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TWELVE

RYDER

Hiking under the cover of darkness sounds cool in theory. But in reality, it’s a total fucking shitshow. For one thing, without the warmth of the sun, it’s cold as balls out. For another, the darkness makes it impossible for Emily and me to see where we’re going. It wouldn’t be so bad if we could use our flashlights, but I’m paranoid about inadvertently alerting Sinclair’s men to our whereabouts, and so we hike and hike and hike through inky darkness until our legs threaten to give out.

Finally, when I ask Emily how she’s doing and she only groans in response, I know it’s time to call it a night. We need to rest at some point, and while I’m in better shape than my partner in battle, I’m pretty sure my legs won’t last another mile.

“Look,” I say, pointing to a cavern-like opening in one of the sloping rock formations bordering the forest. “We could ride out the night here.”

Emily blinks at me. “You want me to spend the night in a cave? Are you aware that bears live in caves?”

“It’s not a cave,” I insist, shining my flashlight into the wide opening between the rocks. “See? It’s just a hollow groove where the rock layers formed together.”

She peers into the opening—which, granted, looks very much like a cave—and raises an eyebrow.

“Can’t we just set up our tents?”

“Sure, but tents might draw attention, and I’d very much like it if Sinclair didn’t find us.”

She peers into the cavern again, biting her lip uncertainly, but whatever reservations she has are clearly trumped by exhaustion and hunger.

“Fine,” she says, relenting. “But if a bear eats me, I will haunt you from beyond the grave for all of eternity.”

“Frankly, I’d expect nothing less.”

Tossing my pack into the cavern, I clamber over several loose rocks and step inside, surveying my new surroundings. The rock walls are gray and streaked red with mineral, and I can’t stand upright without bumping my head against one, but other than the unsettling darkness and a dartboard-sized spiderweb that I will definitely not point out to Emily, it seems like a safe enough place to ride out the night.

“You coming?” I ask as I extend a hand toward her. “Or should I book you a room at the Ritz-Carlton?”

She rolls her eyes but weaves her fingers through mine, allowing me to help her into the not-a-cave cave.

“Charming,” she says as she glances around warily. “This does not at all look like the haunted home of an ancient demon.”

She’s right; this place is creepy, but so is the whole island at night. I’m doing my best to project an air of confidence and not startle every time I hear the hoot of an owl or the cry of a loon, but it’s hard to stay calm when an armed assailant could jump out and grab us at any moment.

“Better a demon than a deranged archaeologist,” I tell her.

She coughs as I unzip my pack to pull out a handful of protein bars, passing some to her. “Ugh. This whole forest smells like a freaking Yankee Candle.”

“I think you mean a Yankee Candle smells like this forest,” I correct her, scarfing down a protein bar in a few swift bites.

“Yeah, well, after this whole ordeal is over, I’m never buying a nature-scented candle again,” she says. “No more Amber Leaves or Balsam Forest or Crisp Campfire Apple for me. From here on out, it’ll only be Clean Cotton and Chocolate Chip Cannoli.”

I shake my head as I unfurl our sleeping bags. “I understand none of what you just said.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What else is new?”

In retaliation, I toss her camping pillow at her, and she laughs and flings it back at me. Emily has a great laugh—it’s throatier than you’d expect, and she wrinkles her nose when she does it—and something inside me buzzes at the sound of it. It feels like a reward, and I find myself wanting more.

Then again, laughter is hard to come by when you’re hiking across an island with henchmen in hot pursuit.

After we dig into a mouthwatering dinner of protein bars and unsalted almonds and wash it down with cold coffee, Emily switches on her lantern and opens the leather notebook I took from Dr.Sharp’s pocket.

“A little late-night reading?” I ask, watching as she removes her ponytail elastic. Her hair falls over her shoulders, giving her a softer, less composed look, and I can’t help but wonder what her curls would feel like underneath my fingertips.

She shrugs. “Beats replaying a mental reel of Sharp’s death as I try to fall asleep.”

Her words conjure up flashbacks of bloodstained sand beneath my feet and the high-pitched whine of bullets flying past me, and I shake my head as if I can somehow dislodge the memory.

“Touché,” I tell her.

She glances up from the notebook, watching as I return the leftover protein bars to my pack.

“Come here,” she says, patting the rocky ground next to her. “Come read with me.”

I rezip the pack, considering. There’s really no need for both of us to peruse Sharp’s journal—I’m an embarrassingly slow reader and would inevitably just slow her down—but I also don’t think it’s a great idea for me to sit any closer to Emily than absolutely necessary. My initial physical attraction to her morphed into a full-on crush the second I watched her sprint toward Sharp with all the courage and badassery—if not the natural athleticism—of Wonder Woman crossing No Man’s Land, and the last thing I need is to develop real feelings for someone who thinks I’m a himbo. I’m already in grave danger of losing my life on this trip; I don’t need to risk a bruised ego and a broken heart, too.

“You know,” she says, studying me, “there’s growing evidence that playing Tetris after witnessing a traumatic event might help prevent PTSD. That’s no help to us now, considering we’re trapped on a Tetris-less island, but who says reading a dead archaeologist’s notes isn’t the next best thing?”

“Sure, of course,” I say dryly, leaning in to glance at Sharp’s notebook. “Who needs therapy when you’ve got a hundred pages of barely legible chicken scratch?”

Emily rolls her eyes but smiles as she flips through the notebook. “Let’s see.”

She flips her hair over her shoulder, and I swear that beneath the strong scent of mud and bug spray, I catch the faintest hint of her lavender-scented shampoo.

Dammit. Now I have no choice but to join her.

“Here,” she says as I settle next to her, her knee brushing mine as she tilts the notebook toward me. “Let me know when you’re done reading this page.”

I stare at Sharp’s terrible handwriting, trying to decipher his words, and Emily waits approximately ten seconds before asking, “Done yet?”

I’m only on the first paragraph, a boring passage in which Dr.Sharp speculates on the best time of year to explore a shipwreck in Key West, and I raise my gaze to meet hers.

“No, Hermione Granger. I am not. Some of us are slow readers. We can’t all be valedictorian, you know.”

She wrinkles her nose. “How’d you know I was valedictorian?”

“You give off very valedictorian vibes,” I say, squinting at Sharp’s scribbles. “I know you got straight As in school, just like I know you’ve never gotten a speeding ticket or been sent to detention.”

“For your information, I did sit through detention once.”

I look at her in surprise. “Oh yeah? For what?”

She blushes. “Well, technically, I sent myself there. I was doing an undercover report for the school paper on student disciplinary protocol.”

“Now, that,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, “is the most valedictorian thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Whatever, prom king,” she says with a huff.

“Who said I was prom king?” I ask, amused.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe all of this?” Emily waves a hand around, as if to encompass my face and hair and body, then drops her hand suddenly, her cheeks pink. “Anyway. We should focus.”

“We should,” I agree. “Please stop distracting me.”

I return my attention to the page, but it’s hard to concentrate when I can practically feel her eyes boring into me as I read.

“Here,” I say, passing her the notebook so that she doesn’t spontaneously combust from impatience. “Read your little valedictorian heart out.”

“Thank God,” she says, snatching the notebook from me and turning to the next page. “And just so you know, I’m normally very patient.”

“Sure. And I’m normally a member of Mensa.”

She side-eyes me but doesn’t reply, and I set about searching my pack for a dry pair of socks.

“So, to summarize,” Emily says after a minute, flipping through the pages at warp speed, “Sharp had suspicions about Killian for months. He considered taking his concerns to the Smithsonian, but he convinced himself that he was being too paranoid. He saw Killian as a son, basically. Didn’t want to believe he had it in him to steal the diamond.”

“Oh, he had it in him, alright,” I say, marveling at the nerve Sinclair had to give me a hard time about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles while he was planning a multimillion-dollar robbery.

“Oh, this is interesting,” Emily says, running a finger down the notebook’s spine. “Dr.Sharp copied some of the letters Captain Evermore wrote for his wife, Katherine.”

She glances up from the pages as I dump out half the contents of my pack and rummage through it. “What are you doing?”

“Searching my pack for anything we can use in self-defense,” I tell her.

“Any luck?”

“Well, we’ve got your mini Jenga game,” I say dryly, holding up the tiny wooden blocks. “So I think it’s safe to say we’re saved.”

She lets out an indignant huff, then raises an eyebrow at me as I dig a pair of boxers out of my pack and set about removing the elastic from the waistband.

“Do I want to know?”

“I’m going to make a slingshot,” I explain, “with this elastic and a stick.”

“Will that work?”

I shrug. “I used to watch a reality survival show where they’d dump a bunch of losers in the jungle with nothing but a knapsack and the clothes on their backs and make them fend for themselves. The contestants made slingshots for hunting rabbits and sharpened sticks into daggers, and it seemed to work pretty well.”

“A bunch of losers in the jungle?” she repeats. “That’s not very nice. What was the show called?”

I smirk at her. “ Losers in the Jungle. ”

Her eyes widen with the confusion of someone who probably only watches prestige dramas and fancy French cinema.

“I didn’t say it was a good reality survival show.”

She laughs, then pauses as something in the notebook catches her eye. “Hm. Looks like Captain Evermore ended most of his letters with poems. Love poems.”

She waggles her eyebrows at me playfully, but the mere mention of poetry brings me back to a harrowing lit seminar in college where I had to write a ten-thousand-word paper on the works of T.S. Eliot. I hadn’t been able to make sense of poetry then, and I’m sure as hell not in a place to make sense of it now.

“Ugh,” I say with a shudder. “I never understood that.”

“Which one?” Emily asks, her tone playful. “Love or poetry?”

“Poetry, Edwards. Believe it or not, I know plenty about love.”

I’m not sure that I do, actually, considering that I thought Hannah was The One and she ended up hating my guts, but I don’t admit that out loud.

“Poetry just never made sense to me,” I explain, uncapping my water bottle and taking a sip. “I mean, why use fancy words or get all roses are red, violets are blue to tell someone you love them when you could just show it through your actions instead? Violets aren’t even blue! They’re purple.”

“To be fair, purple’s a lot harder to rhyme with. But poetry isn’t that complicated, when you really think about it. It’s just a way of using words to make something seem more beautiful.” She shrugs. “Besides, it gives you license to be footloose and fancy-free with punctuation.”

I’ve never needed a license to be footloose and fancy-free with punctuation—just ask every English teacher I’ve ever had—but I only nod at her.

“If you say so.”

“There’s got to be some poetry out there you’d like,” she says, the lantern casting a warm glow on her face. “You just haven’t found it yet.”

“There was one poet I liked, actually,” I say, rezipping my pack. “When I was a kid, Caleb got this book of funny poems from our grandma, and he would walk around reciting them. They’re stuck in my head to this day.”

I blink, remembering the sound of young Caleb’s laughter, how he’d let out an uncontrollable snort when he found something especially hilarious.

“The poet’s name was Shelly, I think,” I tell Emily. “Shelly Silverstein, maybe? I’m not sure. But she wrote silly stuff about sidewalks ending.”

I go quiet, realizing I’ve pretty much admitted that I’m a man child who thinks poems written for small children are the height of comedy, but Emily doesn’t give me a chance to feel embarrassed.

“Shel Silverstein,” she says. “Oh my gosh. I loved his books! My dad used to read them to me at bedtime, and sometimes we’d try to come up with silly poems of our own.” She smiles. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

She’s quiet for a moment, her expression wistful, and then she clears her throat and taps the notebook.

“Well, Captain Evermore was no Shel Silverstein, but he wasn’t a total slouch, either. Listen to this poem he wrote for Katherine. It’s one that mentions the diamond.”

“ As I sailed from sea to sea ,” Emily reads, raising the book toward the lantern, “ I sought the perfect gift for thee .

More constant than the sun and moon

is my ardent want for you.

Your laugh, your voice, your raven plait,

you are my love, my sweet, my fate.

And if death takes me while I sleep,

do not tremble. Do not weep.

For you I shall wait in the silver mist,

dreaming of your touch, your kiss.

For you will never be alone,

as long as you still wear my stone.

Diamond bright, diamond strong,

forever you and I belong.

My soul, my lust are yours alone,

you, my Katherine, are my home. ”

The wind howls outside our cave. Leaves rustle, and somewhere in the distance, a loon cries. But as Emily reads the captain’s words aloud, the outside world falls away, and all that exists is me and her and the burning passion that survived a tragic shipwreck even when its owner didn’t.

I know if I were reading the words on paper, I’d be too distracted by the loopy handwriting and lofty language to really grasp their meaning. But with Emily bringing them to life, the light from the lantern flickering across her face as she reads, I can actually appreciate the beauty and intensity of Captain Evermore’s message.

“See, it’s just a pretty way of saying that love can overcome anything,” Emily says, glancing up from the notebook. “Time. Distance. Even death.”

“Even death,” I repeat, thinking of Caleb walking around the house with a black-and-white book full of silly doodles, reading me ridiculous poems about pancakes and snowballs. The memory makes my chest ache and my eyes burn, and I must not be able to keep my emotion off my face, because Emily reaches across the distance between us to place her hand over mine.

“I know,” she says, as if she can see the memory playing in my brain. As if her own mind is playing a near-identical one, except hers features a little girl and a doting dad instead of two goofy brothers. “Me too.”

Her hand is soft on mine, warm, and when I raise my gaze to meet hers, the ache in my chest and the burn in my eyes turn into a different kind of sensation altogether. A burn of desire, of want, of wishing I could show her who I used to be so she might want me, too.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat and pulling my hand back before I let myself get any ideas, “we really should try to sleep.”

“Right, sleep. Of course.” She nods, as if to snap herself out of a spell. “We’ve got a long day of running for our lives tomorrow.”

We huddle into our sleeping bags, and she switches off the lantern, sending us into complete darkness. I close my eyes and try to sleep, the world quiet except for the sound of Emily’s soft breathing. I try not to think about the shiver that ran through me when she reached for my hand, or about how it felt to have her body pressed against mine after we tumbled down the cliff.

I try not to think about how it would feel to have her pressed against me for real, with no bulky backpacks or inhibitions or fear of getting killed off by crazy people.

And I try not to wonder if Emily’s wondering that, too.