Love without a Compass. Lindy Zart

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СКАЧАТЬ five-ten.”

      “Exactly.”

      I decide not to point out that five-nine is the average height for a guy. Plus, she’s barely five-four herself, if she’s even that.

      “What else?” I know there’s more. That can’t be the only thing about me she sees as a negative.

      “You wear glasses.”

      I snort. “Yeah. A lot of people do, so they can, you know, see.”

      Sighing, she shakes her head and attempts to move around me. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

      I step into her path. She has to tilt back her head to meet my gaze. I don’t point that out either. “Oh, no, let’s hear it. I’d like to know all the ways I am visually unappealing.”

      “Okay, well, your hair is, I don’t know, boring.”

      “Boring?” I narrow my eyes. “How can hair be boring?”

      “I don’t know. It just can. It lacks character.”

      “Are you serious?” I ask in a low voice.

      Ignoring my glower, she adds, “And you’re not nice.”

      My voice is unusually high as I sputter, “What the—”

      “It makes you less attractive.”

      I stare at her hard, long enough that my vision blurs beneath the lenses of my glasses that apparently make me unattractive.

      “You’re not my type,” Avery says, as if she thinks I want her to want me.

      The world goes unnaturally silent as my blood pressure skyrockets. I take a slow breath, keeping my eyes trained on Avery. She watches me with that fake innocent look she uses around the office. Whatever the scenario, I will not let her win. I will remain calm. I will one-up her, again and again. Because I’m too short, and wear glasses, and not her type.

      I may not be a lot of things, but I am something.

      I move closer. “Avery.”

      Avery lifts her eyebrows.

      My gaze trails from her eyes to her mouth. I watch her lips part and sweep my eyes back to hers. “I think we both know you’re not my type.”

      She gasps, her face going pink, and I turn before she catches my smirk. Satisfaction, warm and pure, flows through my limbs.

      AVERY

      I must have died sometime during the night and been sent directly here. Nothing else makes sense. I’m fairly certain, when Duke Renner set up this team-building mumbo-jumbo, he specified that it should be located in Avery Scottam’s—that’s me—least favorite kind of place: outside. Outside is gross. It’s dirty, and there are bugs, and my hair does not respond well to heat.

      To add more salt to the wound, Ben Stitzer is the last person I want to see me at anything less than completely composed, so of course Duke paired us together. It has nothing to do with the fact that I did something awful to Ben and he’s hated me ever since. Things have been tense around the office, and wherever I turn, there’s Ben, plotting his revenge. But that’s not why we’re here. Right. Nope. Not at all.

      Our boss’s words repeat in my head, bringing inner calamity and outer perspiration with them.

      Wilderness retreat.

      Improve team-building skills.

      Rely on one another.

      And the most upsetting words of all…

      Ben and Avery, you’re partners.

      I shoot a look in Ben’s direction. More likely, he chose the setting. As if sensing my eyes on him, his head turns, his eyes slicing me in two. The look lasts all of one second but has enough vexation in it to steadily burn through many, many lifetimes. There was one single night that could have been the start of something amazing, but I ruined it.

      I think we both know you’re not my type.

      The words echo through me, bringing an uncomfortable twinge with them.

      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I reply with a sniff. “I’m sure you made up some fantasy scenario in your—”

      A bitter laugh comes from my side, cutting off my words. “Trust me, you’re not in any part of my fantasies.”

      I stop walking, my eyes shooting to my coworker’s. Ben gazes stonily back, his bespectacled brown eyes scalding me with their animosity. I sigh and face forward, absently scratching at the most recent of countless bug bites. Mountains, rocks, and trees greet me, splashing the immediate vicinity in shades of brown and gray, speckled with green. They remind me of Ben’s eyes, actually, except without the perpetual loathing in them.

      “What’s the hold up?” he demands, hands on his hips.

      “You.”

      One dark eyebrow quirks.

      I know men fantasize about me. I’m not being vain. I’d rather only one man want me over all the rest, and it’s the one next to me, looking at me as if I’m diseased and contagious. That’s irony for you.

      “If I simply stand here all day, will I wake up and realize this has all been a really bad dream?” I ask without looking at Ben.

      “The better question is: will I?”

      I swallow a snort and take the rubber band from my wrist, twisting my hair into a sloppy bun. I don’t understand how Duke Renner could drop us off in the middle of nowhere with a gleeful wave and shouted well wishes. But then, since I started at Sanders and Sisters over six months ago, I’ve realized that the only constant with my boss is that he is unpredictable.

      Things were much simpler in Montana.

      Ignoring the sharp pain that accompanies thoughts of my life before I relocated to Illinois, I set my shoulders back and once again take on the dusty trail to an unknown destination.

      “Where do you think the others were taken?” I ask.

      Our six coworkers are somewhere within the miles-wide expanse of Shawnee National Forest, paired with the person they get along with the least, working on their own quests. I wonder how Juan Narvaez and Nate Schroeder are faring. Nate went out with Juan’s ex-girlfriend a while back and came home that night to find all the beer in his fridge reduced to empty cans strewn about the kitchen.

      To most people, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but to Nate, who loves beer, it was catastrophic. Juan showed up to work the next day with the scent of alcohol seeping from his pores and a smug expression on his face, silently naming him as the culprit. Nate was not happy.

      The wind picks up, bringing authentic country dust with it. Even though my mouth is closed, I still taste its gritty, chalky flavor on my tongue. I haven’t navigated through much of Illinois yet. I have to say, I can think of better СКАЧАТЬ