Page 42 of Delirium

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Camp snapped from beside me.

Finally James looked away from me, staring instead at Scarlett. “What I’m talking about is the fact you haven’t bothered to ask Nash about his past. About what he did for my family when we were younger. Because if you had, I find it hard to believe you’d be letting a murderer pleasure you like that.”

Bomb dropped, James stalked off down the trail, leaving the aftermath of the explosion in his wake.

Chapter

Fifteen

SCARLETT

The thundering waterfall behind me was nothing compared to the thumping of my heart, blasting through my ears.

Hands grabbed me from the side, and lost in the noise swallowing my brain, I couldn’t pinpoint if they were Camp’s or Nash’s. I wasn’t sure which one I was hoping they were. Better yet, I wasn’t sure which ones I was hoping theyweren’t.

A murderer.Maybe I’d misheard James when he snapped at us before turning on his heel. But I knew better than to let myself be delusional like that. I knew what I’d heard. Besides, murderer was one of those words like orange—not a whole lot rhymed with it. Kind of hard to mistake it.

“Scarlett, listen to me.” Nash’s voice was steady in my ear, breath hot against my skin, but not enough to pull me back to Earth yet, not when I was trying to make sense of this new information. “Scarlett, I swear I can explain everything, if you just listen.”

“Man, just leave her alone. Should you even be near her? Jesus, you guys hadmeunder a microscope and apparentlyyouwere the one we needed to worry about.” Camp didn’t sound happy at all, and when I felt myself pulled in the other direction, I knew he was trying to get me away from Nash.

But I considered what I knew about Nash. About his soul’s gentle nature, and his personality. I didn’t feel at risk around him. For all his talk of dangerous things and how to avoid them, I never felthewas the thing to be frightened of.

Hehadlied, though. I did tell him I would trust him to tell me whatever secret he held when he was ready, but I was operating under the assumption the secret wasn’t one that would put me in actual danger.

My brain pulled in two separate directions, slowly stretching itself thinner as I worked myself in circles. At the end of the day, I could only work with the information I had at hand, and right now, I didn’t have enough.

I spun, wrestling myself out of Camp’s grip, clocking the brief look of concern in his eyes as I did so. When I took a step back from both of them, his shoulders visibly relaxed. Nash on the other hand, held only pain in his eyes. His jaw ticked, a thousand words on the tip of his tongue he wanted to say to me, but he held himself back.

A checkmark in the right box then.

I held up my hands to both men. “Look. I’m not making any assumptions or decisions right now. I don’t have anywhere near enough information to do so. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to get dressed.” I threw a hand down my still barely-clothed body. “Because I’m not about to have this conversation in the nude. Then Nash is going to tell us everything, and Camp and I are going tolisten.”

Camp raised a brow in my direction, pushing his damp hair back away from his face.

I silenced his unspoken words with a wave. “We are going to listen. We listened to you, and now we’re going to listen to Nash. We can deal with James later.”

An odd twinge of pain shot through my heart when I thought about James, and the broken look deep in his eyes as he confessed Nash’s secret. I hadn’t really been thinking about how he’d feel watching everything from the sidelines until he stormed over. I hadn’t really been thinking at all.

And after all, hurt people hurt people.

I tugged my clothes on over my damp underclothes, cringing at the way the fabric felt on my skin. I’d change into dry clothes as soon as we were back on board the boat. Getting to the bottom of Nash’s story was more important.

Sitting on the same rock James had occupied only minutes before, I waited for the guys to get dressed, both making the same expressions I had. Wet clothes in the dense humidity of the rainforest were no one’s friend.

Eventually Camp came to sit on the ground at my feet. Nash stood in front of us, twisting his hands, a move so at odds with his usual comfortable confidence.

He sighed. “It all began when I was in university. James and I were in the same class, a beginner level business class. By some odd twist of fate, we ended up in a group project together.”

Camp and I remained silent, letting Nash collect his thoughts before proceeding.

“I guess you could call us friends. I mean, I thought we were friends back then. But knowing what I know now, I’m not sure if we ever were. I don’t know if James knows how to have friends. I don’t know…I don’t know how much my life would be different if I’d realized that sooner. We would go out together, get beers, watch the other people from our classes make complete fools of themselves over girls, and on the dance floor. Friends by lack of association, if you know what I mean. I never really fit in with any group, and James, well, James had always been different.”

Nash tapped his fingers on his hip, looking past us, into the dense rainforest, as if he could see through all the trees and bushes to where James trekked back to theCarpe Diem. “One of these times, I let it slip that I didn’t know how I was going to make next semester’s tuition. The sub place I worked at had gone out of business, rendering me immediately jobless and stressing about the future. James said his father was looking for some help with the family business, and with no other possibilities, I said I’d meet with his father the next morning.”

Something wasn’t sitting right in my chest. “When you say family business…”

Nash met my eyes with a bleak expression. “James’ family owns a lot of property. They have for many years. But maintaining that property, well, sometimes things get complicated. Property and business inside a city like the one we grew up in is a power game. You have to be the most powerful, the strongest, the toughest. If you’re not, you’ll get eaten alive. At first, James’ dad had me doing simple stuff. Running errands. Picking people up. That sort of thing.”

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