“That’s a long fog.”
“No kidding.” He laughed softly. “I had this realization the other night that for the past ten years I only had one goal—to take care of Cora—and I haven’t done anything to plan for what comes next. I’m facing that now: What is my life going to be?”
She could be no help. Lily didn’t even know what her own life was meant to be.
Leo bent, picking up a stick and tapping it against one of the rocks in a ring around the fire. She could feel him moving on, remembered the gesture, how he would change the subject with movement before words. His voice carried a new lightness when he spoke. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
His unsure smile was a slow-growing assault on her libido. “What exactly are we going to find at the end of this trip?”
This was not at all what she expected him to say. “You’re going to find yourselves,” she said with exaggerated sincerity. “Your love for the outdoors and sense of adventure.”
Leo’s playfully skeptical face made her laugh.
“The treasure is mostly stuff that local companies donate,” she relented. “But by the time the guests figure it out and crack the final codes, they’re so proud of themselves it doesn’t matter what’s in the cave.”
“So, you’re saying it’s in a cave,” he detective-murmured, pretending to write this bit of information down on the palm of his hand.
Lily laughed harder. “That might not be the exclusive you think it is. There are a million tiny caves everywhere.”
“Be honest,” he said. “There will be Mardi Gras necklaces and fake jewels inside a plastic treasure chest, right?”
Their gazes danced together. “There might be yo-yos and branded stress balls.”
Finally, she broke the eye contact, feeling too warm, and took her outer layer off, ignoring the way his eyes tracked her bare arms.
“Okay,” he said, “well, I promise to be a good sport and to keep Terry in line as much as possible.”
“What’s his deal, anyway?”
“We went to school together, but he’s more a friend of a friend, someone I see at weddings and stuff. He’s never usually invited on these trips, for obvious reasons. If he gets to be a problem, I’ll handle it.”
She nodded, leaning back and settling her feet on a big rock bordering the fire.
“One last question,” he said, “if we’re still clearing the air.”
Lily hummed. The fire was gently warm, and somehow it matched the energy between them. Calming. Thawing. Nothing was exploding and shooting heated sparks into the sky. “Go ahead.”
“Whatever happened with Duke?” he asked. “Did you two ever work it out? Where is he?”
Laughing wryly, Lily pressed a palm to her forehead. How many cans of worms would they open tonight?
But the first words of her answer were drowned out by the abrupt sound of Nicole hollering, “What the hell are you doing?”
Before she even registered she’d moved, Lily was up, jogging toward the tents just as Terry yelled back, “Taking a fucking leak, princess!”
Lily paused, relaxing in relief before rounding a small grouping of rocks to reach the tent circle. In the shadows, Terry stood between his and Nic’s tents, with his pants slung low on his hips and his—
“Oh God!” She quickly looked away.
“This fool was pissing on the side of my tent,” Nic seethed, pointing to where Terry stood with his dick in his hand. “Are you out of your damn mind? Pull your pants up!”
“It’s late,” Terry reminded her snidely. “You told us not to wander away in the dark, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but you can take ten goddamn steps to pee!”
Deciding this wasn’t a crisis that required both of them, Lily moved away, pulling in a deep breath. She felt whiplashed. On her left was Terry being Terry; on her right lingered the emotional contrails of her bombshell conversation with Leo.
Counting to three, she let the adrenaline clear from her blood. But it was slow to diffuse, and even after several deep breaths, her fingers shook; she still felt unsteady. The truth was all settling in now. She thought he’d left to help his mother recover from a broken leg, maybe a concussion. In Lily’s world, people got injured all the time, but when she was young, no one she’d known had ever died from an accident. It’d never crossed her mind that when Leo had gone home, everything might have been so much more terrible than they’d understood. She’d seen herself as the wounded party for so long, but now had the nauseating realization that they were all simply the victims of shitty circumstances.