Page 119 of Silent Shadows

“This is such a bad idea.”

“It is. But I want you close,” he says without apology.

“I get it. You don’t want to sleep alone after…” I stop.

His eyebrows lift.

Heat crawls up my neck. “After hiking.”

“Right,” he says, lips pressed together. “The hike.”

I point at him. “Don’t be smug.”

“I have never been smug in my life.”

I have to bite back another laugh as he climbs in first, awkward and long-limbed, trying to fold himself against the wall to make space. He knocks his elbow, mutters something under his breath, then looks at me with such earnest determination that I almost can’t stand it.

“Okay,” he whispers. “I think this can work.”

“It absolutely cannot.”

“It can if we commit.”

“That sounds like something said by a man moments before an avoidable wilderness death.”

“Daisy.”

But I’m already climbing in.

It is, as predicted, a logistical disaster.

My knee hits the wall. His arm gets trapped under my shoulder. My hair catches on something that may be a hook or possibly part of the RV’s emergency evacuation system. Miles tries to help and somehow makes it worse.

“Ow,” he whispers.

“Sorry.”

“That was my rib.”

“Why is your rib there?”

“Where else would it be?”

“I don’t know, Miles, but there are too many of your body parts in this bunk, and you’re, like, seven feet tall.”

“I’m 6'1".”

“That was a choice.”

“By whom?”

“God. Your parents. Oprah. I don’t know.”

A laugh breaks out of him, and he clamps one hand over his mouth, eyes crinkling behind his glasses as his shoulders shake under me. It sets me off too, both of us silently laughing in the dark like teenagers sneaking around after curfew.

Finally, after what feels like a full survival exercise, we settle. Or something close to settle.

I’m half on top of him, one leg wedged between his, my cheek against his chest. His arm comes around me carefully at first, like he’s waiting for me to change my mind.