AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTEREIGHT
Day Ten—Eleven teams remaining
Archer
I hacked awayat the branches and large leaves in our path with the machete, stopping to make a second pass with it before moving forward again.
“This is our day, Lo. I can feel it.”
She hummed her doubt. “We’ll see. I think it’s a waste of time. I doubt there are actually anymore buried chests. It’s just a mind game to see if the frustration will break us.”
We didn’t have a competition today, so we’d gone to a new section of the island to look for treasure chests. A couple of hours in, we hadn’t found anything yet, and the worst of the day’s heat was setting in.
“Since when are you a pessimist?” I asked.
“Since my ex stole my faith in humanity.”
I stopped and looked back at her, shocked. A smile played on her lips. I grinned back.
“You had me there for a second.”
“Get over yourself,” she said playfully. “You never had quite that much power over me.”
I used the opening to ask her about something I was curious about. “Do you date much?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t say a lot. I went out on two dates with Jason McGee.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
Laughing, she covered her face for a second. “I am. He’s matured since high school.”
I cringed. Jason McGee? The guy had pissed off many guys at our school by taking the only bathroom stall with a door for at least ten minutes of lunch hour every day just so he could jerk off. And he wasn’t quiet about it, either.
“Hey, I’m stopping for a water break,” Lauren said.
She opened her canteen and drank, and I did the same. After about a minute of silence, she said, “Yeah, I did go on two dates with Jason. But it was like three years ago.”
“Wow.”
Despite his active solo sex life, Jason hadn’t been a bad guy. It wasn’t so much that it was weird for Lauren to go on a date with him—it was weird to think of her on a date with anyone but me.
“Guess they weren’t great dates?”
She smiled. “They were fine. We talked about going out again, but never did.”
“Did you sleep with him?” I caught myself immediately. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No.” She glanced back at Linda, who was filming us. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I don’t want to talk about people who don’t know they’re being talked about.”
We continued our search without talking for a few minutes. The only sounds were birds calling and my machete swiping against brush until Lauren broke the silence with a question.
“What about you? Do you date much?”
Hell. I didn’t know how to answer that. I didn’t want to admit to only having casual sex, but that was the truth.
“Nothing serious,” I said dismissively. “I’m on the road a lot for games.”
“Archer?”
Something in her tone made me stop and turn to look at her. “Yeah?”
“Do you think…” She sighed heavily and looked away. “Do you think if I had come with you that we would have stayed together?”
That hit me right in the gut. I took a couple steps toward her and stuck the end of the machete in the ground, then considered my answer as I stretched my arms.
“I don’t know.”
Lauren met my eyes, emotions swimming in hers. “Be honest. If you love the lifestyle and don’t have relationships, it seems like we wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”
I wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, agitated. “That’s different, Lo.”
“Just tell me.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know. There’s no way anyone can—”
“I’m asking what you think,” she said sharply. “Don’t be so goddamn evasive.”
She wanted me to let her off the hook. To tell her that I enjoyed my commitment-free life and probably would’ve ended things with her even if she had come with me to Minneapolis eight years ago. I couldn’t do that, though.
“Yes,” I said, locking my eyes with hers. “I think we would’ve stayed together. It was different with you, and you know that.”
She looked away, her expression pained. “We were so young, though. Neither of us had ever been with anyone else.”
“And I never wanted anyone else. You—” I stopped talking and held up my palm, distracted by a high-pitched cry.
Lauren’s eyes widened as the sound continued. I put a finger to my lips and then crooked my finger, telling her to follow me.
“What if it’s a snake colony?” she whisper-hissed a couple feet from my ear.
“It’s not.”
“Archer.”
“Hang on, let’s get closer,” I whispered as I crept forward. “If it’s a wild boar and I can catch it, I can kill it with the machete.”
We drew closer to the sound, which was louder now, and I didn’t think it was a boar. I glanced back at Lauren, but I couldn’t read her expression well enough to tell if she suspected the same thing I did.
Stealthily, we crouched behind a couple of tall, overgrown bushes. I peeked around the side of one, and I could tell from Lauren’s gasp behind me that she was also looking.
Neil Stein, the hockey player representing Tampa, was fucking his ex, Shayla, up against a tree.
“Shit…yes,” she moaned, gripping his shoulders. “You’re an asshole, but I love that big dick.”
“Shut up and let me enjoy it,” he said, grunting.
She panted around her words. “I’m trying…but…you used to fuck a lot harder than this.”
Neil growled and picked up the pace, Shayla shrieking in either pain or pleasure, I wasn’t sure.
I moved back. Lauren’s lips were quirked up in a smile I couldn’t help returning. Leaning close, I whispered in her ear. “Are you thinking of the bleachers?”
She nodded and I leaned back, my grin widening. Our senior year in high school, we’d been walking around campus after school one day and we’d happened upon a couple going at it under the bleachers of the football stadium.
As horny teenagers who couldn’t get enough of each other, we’d thought it was both funny and hot. As I’d grabbed her hand and we’d headed away from the couple, I’d been trying to come up with a time and place we could do the same thing they were doing.
Neil and Shayla were in the way of the path I’d been clearing, so we’d have to do the same thing we’d done then and move in another direction.
“Pull my hair harder!” Shayla cried. “Yes, like that!”
“Fucking come already,” Neil ground out.
“I’m trying but…the bark is hurting…my back.”
I shook my head and led Lauren away from the coupling in progress. After cutting a few branches to clear the way, I found a pretty clear area that was closer to a real pathway than any place we’d been so far today.
“Shayla said she hated him,” Lauren said once we were out of earshot.
“She’ll hate him again in about five minutes,” I cracked. “Or sooner if he comes before her.”
“I just don’t get it. She said he cheated on her. And it was just a couple years ago. I could never forgive that.”
“Yeah, me either.” I stopped, taking out my canteen and chugging some water.
Lauren drank from hers, too, emptying it. Behind us, Linda took the camera from her shoulder and set it on the ground, rubbing her shoulder. She pulled a water bottle from her pocket and drank from it, then moved to pick the camera back up again.
