Page 10

JAGGER

T he silence Ms. Chen leaves behind feels loaded. The kind that settles right before everything blows up, and I already know I’m at the center of the wreckage.

Delaney stares in the direction Ms. Chen stormed off, pale as bone. I can almost hear her dreams cracking apart, piece by piece.

"We need to go after her," I say, already moving. "Explain what happened."

"Explain what?" Delaney's voice is hollow. "That we were role-playing a twisted fantasy in the woods? That's going to make it better?"

She's right, but I can't just stand here and watch everything fall apart. I catch up to Ms. Chen halfway back to the main camp, Delaney trailing behind me.

"Ms. Chen, please wait," I call out.

She stops but doesn't turn around immediately. Her eyes find mine, and whatever warmth was there before? It’s gone. Buried.

"This is exactly the kind of behavior Trailbound cannot be associated with," she says before I get a word out. "It’s inappropriate and frankly disturbing."

"It was role play, just two consenting adults who have known each other for years. I promise you."

"Role play." She says with disgust. "In a public place where anyone could have stumbled across you. Including other program participants."

"We were far from camp…"

"You were engaged in sexual activity while serving as the head ranger of this program. She was competing for my company's business." Ms. Chen's voice gets sharper with each word. "The optics alone are completely unacceptable."

Delaney tenses beside me, but I push forward. "Delaney earned that account through her own merit. Her ideas, her passion, her expertise. What's between us personally has nothing to do with her professional capabilities."

"How can I possibly believe that now? How do I know she didn't use your relationship to gain an advantage?"

"Because you know her work," I argue. "You've seen what she can do. You said yourself that her passion comes through in everything."

"Her passion for what, exactly?" Ms. Chen cuts me off. "For conservation? Or for seducing authority figures to get what she wants?"

I step forward, anger flaring hot in my chest. "Don't you dare talk about her that way."

Delaney's hand on my arm stops me. "Jagger, don't."

Ms. Chen looks between us. "You don't represent the kind of people we want to work with. The account goes to Sterling Creative." She pulls out her phone. "And I'll be having a conversation with your boss about tonight's... activities."

She walks away before either of us can respond, leaving us standing in the middle of the trail like the wreckage of a particularly spectacular car crash.

"Fuck," I breathe, running my hands through my hair. "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry doesn't fix this. Sorry doesn't save my career."

This is my fault. All of it. I pushed for this week, convinced her to give us a chance, destroyed everything she's worked for.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I tell her. "That puritanical woman has no right to judge what we do in private."

"We were in the middle of the fucking forest, Jagger. Where anyone could find us. Where she did find us."

She shakes her head, backing away like she’s trying to physically escape the weight of what just happened.

“It’s my fault. I asked for this tonight, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be around you. I don’t even know who I am right now. Why I even ask for things like this. This isn’t me. It’s like I’ve turned into some unhinged sex maniac.”

Her voice cracks on the last word, and shame flickers across her face.

“This is so much more than sex between us. You know it,” I say.

"You don't get it." She wraps her arms around herself. "You don't understand what this means for me."

"Then explain it to me."

"I blame myself," she continues, not looking at me. "I should have known better. I should have been stronger."

Each word feels like a knife between my ribs. She's talking about us like we're a disease she caught, something she should have been able to resist.

"What we have isn't a mistake," I tell her, moving closer. "What happened tonight was bad luck, bad timing, but it doesn't change how we feel about each other."

"Doesn't it?" She finally looks at me, and her eyes are full of tears she's fighting not to shed. “My career is ruined. The promotion I've been killing myself for is gone. And for what? A week of good sex with someone I can never have a real relationship with anyway?"

"We could have a real relationship."

"How?" Her voice cracks. "Maya would never forgive me."

"I know my sister. She'll be surprised, maybe upset at first, but she'll come around. She loves you."

"Not enough to forgive me for this." She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "God, what am I going to tell her? How do I explain that I threw away everything because I couldn't keep my hands off her brother?"

"You tell her the truth. That we fell in love."

"Love." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "More like mutual destruction."

She steps back, creating distance between us. "This can't work, Jagger. It was stupid of me to think it could, even for a week."

"So that's it? You're just giving up?"

She turns to walk away, and panic claws at my chest.

"Delaney, wait…"

"I'm going back to my cabin to pack. The program ends tomorrow anyway." She doesn't look back. "This is over. Please respect that and don’t come after me."

I watch her disappear into the darkness, taking my heart with her.

I don’t sleep that night. I pace my cabin, replaying the conversation on a loop. Picking apart every word, every look, searching for something I could’ve said differently. Some way I could’ve made her stay.

By morning, I've come up with a dozen arguments, a hundred reasons why she's wrong about us being impossible. But when I get to her cabin, she's already gone.

"Delaney left about an hour ago," one of the other volunteers tells me. “Said she had an emergency."

An emergency. That’s what I am to her now, some kind of disaster she needs to evacuate from before the damage spreads.

The other volunteers are packing up, getting ready for their own departures. Brett looks particularly pleased with himself, probably already planning how to spend the commission from landing the Trailbound account. The account that should have been Delaney's.

I want to punch something. Preferably his fucking face.

Instead, I throw myself into cleanup duties, trying to work off the rage and frustration and heartbreak that's eating me alive. Physical labor has always been my therapy, but today it's not enough. Nothing could be enough to fill the hole Delaney left behind.

My phone buzzes with a text from Maya: How was the program? How’d Delaney do?

I stare at the message for a long time, trying to figure out how to respond. How do I tell my sister that I fell in love with her best friend? That I ruined Delaney's career in the process? That the life I'm getting back to feels empty without the woman who just walked out of it?

I finally type back. I'll call you later.

Not exactly a lie, but not the truth either. Just like everything else about this week.

By afternoon, the last of the volunteers have left. I finish the final equipment checks and file my report, going through the motions of my job while my mind is hundreds of miles away.

Delaney is probably back to her apartment, her real life, the career she's going to have to rebuild from scratch because of me. She's probably already crafting explanations for her boss, trying to figure out how to spin what happened into something salvageable.

She's probably already regretting every moment we spent together.

The thought makes me fucking ill.

My phone rings, and for a wild moment, I think it might be her. That she's changed her mind, realized we can work through this together.

It's my supervisor instead, asking if I have time for a conversation about some concerns that have been brought to his attention regarding the volunteer program.

Ms. Chen, making good on her threat.

I close my eyes and try to prepare myself for another conversation where I have to defend what Delaney and I shared. Another person who's going to look at our love like it's something dirty and wrong.

But as I walk toward the main office, all I can think about is the look on Delaney's face when she said this was over.

The way she walked away without looking back.