Page 10 of Lost in the Wild

A minute passes. Then two, then three, until finally, I can’t bear it anymore—can’t breathe this air, thick with tension; can’t stand the ache in my gut.

“What about you?” I ask, my voice rough. “Tell me something about you.”

The cave is silent.

“Please,” I add.

Evie hums, the metal tub clanking as she changes position. What does she look like back there? Are her cheeks flushed? Has she finally stopped shivering?

“Well… if I go home without a wild man interview, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fired,” she says. “Which sucks, obviously, but it might be a blessing in disguise too. This job takes more than it gives.”

I know that feeling well enough. It’s how I wound up here, after all. “Better get out while you can.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Okay, I’m standing up. Don’t look.”

Lurching forward, I snatch up the threadbare towel I left on the stone floor and wrap it around my hips before turning to the wall. Across the cave, Evie splashes and curses and mutters to herself as she climbs out of the tub, water droplets pattering on the stone floor.

I don’t look.

Don’t even breathe.

No, I count backward from fifty and watch the firelight dance on the cave wall.

Five

Evie

“How about: My Sleepover with a Wild Man?”

Rowan grunts from where he’s sprawled on the brown pelt. His bare chest is tan in the firelight, but he’s sharper somehow without all the dirt and dust. Like he’s come into focus since his dunk under the waterfall. “Veto.”

Damn.

“Okay, okay. Um… Late Night Cave Confessions?”

Rowan scoffs, craning his neck to give me a look. When his piercing gray eyes find me in the gloom, shivers race down my limbs, and I bite my lip, huddling deeper into the mound of blankets on his cot. My body’s been all weird and squirmy ever since we both stripped and bathed in this same small cave, but I’m trying to hide that fact.

“That’s even worse,” he says.

I didn’t get a peek at Rowan naked or anything—not that I tried.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not dying of curiosity.

“Stranded with a Cryptid?”

“No.”

We’ve been at this since we finished dinner—a simple savory stew of meat and vegetables that somehow tasted better than any restaurant meal I’ve had in my life—and I’m starting to think I’ll never find an angle for my article that Rowan likes. Still, he seems happy enough to keep chatting as night deepens, with one arm pillowed beneath his head. His arm muscles bulge, one ankle is propped on his bent knee, and his dark hair sprawls across the pelt.

He put those jeans back on after his makeshift shower. They’re not especially tight, but even so, my gaze keeps flitting to all the places where the denim hugs his body. If Rowan’s upper half is anything to go by, his legs must be strong and toned too.

The fire pops, its golden light licking over his bare skin.

“Evie?”

I swallow hard, my throat suddenly so dry. When I drag my gaze back up to his face, Rowan watches me steadily.

“Hm?”

---