitchat with a smile, I am sure, that makes me look like I’m in pain. Maybe I’m underestimating myself. I’m fully capable of ignoring him while lying next to him. I can pretend he’s a wall.

“I brought one with a plastic see-through ceiling,” he says, tapping the tent’s dome. “Good for stargazing.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say tightly. My pitch is the last key on a piano.

Wesley shovels our bags into the tent. “Gimme a minute? Just gonna change my clothes. Then we’ll trade.”

I bob my head. “Yep, yep, yep.”

He quirks an eyebrow at me, then disappears into the tent. I nearly buckle. I have absolutely no business letting myself visualize what he’s doing in there, but I do. I squeeze my eyes shut, consider bolting into the trees, and command myself sternly to not hear that rustling noise that is unmistakably a pair of pants being removed. I simply do not possess the strength this situation requires of me.

He emerges in his koehler landscaping shirt and gray sweatpants that steam up my glasses. Hair mussed. His rain-and-earth-and-bonfire scent wafting stronger, refreshed, reaching out to punch me in the stomach. A chyron of explicit language rolls across the bottom of my field of vision. “Your turn.”

“Cool, thanks,” I squeak, sliding past him. Our gazes clash and can’t get unlocked for a moment, the function jammed. I drag mine away, the weight of oceans, limbs clumsy, and it’s fine, I think, that I know how I’m going to die now. Not