“Are you hugging me?” Fletcher asked, muffled against his shirt.
Yes. The answer wasyes. His arms coiled around her back, their bellies pressed together, and his cheek rested on top of her head. It was, by definition, a hug.
And she…didn’t hate it.
It was so Waylon. The confident way his hand came to rest on the back of her head, nudging her closer to his collarbone. His grip firm and self-assured as warmth seeped from his skin to hers and thethump-thumpof his heartbeat as it slowed, steadied.
But at her question, Waylon arched back, as if only then realizing what he’d done. His arms fell away from her sides. She shivered in their absence. Around them, morning dawned pastel pink, and the same hue flared across his cheeks, though he tamped it down as quickly as it rose.
“Did I hear you scream earlier?” he asked. His usual gruff tone returned, but this time it wasn’t at her expense. It wasforher. Concern etched into his brows on her behalf.
“Oh, I—” What? Had a predawn stand-up with Jackie Caldera to discuss some urgent agenda items? “Yeah. About the bush baby. Terrifying creature. We should get out of here before it comes back with friends.”
Waylon practically ran. “Way ahead of you.”
17
In hindsight, Fletcher should have packed sneakers. The whole outfit was wrong: the poly-blend skirt, the buttoned shirt, the strappy flats. They were designed for standing near someone more important than her and handing them a stack of neatly stapled documents—ledgers, expense reports, vague threats from Sales about a mutiny. Not trekking through Rhodes grass so tall it tickled her chin.
She missed the overly air-conditioned skyscraper with the drooping monstera on the sixty-fourth floor that refused to perk up no matter how many times she watered it.
She missed gossiping with Ford over piles of mediocre noodles and newJet-Settereditions, their talking points ranging from worthless celebrity drama to in-house scandals seeded from the mouth of Molly Bradhampton herself.
At this rate, she even missed the estate. Sure, they had been surrounded by people who wanted them dead—and the bodies of colleagues already killed—but at least back there, Fletcher could perform basic hygiene tasks. Flush a toilet. Wash her hands. It hadbarely been twelve hours since their escape and her scented travel hand sanitizer already wheezed with every squirt.
She and Waylon had walked until the sun burned off the morning dew, but the jungle wasn’t getting any closer. Meanwhile, clouds that yesterday clung to the edge of the horizon now nipped at the island’s shores. Those roiling black thunderheads cast darkness over the plains, threatening rain.
Fletcher didn’t walk any faster despite it. Between her heels blistering and her thighs chafing, she couldn’t.
“What’s that thing people sometimes use to clear paths in the wilderness?” In the midmorning heat, she’d folded up her sleeves, but now her elbows had rug burn from forcing through the grass stalks. A particularly unruly brush smacked the side of her face in retaliation.
“Spence,” Waylon clipped.
“Oh, right. A machete.”
Maybe it was the way exhaustion scratched at the back of her retinas like steel wool or Jackie’s descent into supervillain territory or how she’d been forced to share her breakfast with a monkey, but the fight was picking itself.
Waylon groaned, back to his usual demeanor, floating somewhere between purposefully nettling and naturally on edge. “We’re almost to the jungle.”
“Are we? Because it looks like—” A fringed piece of grass thwacked her, some of its frilly seeds sticking to her lips. She spat it out.Mmm, whole grains.“It looks like we’re lost.”
For the first time in hours, Waylon glanced down at Fletcher. He’d spent most of the morning plunging deeper into the savanna without ever once asking Fletcher for directions. Or talking to her. Or acknowledging her existence at all, really, aside from the back of his hand brushing against hers every few steps, close enough to sayI’m right herewithout crossing any uncharted territory after The Hug™.
It riled her up. The Hug™ and this, now, whatever it was.
Their physical contact had been limited solely to life-or-death situations, but this was just a hike. And Fletcher hated hiking. No road rules, no structure, no lines to stay inside. Every step unmapped, undefined. Anything could happen.
The sooner they made it to the jungle, the sooner they’d find Carlotta’s key in the staff building, and the sooner she could make it to the marina on the other side of the island and—hopefully—out of here alive.
Before long, she’d get back to the city where everything was gridded streets and dollar pizza and mystery steam wafting from subway grates. The constant hum. The reliable chaos.
Occasionally, Waylon would shake out his arms or flex the muscle of his jaw, a divot forming on his forehead. A few times, he pivoted their direction so dramatically she grew fairly certain they were heading the same way they started.
And every time his touch grazed her hand, she inched closer to an unknown cliff, not fully understanding what mountain she was climbing or why Waylon made her feel like she could jump without crashing.
Now he cast a glance back at her, the wrinkle between his brows relaxing and then fading altogether. A slow smile spread across his face. Unfiltered and indulgent. His gaze roved over her, like he enjoyed the pointed crest of her nose, the sun-inflicted freckles on her already-burned cheeks, the irritated slope of her lips.
Reaching, he plucked and discarded a clump of grass from her hair. Then another, tucking a strand of copper behind her ear when he was finished.
