Or maybe it’s because everyone is too busy panting at the grueling pace Sophie’s set. Honestly, that girl must have an engine where her lungs should be: she’s striding ahead like it’s nothing, even with her rucksack full to the brim with supplies.
We’re supposed to carry a third of our bodyweight while we trek, but I am a delicate flower, so Brad took most of mine, thank God. I slide a look at him out of the corner of my eye, partly to make sure he hasn’t collapsed under the strain and partly because he’s too gorgeous not to look at. This thing we’re doing, where we spend all our time together and sneak off to make out and talk about the future while carefully avoiding the distance that future will put between us—I thought it would make things easier.
Nothing about this is easy.
I know the texture of his skin. I know the way his breathing changes when I twist my fingers into his clothes and pull him closer. I also know the way he sighs when he’s thinking bad thoughts, I know he’s aware of exactly how handsome he is and enjoys it very much, I know he turns into a five-year-old when he’s around his little brother. And I love it. All of it.
I should put a stop to this, but every time I try, I learn the hard way that it’s impossible.
I am trapped by my own choices. Just take him or leave him. Except I’m pretty sure I lost my chance to take him like that in December, and I can never leave Brad again, so this halfway house is all we have left. My vision blurs for the barest second, turning the image of him wispy around the edges like he’s a ghost. Then I blink and everything’s clean and crisp and clear, the way it’s supposed to be.
“Hey.” Aurora’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. I realize I’ve been staring blankly at Brad’s head for way too long and pin my gaze to the forest floor instead. It’s all mulchy, frosty moss and twigs almost as thick as my wrist. Glen Finglas, it turns out, is vast and twisty, with ancient trees that stand miles above me like sentinels.
I suck in a breath of cold, green-tasting air and face Aurora. “Yeah?”
“Is Brad…okay?” she asks, her voice a whisper.
There’s something in her tone, in the careful light of her wide, blue eyes, that makes my expression shutter and my voice harden. “He’s fine. Why?”
Some people know Brad has OCD. Some people don’t. It really doesn’t matter because it’s no one else’s business. The problem is when people notice there’s something different about him, don’t have a name for it, and make it a thing. Aurora is my friend, and I like her a lot, but if she turns out to be one of those people, I will rip out all her hair and knit a scarf with it.
She raises her hands like maybe she read the hair-scarf intent in my eyes and murmurs, “I just noticed he, um, is bothered by certain things, that’s all. And he’s staring at that log pretty hard and I was worried he might be—”
“What?” I whip around to check. Brad is indeed staring at a log pretty hard, although log might be the wrong word: we’re approaching a moss-carpeted clearing, and at the center of that clearing is a vast, felled tree trunk, all smoothed out by time and weather but ragged like a wound at both ends. It’s hollow, and inside there’s a wealth of all the things that fuck Brad’s mood right up, like clusters of mushrooms and creepy little bugs and…“Thanks. And, er, sorry,” I say to Aurora, then rush over to stand by his side.
The thing about Brad is, he always looks so pleasant and so pretty, it’s hard to tell when he’s having a moment. Right now, his dark eyes are narrowed but his mouth is soft and slightly parted. His jaw is sharp as ever, but not tense. His hands are in his pockets so I can’t tell if he’s clenching his fists, if he’s tapping his fingers…
Just ask. Duh.
“Brad?”
“Cel,” he murmurs, his focus fixated on the trunk.
“Are you okay?”
His lips tip into a tiny, absent smile. “You mean, am I having a series of dark and inescapable thoughts about fungus and spores and effervescent rabies germs floating up from fox urine and into my body?”
“Um…”
“Because no, not really.”
My response is far from helpful. “…Kind of…sounds like you might be?”
“Well, maybe,” he allows, “but only a very normal amount.”
Oh dear. “Is this one of those times when I should give you a minute, or is this, like, a time when I should do something else?” No response. “You’d tell me, right, if I should do something else? Brad!”
He finally tears his eyes away from the tree. His smile widens into something slow and familiar that burns away the cold around us like hot coffee. “Are you worried about me, love?”
My heart doesn’t jump at that word, or if it does, it’s a jump of shock. Of minor surprise. Certainly nothing else because it’s normal to call people love. The postman calls me love, for heaven’s sake. Anyway, knowing Brad, he’s just trying to distract me.
I bite my lip and squeeze his elbow, studying his face like I can read his thoughts written there. And maybe I can, at least a little bit, because I realize with an exhale that he’s doing fine. The concern whirling in my gut eases. “Why would I be worried about you?” I ask, eyebrows raised.
“Because we’re such good friends.” There’s a tease in his voice that makes me smile against my will.
“True,” I allow, trying and failing to fight that grin.
“Wonderfully close,” he continues.
Still not as close as I’d like.
“Some people might call us intimates,” Brad adds.
“No one would call us that this side of the year 1940.”
His voice is singsongy and infuriating and wonderful. “If you say so, Celine.”
“What are you two loitering over there for?” Sophie demands a few meters away.
Brad shoots me one last grin before he looks at her over my shoulder. “I think we need to go south here.”
“But south is the way we came!”
“Just a little bit. Off the trail. Come here, look at your map.” Then Brad pulls out his own and shows us all one of the Golden Compass clues, and where we are on the grid right now, and reminds us this trunk must be the shapeless, blobby landmark in sector E6, so if we go south…
And that’s how Brad, and his vivid focus, and all the tiny details he can’t stop himself from noticing, get us our first Golden Compass.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BRAD
We get to the next campsite in time—in fact, half an hour early—with five Golden Compasses. I found three of them, which doesn’t technically matter since we’re working as a team—but our cameras will have caught that, right? And anything that gets me closer to the scholarship, I’ll take. Now that I know I’ll be studying English, I’ve started to have all kinds of hopes, started to imagine myself wearing burgundy brogues and, like, coffee-colored houndstooth trousers and a navy turtleneck to lectures, where I discuss the nature of the creative mind with super-smart professors, and then I go home and write 10,000 words of pure gold.
And I know uni won’t be like that; I know I’ll actually have to work and I’ll probably fail a bit and my first book will still be near impossible, but the point is, I want to go. And I’m remembering that if I get the scholarship, I can spend my full loan on better housing to avoid having a roommate. (Because, seriously, can you imagine having a roommate? What if he’s like Mason? I’d rather choke.) So when we break out of the woods and into the Duke’s Pass campsite, I’m already planning the stuff I’m gonna say in this evening’s interview to wow our supervisors. I will modestly but accurately portray what an asset I’ve been to the team, et cetera. Judging by the super-serious expression on Celine’s face, she’s planning the same thing.
“Hey,” I say, bumping our shoulders. “What are you gonna say in the interview?”
She blinks hard, eyelashes fluttering like sooty wings. “What?” Her lips are slightly parted, and I’d like to kiss them, but I’d also like to know what exactly she was thinking just then, if it wasn’t about Holly, Rebecca, and Zion. That furrow between her eyebrows is only acceptable if she’s scheming. Otherwise, it means she’s worried, and I don’t want Celine worried.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, the word landing too deliberately to be true.
“Cel…”
“Nothing, really.” Her fingertips brush against my wrist, finding the gap between my gloves and my coat with heat-seeking precision.
My stomach flips around like a carnival roller coaster. “Not fair.”
“You’re so easy.”
“Are you slut-shaming me?”
She grins. Slides her fingers into mine, leans into me, and just like that we’re officially holding hands in public. Like a couple. Like she doesn’t care. “Maaaybe. What are you gonna do about it?”
So much.