Page 40 of Tourist Season
He’s right—it’s the only viable hiding spot. And I’ll be even more vulnerable there than I will be sitting out in the open. Because I can’t swim.
Adrenaline bursts through my veins as I clutch his hand tighter and follow him down the slope to the narrow shore. Nolan doesn’t stop at the water’s edge, he just keeps going into the inky water, pulling me along as though he can’t feel the hesitation of my steps or the tremor in my hand. A cold current fills my boots and sweeps around my ankles. It rises up my calves to swirl around my knees. I manage to transfer my phone into the chest pocket of my jacket before the water reaches my hip. By the time the river grazes the bottom of my breasts, I’m shaking, whether from the cold or the fear I don’t know.
“Stop,” I whisper.
Nolan turns, his eyes slowly dragging over me. It’s not his usual sharp, scrutinous stare, but he still seems to understand through his psychedelic haze that I can’t go any farther. He opens his mouth to say something, but a voice comes from the dark to stop him.
“… drone footage to follow the river,” a man says from thebank above us, “with a voice-over about the purchase of the property following the disappearance of the previous owner …”
“It’s Sam,” I whisper.
Nolan nods and tugs on my hand to pull me closer, shielding me from both the current and the view of the bank. “I saw him today, coming out of the Viceroy office on Main Street.”
“That’s the company that bought this land.”
“… dusk shots, fog or heavy cloud. Bring a metal detector …”
We remain still and silent in the river, Sam’s voice growing more distant as he continues scouting the grounds that he doesn’t have permission to be on. My lips tremble. I keep my focus trained on the direction of Sam’s words, even though it becomes harder and harder to hear him above the hiss of rain on the water and my heartbeat humming in my ears. Though I feel Nolan’s eyes on me, I don’t meet them. Not until he whispers something so unexpected that the threat of Sam suddenly seems like a distant memory.
“You’re so beautiful.”
I meet Nolan’s eyes, trying to decipher his expression despite the shadows. “You’re just saying that because I’m made of light worms or some shit.”
“No.” I don’t know if he realizes he’s still holding my hand beneath the water. Or that his thumb is tracing a repeating pattern over my bandage. Or that he could hurt me if he wanted to. Just a little pressure against a wound, a reminder, a clear communication that we’re still enemies. But he doesn’t. Instead, he raises his other hand, moving slowly as though not to scare me, and traces the curve of my cheek to leave the scent of the river behind. “I mean, now that you mention it, there are light worms in your face.”
“Great.”
“But I thought you were beautiful the first time we met too.”
His caress follows my jaw, lowering to my neck to glide down the pulse that hammers through my flesh. He watches the progress of his touch, one that feels as reverential as it does forbidden. I fight to keep my eyes from drifting closed. My heart erupts beneath my bones. “And then you realized who I was.”
“It didn’t change anything.”
“No. It changedeverything.”
He meets my eyes, his palm resting on my neck. He could so easily wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze. It would only take a heartbeat to subdue my body beneath the river. Only moments to force the air from my lungs and fill them with water.
Maybe he thinks about that too, because Nolan holds my gaze as he lifts his fingers one by one, then lets his hand fall away. It feels like a shadow descends between us. Something dark and cold and otherworldly. We’re still staring at each other when Sam’s voice returns as he seems to backtrack toward the road. Our connection doesn’t break as he passes by. Not even as the car door closes a few moments later. It’s only once we hear the car travel over the nearby bridge that the thread between us snaps, and we walk back to shore.
But it’s not until we’re standing on the rocks at the top of the bank, staring down at the graveyard before us, that he finally lets go of my hand.
FOGBOUNDNolan
“IHAVEN’T DRIVEN IN Along time,” Harper says, her eyes fixed on the rearview mirror as she adjusts it. She chews on her lip, ribbons of light erupting from each bite. I need to stop staring at her mouth. It’s just fucking hard to do when she’s so beautiful that my heart implodes every time I’m forced to look away. She’s like an angel, her skin illuminated with shifting colors, glowing from within.
She’s not an angel, for fucksakes. Shedruggedme. She’s a fuckingdemon. But don’t think too much about that because then I’ll probably see fucking demons everywhere and freak the fuck out.
I peel my gaze away and press my eyes closed, leaning my head back against the passenger seat as the world seems to pulse around me. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Not for the reason you think.”
I turn my head just enough to see her face. “It wasn’t reason enough?”
Hurt erupts in Harper’s eyes before she shutters it away and keys the engine. It never feels the way it should when I manage to slipan arrow past her defenses. I keep expecting satisfaction for hitting my mark, but the closer I get to a bull’s-eye and the deeper I strike, the more it feels like I’ve missed the target entirely.
She doesn’t say anything in reply, just puts the car in drive and coasts away from the abandoned lane where I hid the rental, just in case Sam happened to pass by the Ballantyne River property as we were working. Fucking Sam Porter. He’s getting too close to her. I could rip his fucking face off. It would be so satisfying too, feeling the flesh pull away from his bones, stripping his skin off with my bare hands. That would probably be a bad idea though, and I need to keep my last wits about me. So I take a deep breath, closing my eyes again as I press myself back into the seat until it feels like it’s absorbing me.
“Well,” Harper says, her tone grim, “I guess I’m not taking you back to Capeside in that case.”
