Page 29 of Tourist Season

“When Maya said her fake blood will change your life, she wasn’t fucking around.

” I keep my hand clamped to Nolan’s face and my eyes trained on him as I reach for the hot chocolate pot in my peripheral vision and toss it into the water.

The stove quickly follows. “It contains psilocybin. Magic mushrooms.”

Nolan tugs my hand free of his mouth. “You drugged me?”

I shrug. “Maybe a little bit,” I admit, chucking both our cups over the embankment. “And by a little bit, I mean probably a lot. Who knows.”

“What do you mean?”

“I kind of free-poured, you know? It’s not like I measured your BMI beforehand, is it?”

“You’re a terrible person,” he whisper-snarls.

“You already knew that, remember?” I yank the stool from where he’s about to plop himself down so he can probably question all his life choices and hurtle it into the water as his ass hits the damp earth with a thud.

“But you can take it up with me later, because someone is here, and we need to hide. Now .”

“I can’t believe you fucking drugged me,” he says, his eyes wandering over our surroundings as though he’s seeing a whole different world than the dark and dreary one that envelops us.

“And I can’t believe you’re moving at a fucking glacial pace when I said I heard someone approaching our little gravedigger situation.

Get a move on.” I toss my backpack over one shoulder and his over the other, and then I grab hold of Nolan’s wrist and tug him to his feet.

I thrust my shovel into his hand. “You were a dick in the shop today. What did you expect?”

“I was?” Nolan’s brow furrows, his eyes tracking to my hand as I scramble to pull the tarp off the branches. A fresh bandage covers my blistered skin. “I was just worried about you.”

My motion slows as his words take root in my mind, warmth blossoming in my chest. And I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s hoping for, even though he looks as though he’s telling me a truth that’s emerged in a drug-induced haze. But it’s a ploy. He wants the book. He’ll say anything to get it.

I shake my head and refocus on my task in the hope the heat still slithering around my heart will wither and die. “I’m not going to have you sent to jail for a little burn, Nolan. You were weird about the hand, sure, but you were a dick about Arthur.”

I tuck the tarp under my arm and survey the terrain around us, but I’m not sure there’s a good place to hide.

The trees are too sparse. The rocks are too exposed.

If we make a break for it across the plain, we might be seen, and even if we’re not, we’ll leave a fresh set of tracks behind in the mud.

Nolan takes my hand. “Come on,” he whispers as the voice draws closer. He pulls me along after him, heading toward the bank and the river that snakes through the woods.

“No—”

“It’s the only place left to go.”

He’s right—it’s the only viable hiding spot. And I’ll be even more vulnerable there than I will be sitting out in the open. Because I can’t swim.

Adrenaline bursts through my veins as I clutch his hand tighter and follow him down the slope to the narrow shore.

Nolan doesn’t stop at the water’s edge, he just keeps going into the inky water, pulling me along as though he can’t feel the hesitation of my steps or the tremor in my hand.

A cold current fills my boots and sweeps around my ankles.

It rises up my calves to swirl around my knees.

I manage to transfer my phone into the chest pocket of my jacket before the water reaches my hip.

By the time the river grazes the bottom of my breasts, I’m shaking, whether from the cold or the fear I don’t know.

“Stop,” I whisper.

Nolan turns, his eyes slowly dragging over me. It’s not his usual sharp, scrutinous stare, but he still seems to understand through his psychedelic haze that I can’t go any farther. He opens his mouth to say something, but a voice comes from the dark to stop him.

“… drone footage to follow the river,” a man says from the bank above us, “with a voice-over about the purchase of the property following the disappearance of the previous owner …”

“It’s Sam,” I whisper.

Nolan nods and tugs on my hand to pull me closer, shielding me from both the current and the view of the bank. “I saw him today, coming out of the Viceroy office on Main Street.”

“That’s the company that bought this land.”

“… dusk shots, fog or heavy cloud. Bring a metal detector …”

We remain still and silent in the river, Sam’s voice growing more distant as he continues scouting the grounds that he doesn’t have permission to be on.

My lips tremble. I keep my focus trained on the direction of Sam’s words, even though it becomes harder and harder to hear him above the hiss of rain on the water and my heartbeat humming in my ears.

Though I feel Nolan’s eyes on me, I don’t meet them.

Not until he whispers something so unexpected that the threat of Sam suddenly seems like a distant memory.

“You’re so beautiful.”

I meet Nolan’s eyes, trying to decipher his expression despite the shadows. “You’re just saying that because I’m made of light worms or some shit.”

“No.” I don’t know if he realizes he’s still holding my hand beneath the water.

Or that his thumb is tracing a repeating pattern over my bandage.

Or that he could hurt me if he wanted to.

Just a little pressure against a wound, a reminder, a clear communication that we’re still enemies.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he raises his other hand, moving slowly as though not to scare me, and traces the curve of my cheek to leave the scent of the river behind.

“I mean, now that you mention it, there are light worms in your face.”

“Great.”

“But I thought you were beautiful the first time we met too.”

His caress follows my jaw, lowering to my neck to glide down the pulse that hammers through my flesh.

He watches the progress of his touch, one that feels as reverential as it does forbidden.

I fight to keep my eyes from drifting closed.

My heart erupts beneath my bones. “And then you realized who I was.”

“It didn’t change anything.”

“No. It changed everything .”

He meets my eyes, his palm resting on my neck. He could so easily wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze. It would only take a heartbeat to subdue my body beneath the river. Only moments to force the air from my lungs and fill them with water.

Maybe he thinks about that too, because Nolan holds my gaze as he lifts his fingers one by one, then lets his hand fall away.

It feels like a shadow descends between us.

Something dark and cold and otherworldly.

We’re still staring at each other when Sam’s voice returns as he seems to backtrack toward the road.

Our connection doesn’t break as he passes by.

Not even as the car door closes a few moments later.

It’s only once we hear the car travel over the nearby bridge that the thread between us snaps, and we walk back to shore.

But it’s not until we’re standing on the rocks at the top of the bank, staring down at the graveyard before us, that he finally lets go of my hand.