Returning the smile, I rest my forearms on the desk, leaning in and holding her gaze. “I sure hope you can. Hypothetically speaking, if one were looking for a littlefunon this island, where would they look?”
“That depends,” she mutters, glancing around. “What type of fun are we talking?”
Holding up my thumb and index finger up to my lips as if I were holding a joint, I take a few invisible puffs.
Celeste watches me for a moment, not saying anything, and I start to wonder if maybe I was wrong in my assumption. But then she leans in, voice hushed. “Josiah, he’s one of the housekeepers. Works day shift. He can hook you up.”
A grin splits on my face as I smack the counter. “Thanks, babe.”
Movement to my right catches my eye. Glancing over, I see Caspian coming out of the restaurant, heading toward the doors that lead outside to my left. He blows past the front desk without even looking this way, and without thinking, I follow. I keep my distance, so he doesn’t notice he’s being tailed just yet. He seems to know where he’s going as he heads off the trail into the wooded area that reminds me of a jungle. He veers left, finding his way onto another trail, and we continue on for about twenty minutes until we get to a clearing that opens up to a beautiful waterfall.
Holy shit.How did he know this was here?
Caspian’s wearing a navy-blue drawstring backpack. It’s a Black Diamond one; I think he got it from the health center. Shrugging it off his shoulders, he sets it down, and it’s then I notice he’s wearing ear buds.So, that’s how he didn’t hear me this entire time.I walk over, closing the distance, intending to let him know I’m here. It happens so fast; one moment, my hand reaches out, touching his bicep, and the next, pain explodes in my jaw, my head jerked to the side.
“Ow, fuck!” I cry out, hand coming up to hold my jaw. Something wet and sticky drips down, my fingers catching it, and when I pull my hand away, I see it’s blood. “You fucking punched me!”
His eyes, slightly wild, look from the blood on my hand to my eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s what you fucking get for sneaking up on someone, idiot.”
“I wasn’t sneaking up on you,” I grumble, wiping my split lip with the back of my hand. Moving past him, I step down to the water’s edge, dipping my hand in to clean it off. I hope I don’t need stitches.
“Then what the fuck do you call what you just did?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I watch as he sits on the sand, legs extended in front of him. He loosens the drawstring backpack, reaching inside to grab out a book, then shoves the ear bud back in his ear without another word and starts to read.
Okay, clearly, he wasn’t looking for an actual answer.
My lip is still bleeding in earnest, and with nothing else to make it stop, I rip my shirt over my head, bunching it up, and pressing it to my face. It stings, and I’ll definitely have a bruise tomorrow. Thank God I wore a black shirt, so hopefully the blood won’t be as noticeable.
I take a seat beside him, watching him tense for a moment as I do. Knowing I probably shouldn’t, but not totally caring—it’s the least he could do after clocking me in the fucking face—I grab the bud out of his right ear, putting it in mine.
“What in the fuck do you think you’re doing, lad?”
That’s the second time he’s called melad. I like it.
“Hanging out with you,” I say easily, with a shrug.
Animalby WildHeart is playing through the little buds. Not surprising that he has excellent taste in music, given he’s a literal musician.
“We are not hanging out,” he states.
“We kinda are now.” He makes a grumbling noise before returning to his book. “What are you reading?” I ask.
“The same book as the other day. Now shut the fuck up if you’re going to insist on sitting beside me.”
A small smile pulls on my lips as I glance over, reading over his shoulder. It’s basically a foreign language to me, since I know nothing about Greek mythology, but it’s interesting. And he doesn’t try to punch me again, so that’s a plus.
“What about this stuff do you enjoy so much?” I ask.
He huffs. “I said be fucking quiet if you’re going to sit here.”
So grouchy.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Caspian
I’m fucking over this place. I’ve barely been here a couple of weeks, and it’s so fucking boring. Same shit, different day. Meet with my nosy fucking therapist twice a week—she’s got me started on some bullshit anti-depressants, like they’ll fucking fix me—sit through painfully dull group therapy where people bitch and whine and cry about their hard lives, and then I’m left to do fucking nothing the rest of the week.
