Page 37 of Not Safe for Work

He’s rubbing my back. He almost killed me, so I guess we’re back to first names.

“Rafe!” I half shout and half gasp, my face pressed into his chest. I’m not sure why. This isn’t his fault, but my life just flashed before my eyes, and I can’t catch my breath. He folds me against him, arms wrapping tightly around me, and my capacity to examine this gesture is limited right now.

“Tris, I’m so sorry,” Lan calls. She stands with Gabrielle on the platform, shouting down at us. “I tripped! Are you okay?”

I shake my head, trying to dislodge the mud wedged in my ears and my nostrils and my eyes. I push back a ropey strand of mud-caked hair. This is going to be a nightmare to get out.

Rafe helps me stand, and then the shrill sound of a whistle breaks through a wall of shocked silence.

Skreeeeee.

“You!” Whistle Mouth points to me. “You’re disqualified for interference.”

“What? That was an accident!”

She brandishes her accusing finger like someone died and made her the Lord of Blue Lagoon Adventure Park. “I saw you grab him and pull him in the mud!”

“It was clearly an accident,” Rafe says. “Let’s just start from the rings. We would have been even, anyway.”

I throw him a suspicious look. Why is he defending me? His team wins by default if I’m disqualified.

“I said she’s out,” Whistle Mouth replies.

“That’s not fair!” I argue.

“It’s really not,” Rafe counters. “I want to win properly, not by default.”

Thus, his motives become clear. He’s not being nice; he just wants to make sure everyone sees when he beats me.

“And now you’re disqualified for arguing with the referee!” Whistle Mouth says. “Both teams are done!”

The crowd’s collective groan mingles with cries of protest and outrage. Whistle Mouth blows so hard that her entire head turns into a roasted beet.

“My decision is final! Teams three and four will compete for the top spot instead.”

Rafe and I open our mouths to complain again, but Whistle Mouth silences us with another bleat. “If you want to argue further, I’ll disqualify you from this entire exercise, and you can both return home on the next flight out of here.”

Well, that does it. Our mouths snap shut, and Whistle Mouth fires another screech in our direction, punctuating her threat with a shrill exclamation point. She then walks off, gesturing for teams three and four to make their way to the start of the course.

Rafe’s jaw tics as he watches her back, and I open my mouth to apologize for grabbing him. He cuts his glittering gaze in my direction, and my apology dies on my tongue.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I say. “This isn’t my fault!”

“Well, it’s not mine, either.”

“Whatever, Rafe. Why do you even care? You can have dinner with the executive team any time you want. Don’t pretend you haven’t spent summers at their sprawling beach houses sipping cognac and harrumphing confidently at each other as you disdain the rest of us plebeians.”

But I’ve really said the wrong thing because his expression becomes a shard of obsidian dipped in ink.

He opens his mouth but then must think better of what he was about to say because he closes it so hard I’m surprised his skull doesn’t shatter.

After assailing me one last time with the heat of his fury, he splashes out of the mud pit and storms away.

Chapter Eleven

Rafe and I are forced to ride on the bus back to the hotel together. Covered head to toe in mud, we smell weird, and everyone politely declines to sit with either of us. Maybe it’s not only the stench but the scene we made and the inescapable aura of drama that’s following us. It feels like we’re causing issues wherever we go.

As the bus rumbles and lurches back to the hotel, we don’t converse with words, instead using a series of carefully architectured glares to express the infinite chasms of our mutual irritation.