Page 49 of Chasing Paradise

Then my gaze landed on it.

“Wait, is that it? It’s real?” Violet asked, following my line of vision to the little pod in the trees.

“No,” I said, feeling months of stress suddenly melting off my shoulders.

“What do you mean no? It’s literally right there.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking steps closer. “But there should be more of them. Dozens of them. And one much larger build for the staff to stay in. This… this is just a prototype. They use that to take pictures for the brochures to convince investors,” I said, reaching for my camera to document the evidence I’d been praying to find. “It’s all one big fucking scam.”

Thank God.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Violet

“Well, uh, scam or not… could we maybe go inside of it?”

There was a particularly large ant hanging around our feet. And, sure, maybe it wasn’t one of the ones that wanted to cause searing pain for a full day, but I didn’t exactly want to take that chance either.

“Yeah. I want pictures anyway,” Wick said, snapping a dozen of the outside of the strange, bean-like structure.

It really was shaped like a bean, poking out of the dense trees and foliage. Squat, brown, with full glass windows across the front and solar panels on the roof.

I knew it was supposedly a scam building, but maybe it had water. Or a way to charge my phone.

I really wished I’d gotten a chance to take a picture of the cool little mustached monkey. My cousins would lose their minds over him.

“How do we get to it?” I asked, squinting up at the bean.

Marco, our punishing, silent guide, was sitting a few yards away, peeling an orange he must have had in his pocket—since he’d opted not to have a backpack like Wick and I had.

I never thought I’d crave an orange. But the ones on Isla Perdita were the best I’d ever had. And I was more than a little dehydrated.

“There should be stairs right… there,” Wick said, pushing some thick vines out of the way to reveal a set of warped wooden stairs leading up to the bean.

“Those look… iffy.”

“Definitely not how they looked in the brochures. I’m guessing those were edited to make them look more accessible. You go first.”

“Oh, sure. Make me fall through the shoddy stairs.”

“I was thinking more that if you slip, I can catch you. But if you want—” he said, charging forward.

I was starting to think Wick was getting to know me better than I realized. Because he absolutely knew what to say to make me take the lead.

Up close, the steps weren’t as bad as they appeared. I mean, they were no modern marvels and the treads were warped and slippery in spots, but they didn’t crumble under my feet or anything.

I grabbed hold of some of the vines in lieu of railings. Even if some small part of me kind of wanted to slip and fall into Wick’s arms.

Fine.

More than asmallpart of me.

Luckily, the higher we climbed, the less I wanted to take chances on his reflexes. Or, you know, send us both crashing down to the ground.

“I need to use that stair machine at the gym more,” I said when we reached the top and I was struggling to catch my breath. “My cousins always go straight to them. Probably why they have such great asses. But I could never make myself get on them.”

“What’s your machine of choice?” Wick asked. I took a small bit of comfort in the fact that he was a bit out of breath too.

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