Page 35 of Delirium

I narrowed my gaze, scanning him for a weakness I was missing. Surely he didn’t mean anything he was saying. Finally, I shook my head. “Suit yourself. But for what it’s worth, I’ve seen her looking at you, too.”

Nash flushed, and looked away from me. “Just drop it. If we’re lucky, your city will be on the way to this waterfall and then you’ll never have to see me again. I’ve spent a lot of years putting that period of my life behind me. I don’t need to open up the wound again. It’s been healed for a long time.”

Obviously, it wasn’t healed.If I knew him like I used to, he was probably carefully opening up the wound himself each night, a penance to some unseeing god. But I kept that thought to myself. Nash would only dig his heels in deeper, and neither one of us would make any headway. It was a pointless game. Fun, when I had the mental capacity, but right now, I didn’t. “You get me to my city, and you’ll never see my face again.”

He nodded, resolved, and left me for the front of the group, brushing past Scarlett and Camp like they were nothing more than foliage. “All right, from here on out it gets a little steep, but as long as you follow my path, you’ll be fine.”

Nash brushed aside a sweeping canopy of leaves and led us deeper into the rainforest.

There was something unnatural about being this far away from civilization. Everything was too green. Too overgrown, without the eager destruction of humans. Everywhere I looked, something was growing, sometimes multiple things out of the same place, sharing the space even though they were completely different.

I blinked, trying to keep my head screwed on straight once I realized I had been staring at the parasitic tree for so long I’d lost sight of the group. They were just up ahead, but the dense trees separated us.

It would be far too easy to lose your way in the rainforest. To lose your mind. Although, maybe I already had.

With the way my brain kept cycling over Scarlett and Camp, it wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe this whole thing was a fever dream, and I’d wake up to realize it was still only my second day on the boat.

I scoffed, swapping my bag to the other shoulder. It would be far too easy for that to be the case. Dreamers would think such a thing. Nash, for one.

Not me. I was a realist. Always had been. Always would be.

And that was why I was certain of a few things. One, Scarlett and Camp were together, whether I liked it or not. And two, Scarlett would never be mine.

Chapter

Thirteen

SCARLETT

Ihad never seen a place as beautiful as this, I was absolutely certain. The thick walls of foliage enveloped us in a world entirely of our own, a make-believe bubble on the verge of bursting. The lush green leaves in front of me still dripped with the morning dew, hidden from the sunlight for the time being. A bird called out overhead, a melancholy sound. Large purple flowers twirled around the trees, blooming in the small rays of sunlight they could catch coming through the canopy.

Coming on this expedition, I’d been expecting to spend time in villages—both inhabited and not. But Nash had been so excited to show us the “most amazing waterfall we’d ever seen,” that there was no way I would disappoint him. Besides, getting off the boat was good for the soul.

As much as I was loving being on theCarpe Diem, after a few days, the close proximity and creaky floorboards started to eat away at me. I had no idea how Nash managed to live on her full time, but he was a stronger person than I’d ever be. Probably a better person, too, all around. Nash was a lot of things, all of them positive, and sometimes it was hard to focus on anything other than my normally shirtless captain.

“Watch your step.” Camp caught my elbow, and I fell back against him as he pointed to my feet. “You almost tripped on that root.”

I shook my head with a laugh. “God, I don’t know where my brain was.”

Except I did. It was focused on Nash and his muscular pecs while Camp walked by my side.

I had looked into my textbooks a bit the night before, wondering if they said anything about being attracted to multiple people at the same time, but the results were bland and not useful in the slightest. Sociology didn’t always translate over smoothly to real life. It wasn’t a perfect science, not like chemistry or physics, where the answer was always in front of you. It didn’t account for the nuances in individual humans, how we reacted to different situations. It didn’t account for people who were raised in different scenarios. Hell, sometimes the same person could react differently to the exact same thing, depending on the time of day.

It didn’t account for the fact I had never seen myself as polyamorous, and I wasn’t even sure I fit into that word. It was like trying on an outfit for the first time. I needed to see how I moved in it, how it moved around me, before I made the final call. The facts—I was attracted to Camp. I was fairly certain I wanted to build a relationship with Camp. But that didn’t take away from the feelings I was having toward Nash, which I also wanted to explore. And we just weren’t going to talk about James, or what happened in the hallway.

Of course, none of this took into account Nash’s feelings on the situation. There was a chance all my stressing about categorizing and labeling was for nothing.

I shook my head again, realizing Camp was still looking at me, holding my elbow, a crease between his brows.

“You okay?” he asked.

I smiled. “Of course I am. Just hot out here.” I scratched one of my mosquito bites absentmindedly. It wasn’t a lie. But whatever Camp and I were was new, and it wasn’t fair of me to dump an entire textbook’s worth of social sciences on his lap and expect him to go along with it.

Camp scanned my face again, and seeing through whatever façade I tried to present. Reading people was just one of his natural talents.

Or maybe it was a punishment. Seeing people for who they really were weighed heavy on your heart, even when you thought it wouldn’t affect you.

“You don’t have to hide whatever it is you’re hiding.” He gave my elbow a gentle squeeze.

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