Love without a Compass. Lindy Zart

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СКАЧАТЬ sound, much closer and definitely human, catches my attention. I turn to the left, looking at a small valley where trees reside, and come up short. I stare for a minute, trying not to smile as I meander toward one particular tree. My heartbeats slow with the knowledge that Avery’s safe.

      “How’s it hanging?” I greet.

      Avery smiles thinly, not replying.

      “Let me guess—you’re imitating a tree, right?” I tilt my head sideways to better meet her eyes. I probably shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as I am, but it’s Avery.

      She stands at an odd angle, her hair held hostage by a tree limb. Her arms are crossed as she stares death at me. “I just thought I’d like to see the world from a different perspective.”

      I rub my jaw. “I see. How’s that going for you?”

      Avery’s expression turns lethal.

      I pat her shoulder, feel the muscles spasm beneath my touch, and turn. “Well, have fun with that.”

      “If you leave me like this, you’re fired.”

      A patch of green-and-yellow shrubbery holds my interest as I weigh her quiet words. She’s right, but I’m still considering it. I face Avery, watching her skin turn pinker the longer I gaze at her. Shifting my jaw back and forth, I remove a switchblade from my pocket, flick it open, and advance.

      “What are you doing?”

      I grin evilly.

      “You’re cutting the branch, not my hair, right?” Her eyes dart from the gleaming silver blade to me.

      “Yes.”

      “Yes? Yes, what?”

      Glancing down, I hide a smile before moving behind her. I allow myself one second to study the elegant slope of her neck before taking the limb in hand to saw it in two. It frays, then snaps, and Avery screams like I slit her throat instead of the tree branch holding her hair hostage. She hops around as she disentangles the limb from her hair and manages to trip over the same branch as it hits the ground. She falls, landing on her back in the dirt. A grunt leaves her upon impact.

      I watch the rise and fall of her chest as she pants, her gaze deadly and aimed straight at me.

      Her creamy skin is pocked with dirt and her shoulder-length hair is a golden poof around her head with twigs and leaves caught in it. The rubber band she used to pull back her hair is now but a memory. Avery’s shorts and T-shirt are brownish gray with debris, and her grapefruit scent has all but dissolved. This is sweet justice, it really is.

      Avery’s eyebrows slant down, and she scowls up at me. “Why are you smiling? You’re stuck with me for the next four days.”

      The smile drops from my face. I close the knife and shove it back in my pocket before I decide to use it on her. “You’re welcome.”

      Avery huffs behind me, but luckily for me, she remains quiet.

      I make my way down the rocky incline at a brisk pace, thinking the faster we find our flags and checkpoints, the faster we’ll get out of this hellish place. I misstep on a pile of rocks and roll forward on my boots until I gain control of myself. A branch scrapes my cheek as I pass by a tree too closely. I breathe in the scent of crisp leaves and fresh air. If not for Avery, this might not be all that bad. I’m not much of a nature guy, but this feels peaceful.

      “Ben! Wait up!”

      I wince. And there goes the peacefulness.

      The sun peeks through endless branches, heating my already hot skin. I almost cheer when I hear the sound of moving water. I slow my pace to allow Avery to catch up.

      The end of earth comes upon me quickly, and for a moment, I feel weightless. I jerk back from the edge of a rocky cliff. Where the hell did that come from? Without warning, the world ended. My heartbeat takes a drastic leap directly into calamity, and I carefully step away from a ride I’d rather not take, putting a couple feet between me and the drop-off. I set a hand to the rough bark of a tree and look down hundreds of feet to the rushing water below. It looks unapologetically wicked.

      “What is it? Why are you stopping?” she asks.

      There is one instant—one immoral, spiteful second—where I consider letting her find out on her own. Chances are, Avery would stop walking before she fell to her death. Probably.

      I partially turn and look over my shoulder. “Don’t come any closer. It’s a drop-off.”

      Avery skids to a stop, her eyes wide in her dirt-smudged face. A chunk of golden hair falls forward to obliterate one eye, giving her appeal she doesn’t need, and that is wasted on me. Pretty face twisting, she throws her hands up. “What is the point of this? We’re just supposed to wander around in the wild for days? This is asinine! There’s no reason we couldn’t learn how to work together as a team at a nice resort, not out in the wilderness. I don’t understand why Duke would do this to us. It’s like he’s punishing us.”

      My lips press together. Oh, I am definitely being punished.

      “I feel like we’re in The Hunger Games,” Avery mutters from my left. “Who does this anyway?”

      “Duke Renner,” I growl, for once in agreement with her.

      “I thought we weren’t allowed to bring anything,” Avery remarks.

      I look at her.

      “Your pocketknife.” She gestures to my shorts. “We were told to not bring anything but ourselves. Isn’t that considered illegal?”

      “Illegal?”

      “You know what I mean. Against the rules.”

      I study Avery’s features. “I would think you’d be glad I had it. Otherwise, you might still be trapped by a deadly tree.”

      Her jaw goes taut. “I think the idea was to get me untangled without using a weapon.”

      I shrug. “I’ve been wondering…how did you manage to get your hair caught?”

      “You know what an even better question is?” She glares at me.

      “Why has Duke forsaken me?”

      Avery continues to glower at me.

      I sigh and briefly explain about the pocketknife, “I don’t go anywhere without it.”

      “Why?”

      I climb over a boulder almost as big as me, calling over my shoulder, “If I tell you, you’ll just make it into a slogan and sell it on me. You’re good at that.”

      AVERY

      We all have parts of ourselves we dislike. Some we can help, and others, we cannot. I’ve always hated my freckles and wavy hair. I can’t permanently do anything about either of those.

      I carefully heave my frame over the monstrous rock that decided to СКАЧАТЬ