Page 116 of Final Drive

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

I press my mouth to her shoulder.

She reaches back after a minute and very carefully touches the new mark. “That’s eight.”

“I can count.”

“Can you? Because Tyler said you miscounted the oar inventory twice last month.”

“Tyler’s a narc.”

Her laugh goes through me before I hear it.

I freeze.

Reese does too.

Then she starts laughing harder.

“Shut up,” I say with a groan, dropping my head in the sand.

“I didn’t say anything,” she answers between giggles.

“I can feel you laughing.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“It is literally inside my body now.”

That makes her laugh even harder, and because apparently this is my life now, I can feel the edges of it running through the bond while I’m trying not to join her.

I put my face against the back of her neck, close to Bo’s mark. “This is terrible.”

“You love it.”

I don’t answer.

She doesn’t make me.

We stay there until our breathing evens out and the cold starts reminding us we’re naked on a beach in the middle of the night. The lake keeps being a lake. The crickets keep making too much noise. Somewhere back toward the trees, an owl calls twice.

Eventually Reese sighs. “They’re going to be awake.”

“Yep.”

“All of them.”

“Definitely.”

“Tyler’s going to have health center paperwork waiting on the kitchen table.”

“He printed it two days ago.”

She twists around as far as the knot allows. “What?”

“It’s in a folder by the door.”