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“What?” I call back.
“I can’t tell you unless you come out and see for yourself.”
“Sorry,” I say. “This bath is too good.”
“Are you sure? Because dessert involves chocolate-covered strawberries hand-fed to you while naked in bed.”
Burgers, champagne, and a naked handfeeding of chocolate strawberries?
No bath is that good.
I pull the tub stopper with my toes and get up as the water swirls down the drain. I use the showerhead to rinse my body of all the remaining foam and then step out of the tub, wrapping myself in a fluffy white towel.
Hot water, clean towels, food. Things I’m never again taking for granted.
In the bedroom, Logan isn’t much more dressed than me. He’s sitting at the small, round table wearing only his boxer briefs. His chest, arms, and legs are covered in bruises and bug bites. And his knees are still swollen from the impact with the ravine. Both our bodies have seen better times. But… mostly naked Logan? Another thing I’ll never take for granted.
I scowl. “I thought you promised me a naked dinner?”
“Naked dessert,” he corrects. “You must endure clothes for the burgers and champagne.”
I sigh theatrically. “The hardships you put me through.”
We ravage the food with the enthusiasm of two people who’ve recently spent seventy-two hours eating basically nothing. And dessert turns out to be as worthy of an abandoned bath as Logan had promised. We make love well into the night and fall asleep curled in each other’s arms.
Who would’ve guessed the standoffish Dr. Logan Spencer was a cuddler?
* * *
We spend the next week suspended in this beautiful limbo where we live together in a hotel room, make love as we wake up, eat a lush breakfast, and take a cab to the hospital to visit Archie. The rest of the day Logan passes at the Thai Fine Arts Department, while I settle in a nearby cafe working on my computer to post-produce all the photos I took in the jungle. We eat lunch together, work more in the afternoon, pay Archie another visit, and then we go back to the hotel for another night of passionate lovemaking.
It’d be a perfect life, if not for the ticking timer attached to it.
Archie will be discharged from the hospital in two days. He and Logan have already booked a flight to San Francisco. Archie, to take some well-deserved downtime. Logan, to give his dean and the college foundation sponsoring the expedition a full report on our discovery. He needs to ask for more funds before he flies back to Trat to supervise the cataloging of all the treasures we uncovered and study the civilization that lived in the lost city. With a site so vast and untouched, the process will take months. Logan will have to move to Thailand.
I, too, have booked a flight home to LA. A near-death experience has been enough to make me reevaluate a few of my life’s choices. Like the one of not talking to my sister over a boy scuffle. First thing I’ll do when I get home is bang on her door and hold Summer in my arms so tightly, she’ll beg me to let go. Then we’ll crawl into her California king bed and stay awake all night talking until we fall asleep, like we used to do when we were kids.
The only remaining question is: with our lives moving in such opposite directions, what’s going to happen to Logan and me?
* * *
Logan
“Man,” Archie says, packing the last of his clothes in his rucksack. We’re in his hospital room, and I’m helping him get ready for the long flight home. Winter has gone to the cafeteria for a coffee run. From here, the three of us will share a cab straight to the airport. “Please tell me the photographer owes me 200 bucks, yeah?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back at camp, I bet her 100 dollars you’d screw each other’s brains out before the expedition ended.” Archie folds a shirt on the bed and then turns his piercing blue gaze on me. “She raised me 200 you guys wouldn’t.”
The statement takes me aback.
Without having specifically agreed on it, both Winter and I have been very discreet with PDAs in front of our friends. No real reason why, I guess we just wanted to enjoy the privacy of our new relationship. But Archie knows me too well…
From the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, I can tell he’ll tease me until the end of time.
“Don’t even try to deny it, man,” he adds.
“Okay, I won’t.”
