Page 9 of Delirium

Scarlett was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Sure, I guess. It’s just hard to imagine someone like you having one.”

My mind flashed back, memories I’d rather forget flooding to the forefront of my brain.No. Not today.“It’s there. It just doesn’t make an appearance too often.”

I could feel her looking at me, sense the way she wanted to ask me more, and waited for the question that always followed. Except it never came. “I’m not sure Camp deserves our bad sides quite yet.”

“No. But James is on this boat, too, and we can’t make a decision without including him,” I reminded her. I swatted at the bugs surrounding me. They were always bad during the rainy season, but today’s batch was something else. I grimaced as a mosquito sank into my skin before I could get to it.

Scarlett fell silent beside me. Not wanting to force her to say anything, I turned my attention to my environment. The rainforest was thick, and seductively lush. The thought the rainforest was little more than an illusion always lurked in the back of my mind. How else could something bethisgreen? It was surrealism at its finest. A vibrant world only some of us were lucky enough to experience with our own eyes—photos never did it justice.

When Scarlett finally spoke up, I hadn’t realized how much I’d been waiting to hear the sound of her voice. “You never said how long you’ve been here for.”

It was smooth and melodic, fitting right in with the orchestra of the strange world we floated through. A lullaby, maybe, or the dulcet tones of a hypnotist, lulling me into a false sense of safety.

Whatever it was, I never wanted her to stop talking, even if it was a poison slowly filling my blood.

“Let’s see.” I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, counting off years. “I think I was twenty-five when I got here? Give or take a year, but twenty-five sounds right. Time moves differently in the rainforest, you know? Different pace out here.”

“Well, I guess when you don’t get seasons the same way we do, so it’s hard to feel like the years are passing,” she mused.

“Exactly that, darling. Exactly that. Plus, sometimes it’s kind of fun to live outside the reaches of time. Like I’m untouchable. Immortal, even.” I grinned down at her, and she smiled back.

Her smile touched a piece of me, something deep inside I had forgotten even existed.

Poison. Magic. Hypnotic. Something about this woman’s aura was bound to do me in.

“But, back to your question. If I was twenty-five when I first arrived at this beautiful little slice of life, and I’ll be thirty-five in the next few weeks here, I guess that makes it a nice, round decade.”

A decade. Had I really been here that long? Some days it felt like only yesterday. Other days it felt like a century.

“It suits you. Or maybe you suit it. I don’t know which way around.”

“You just saying that because I’m tanned and shirtless?”

She laughed, and the tips of my toes curled. “I mean, it does help the ‘jungle boy’ aesthetic.”

“Jungle boy…” I cocked my head, weighing the name. “You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been called that.”

Scarlett mock-gasped, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling down at her. “You’ve shocked me, Nash. I thought for sure that would’ve been a standard nickname from your guests once they got to know you.”

Pure. That’s why her aura spoke to me. Everything about her was pure. Life hadn’t tainted her. How had she made it through this world unscathed?

I laughed, smiled, joked, and made people happy, but sometimes it felt like little more than a mask.

Scarlett, with those brilliant blue eyes looking up at me, and a smile that could melt even the iciest of hearts, everything about her wasreal.

And real was rare.

I liked rare. I liked it a lot.

“Well you see, there’s a bit of a problem with your logic,” I said.

“There is?”

“Mhmm…” I nodded seriously, steering us around a jagged rock. “Your logic assumes my guests get to know me as more than Captain Nash.”

“Don’t they?”

“Not usually.”

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