Page 100 of The False Flat

“What I started?”

The curl to his lips was devious. “I was innocently trying to get that flower out of your hair.”

“I bet there wasn’t even a flower.”

“Oh, there was a flower.”

His half smile made me want to shove William into a bush and have my way with Grant. Instead, we walked hand in hand as I wondered what the locals had in store for us.

CHAPTER 38

LIFE REALIZATION #16: ALWAYS DRINK THE MOONSHINE

The fire roared, as did everyone around it. Dinner was over, and the crew had congregated in a loose circle, telling regular stories, roasting marshmallows for s’mores, and drinking . . . a lot.

“And I had no idea!” one of the mountain guys said for the fourth time. “Her phone had been ringing the whole time!”

Unprecedented (and unwarranted) laughter shook the forest.

I exchanged a look with Deanna as one guy recounted the tale about how he’d accidentally ridden off with his wife’s cell phone. It rang and rang, but he didn’t notice because her ringtone had been set to bird calls. “She’s an ornithologist!”

I’d only been able to stomach a couple of timid sips of their moonshine concoction—frustratingly called Sex in the Woods—so the stories weren’t that funny, but I manufactured a few guffaws to suit the atmosphere and turned everyone into various digits when I needed to, which wasn’t often because of the alcohol or because I was too preoccupied or because the attention wasn’t on me. It was nice to lean back and watch them all without expectation or pressure to contribute.

“This is good,” William said, a little too loudly, lifting a paper cup to his lips.

Grant peeked into William’s cup. “Slow down, buddy. We’ve got a long way to go tomorrow, and we’re not slowing down because you can’t hold your sex.”

“Oh, I can hold my sex,” William assured him, then told the group a story about a guy who’d accidentally ingested psychedelic drugs and ended up naked in his neighbors’ swimming pool. He definitely couldn’t hold his sex.

As everyone laughed and William embellished, my mind drifted.

Grant loved me.

The three words were on repeat, a reverberating whisper in my ear, reminding me of how much I had and how much I had to lose.

In his arms, the moment’s intensity magnified. The rough bark against my back, the prickle of his mustache, the subtle texture of his tongue, all three contrasting significantly to the softness of his lips on mine and the pressure of his hands on my body, a touch that was both firm and gentle.

I love you.

This was real, more real than anything else in my life, which meant it could hurt more than anything else in my life, which was why I’d kissed him in response.

It had been years, years, since I’d said those words to someone else. After Brandon, my family had stopped saying “I love you.” It’d become a jinx. If you said it, bad things might happen.

Now I was in a nest of emotions I didn’t understand, a part of me near-jubilant, the other part simply terrified. Did I love Grant? Was this what love felt like? I think I did love him. But I wasn’t completely ready for this.

I didn’t know how unready I was until what happened next.

I could’ve sat there all night with his hand in mine under an inky sky scattered with stars that didn’t have to compete with artificial light. And perhaps I would’ve stayed right there and tucked my head into his shoulder if Kellan hadn’t started talking. Her words yanked me back around the fire.

“I hate my brother,” drunk, twentysomething Kellan said. “I wish he was dead. Like seriously, dead.”

Everyone laughed, assuming she was joking.

But for me, all noises in the forest paused. All the laughing faces went silent, like a black-and-white film with subtitles. Kellan hated her brother because he’d ruined her relationship with a really hot guy, who, according to her “overprotective” brother, had been planning to cheat on her.

I wanted to grab the girl’s face and tell her that she should be thanking her brother. Because at least her brother cared. At least she had a brother.

I was forced to bend at the waist and hold my face, the beginning of a panic attack.