“A workplace hazard. You’d be surprised at the dangers deli meats pose to the future of periodicals.” She ducked beneath a branch boasting bloated purple blooms. After their dip in the watering hole, their backpacks were thoroughly soaked. Now the soggy extra weight threw her off-balance. Or maybe that was the way Waylon looked at her. “I was wishing I had my camera.”
Waylon immediately pursed his lips like he was auditioning forZoolander 3. “You like what you see?”
“Grow up,” she said, burying the rise of sparkles through her body, like her blood was carbonated. She heaved her shoulders, adjusting the weight of her dripping backpack and the weight of it all, really. “There’s so much about this week that is horrifying and ugly and imperfect and flat-out scary, but looking at it through a lens would make me a little less…afraid.”
Waylon considered this with a hum. Did guys like him have security blankets? Or was it security leather jackets and security ribbed condoms?
“And I guess I should thank you,” Fletcher said, surprising even herself at how quiet it came out. “For, you know, not letting me get eaten by a hippopotamus.”
“Thank you for saving me from the indomitable bush baby.” Waylon’s chin turned, the hint of a smile on that inscrutable slope of a mouth. “What photo would you take now?”
A flashbulb lit in Fletcher’s chest. She didn’t have to see her reflection in the river water to know she was glowing. Once, Waylon was the only person who knew why she clung so hard to her job at Cartwright Media. The only person who believed she could be more than an executive assistant.
“I’d want you in the foreground. Stand there and turn your head toward the river.” She took a step backward, then another, then one to the left. Her heels indented the soft dirt at the river’s edge, a steep drop-off into the glassy water. Neither of them had fully dried since their last water-feature encounter—Waylon’s damp shirt draped around his shoulders, contouring around the divot of his triceps, the banks of his shoulder blades. She pinched one eye closed and formed a rectangle with her hands, imitating a viewfinder. “A little more, stop. I’d want your face to look like you,nota low-budget Ben Stiller impersonator.”
“Low-budget,” he scoffed under his breath. “Okay. How do I look to you, honey?”
While ordinarily more petulant than pet name, thishoneymelted in his mouth.
That prickly feeling returned. The usual avalanche of derogatory adjectives she associated with Waylon thawed. They were probably going to die here anyway, so what did it matter if she let her hard resolve to hate him melt away?
“You look rough around the edges on purpose. To prove a point, probably. But like you have a four-, maybe six-step skincare routine and try not to tell anyone because it would ruin your Cool Guy image.”
“How’d you know?” He cracked a smile, a real one and not just the imitation he put on for show.
And he was, wasn’t he? Putting on a show? Waylon Cartwright was the billionaire’s castaway kid, a playboy and a problem child. Too smart for his own good, too stubborn to do the smart thing. But Waylon—this Waylon—had screamed in the face of a pocket-size primate and hand-fed her grapes and carried her on his shoulders when she couldn’t see. Different from the version of him that had lived in her head the last three years.
She inched forward a hair, repositioning him in her finger frame.“Curls expertly mussed. Eyes narrowed like you’re always up to something mischievous. Deviously sparkling. Do you use special eye drops for that?”
His eyes flashed, then darkened as she paced toward him, trying to find just the right angle. Not the facade the tabloids or the creepy Reddit pages would see—but the version of him beneath the veneer. When was the last time someone actually saw him? Waylon sans Cartwright.
“A little tired.” Closer still. “A little lonely.”
“Fletcher.” A whisper parted his lips.
The unguarded way he studied her robbed her legs of all structural integrity. She could lean into him so easily. Let his hands tangle in her hair. Let him kiss her until her lips were swollen, until her head spun, until she forgot why she was ever mad at him to begin with.
Her hands fell away from her eye, the gap between them reduced to inches, a few ferns between their toes. “Click. That’s the one.”
Fingertips brushed across her wrist, a tug to come closer. His head crooked, hers tilted. This was it. The moment she finally kissed Waylon Cartwright.
Waylon’s hands slid around her waist, then tightened as his gaze flitted over her shoulder. “Fletcher,” he said, this time with a severity that didn’t quite align with what she thought he’d sound like when she imagined him kissing her. “I need you to trust me.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. Dreamy. Dazed. What had gotten into her? Heatstroke was a hell of a drug. But she did trust him, much to her dismay. “Okay.”
Behind her, thunder rumbled. Sun still filtered through the canopy, the air stifling without the savanna breeze. It didn’t smell like rain—just earthy botanicals on the heady side of indulgent, a hint of copper, a touch of salt.
All too easily, she could picture this moment in a snapshot framed by the tropical blooms and waxy leaves. Her hand on Waylon’s chest, his fingers tight against her waistline, him about to—
Waylon wasn’t kissing her.
Why wasn’t he kissing her?
Fletcher pried open one eye a smidge. Waylon’s dagger-sharp eyes focused over her shoulder. “Naya.”
Fletcher squinted. “Who’s Naya?”
She followed his gaze. The magic spell severed.
