Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
We drew closer to the sound, which was louder now, and I didn’t think it was a boar. I glanced back at Lauren, but I couldn’t read her expression well enough to tell if she suspected the same thing I did.
Stealthily, we crouched behind a couple of tall, overgrown bushes. I peeked around the side of one, and I could tell from Lauren’s gasp behind me that she was also looking.
Neil Stein, the hockey player representing Tampa, was fucking his ex, Shayla, up against a tree.
“Shit…yes,” she moaned, gripping his shoulders. “You’re an asshole, but I love that big dick.”
“Shut up and let me enjoy it,” he said, grunting.
She panted around her words. “I’m trying…but…you used to fuck a lot harder than this.”
Neil growled and picked up the pace, Shayla shrieking in either pain or pleasure, I wasn’t sure.
I moved back. Lauren’s lips were quirked up in a smile I couldn’t help returning. Leaning close, I whispered in her ear. “Are you thinking of the bleachers?”
She nodded and I leaned back, my grin widening. Our senior year in high school, we’d been walking around campus after school one day and we’d happened upon a couple going at it under the bleachers of the football stadium.
As horny teenagers who couldn’t get enough of each other, we’d thought it was both funny and hot. As I’d grabbed her hand and we’d headed away from the couple, I’d been trying to come up with a time and place we could do the same thing they were doing.
Neil and Shayla were in the way of the path I’d been clearing, so we’d have to do the same thing we’d done then and move in another direction.
“Pull my hair harder!” Shayla cried. “Yes, like that!”
“Fucking come already,” Neil ground out.
“I’m trying but…the bark is hurting…my back.”
I shook my head and led Lauren away from the coupling in progress. After cutting a few branches to clear the way, I found a pretty clear area that was closer to a real pathway than any place we’d been so far today.
“Shayla said she hated him,” Lauren said once we were out of earshot.
“She’ll hate him again in about five minutes,” I cracked. “Or sooner if he comes before her.”
“I just don’t get it. She said he cheated on her. And it was just a couple years ago. I could never forgive that.”
“Yeah, me either.” I stopped, taking out my canteen and chugging some water.
Lauren drank from hers, too, emptying it. Behind us, Linda took the camera from her shoulder and set it on the ground, rubbing her shoulder. She pulled a water bottle from her pocket and drank from it, then moved to pick the camera back up again.
It had to be a bitch carrying a heavy camera through the jungle on your shoulder.
“Take a break, Linda,” I said. “We promise not to say anything interesting.”
She nodded and sat down on the ground. “Thanks.”
I approached Lauren and pulled the strap of a fresh canteen over my shoulder, offering it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip. “Hey, do you know how to get back to our camp? If we got close to Neil and Shayla’s camp, we must be far from ours.”
“Yeah, I’m tracking.”
She nodded. As she drank more water, I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. I should really leave it alone. I knew that. But I couldn’t.
“Hey, did you want to finish our conversation from earlier?” I asked.
She shrugged. “There’s no point. We broke up. Rehashing it won’t help anything.”
Just a few minutes ago, she’d had tears shining in her eyes as she asked me whether I thought we would have lasted. Now she sounded disinterested.
“I’m not trying to rehash anything,” I said. “But I’m not going to lie and say I would have broken up with you if you had come. I wanted you with me.”
She scoffed. “As your eternal girlfriend.”
“You don’t know that.” I lowered my brows, irritated. “You were a hothead who broke things off when you shouldn’t have and you want some justification to make it feel right, but there is none.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I locked gazes with her. “Did it fucking sound like a joke?”
“A lot of what comes out of your mouth—” She stopped midsentence as her eyes focused on something behind me. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
I looked in the direction she pointed. Just off the path about ten yards ahead, there was an X painted on the ground.
“Holy shit, you found one,” I said.
I’d forgotten all about Linda. We’d have to replay finding the chest with the camera rolling if she’d missed it. I turned and she gave a me a thumbs up, camera back on her shoulder.
“Do we have anything to dig with?” Lauren asked me.
“I’ll use a stick if I have to.”
I charged toward the X, dying to know what was inside of it. We’d spent countless hours getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while searching for chests, and finally we had a win. If there was a bottle of booze in this one, I planned to crack it open and take a swig immediately.