You, With a View(36)

I look over my shoulder at Paul. “And you?”

“Ninety-seven.” He nods his chin at Theo. “He’s trying to catch up with me.”

“Forty-two is pretty impressive.”

“Yeah,” Theo agrees, but it’s not smug. He seems in awe of it, and confirms that when he continues, “I realized early on what a privilege it was to be able to travel. Granddad drilled into my head that seeing the world is expensive, and it requires time people may not have. I can’t do anything about the time part of it, but Where To Next was born from the idea that everyone should be able to afford a full-package experience.”

“I love the off-season packages you offer,” I admit. “Gram and I went to Scotland a couple years ago and practically paid pennies.”

His attention turns keen. “Do you use it often?”

I lift a shoulder. “When I have the time and money. Before Gram died, I didn’t have much of either. There’s no way I would’ve gone on the trip without the off-season deal. Gram would’ve wanted to pay for my way, and it would’ve turned into this big argument of me not wanting to be a burden—”

Gah. Major overshare. I bite my lip to prevent further confessions, but Theo seems to have a one-track mind.

“Do you think it’s a necessary feature?” he presses.

“Yeah, everyone I know has used it at least once. It’s the biggest draw of your app, in my opinion.” I eye him. “Why are you asking? Are you using me as some sort of one-woman focus group?”

He runs a hand over his jaw, distracted now. “Yeah, I guess.”

We spend the next few minutes walking in silence before coming up to a portion of the trail where a creek is revealed, water rushing over huge craggy rocks. Behind it, a massive slab of mountain thrusts into the sky. My fingers start tingling, and my heart beats faster at the feeling in response. It’s been so long since I’ve wanted to shoot anything so badly my fingers tingled.

“Can we stop real quick?” I ask, already popping the cover off my lens. “I want to get a few shots here.”

“Go ahead,” Paul says.

I scramble toward the edge, staying a safe distance from the drop, though it’s not significant. It’s just rocky, and the water below looks freezing.

But when I look through the viewfinder, the angle is all wrong. The pictures I took this morning weren’t my best work, but I need to get up to speed quickly so I can capitalize on the attention and followers TikTok has afforded me. I want to make more videos. Need to, actually, and I want it to be with work that shines.

Which means I need to scoot closer so I can get this shot.

Theo’s voice is sharp behind me. “What are you doing? You’re going to fall in.”

I slide an inch forward so the toe of my hiking boot rests on a rock. “I’m not. I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you? Because you’re way too close to the edge.”

I peer through the viewfinder again. Almost there. If only Theo would shut up so I could concentrate. “I know my body placement better than you, Spencer.”

I inch forward. It’s almost perfect, almost—

“Shepard, don’t—”

But it’s too late. The heel of my hiking boot slips on a wet patch of rock, and I’m falling.





Thirteen





You’re a fucking mess.”

I press my key card against the reader, my body throbbing from head to toe. “And you’re overreacting.”

Theo reaches an arm around me, pushing my hotel door open. His furious tension leaches from his chest into my back, but when he pushes past me into the room, it’s with a gentle brush of his body against mine.

Still. He’s pissed. The ride back to the hotel was deathly silent. Even Paul was quiet, beyond asking several times if I was okay.

As Theo stalks away, I focus on the mud streaking down his pants from his ass to his knee. He’s missing the bottom three inches of his shirt. We used it as a makeshift bandage, so now he’s rocking a crop top. His elbow is scratched but not bleeding, which is more than I can say for my knee.

I look down at it in dismay. It’s no longer gushing, but it looks nasty underneath the shirt. The material is soaked through with blood. And my leggings are trashed, ripped from knee to mid-thigh.

Theo holds the first aid kit he got from the front desk over his shoulder. “Take your pants off.”

“Excuse me?” I choke out, my shoulder clipping the doorway as I cross the threshold.

The look he gives me is incendiary. “We need to clean your knee and your leggings will be in the way. They’re ruined anyway. Off.”

My spine cracks, stiffening at his bossy tone, but I bite my lip against a retort as I watch him stride into the bathroom. He pushes aside all the crap I left out this morning, tossing the first aid kit onto the counter.

He has good reason to be mad; I had no business hanging off the edge of the embankment like that. What’s worse, I didn’t even get the shot and my lens is cracked, though thankfully I have a backup.

I drag myself over to my suitcase, digging around for a pair of shorts while my brain flashes through the past two hours: My foot slipping and the way I tipped forward. The horror of seeing the rocks ten feet below me with nothing to grab onto, knowing I was going to fall face-first into them. The feeling of being wrenched backward by my backpack, being thrown to the side from the force of Theo’s momentum. The searing pain in my knee when it sliced against a jagged rock and the glug of Theo’s racing heart underneath my ear when we finally stopped halfway down to the creek.