Lucas shrugs again. “Everything works that way,” he says, reaching down to pick up another fallen branch. “Anyway, it got Warden a map, so who’s really complaining?”

Something in Lucas’s tone makes Dawn realize he’s about done with the conversation, and that’s just fine with her. She lets him wander off, and she heads back to camp with her armload of firewood.

Warden and Amber are nowhere to be found.

Chapter 34

IT’S ANOTHER LONG NIGHT.

This time, Dawn isn’t worried about Fart Mountain/Raven’s Claw.

I mean, she is worried—tomorrow they’re hiking to the base of it—but she’s mostly just thinking about Warden. And Amber. And how Warden’s hand felt in hers when he was saving her life up on that ravine. About the muscles in his arms and the green of his eyes.

She’s thinking about how strong he was when he pulled the straps on her pack tight, how he nearly pulled her right on top of him. She’s thinking about how she maybe wouldn’t have minded being on top of Warden.

It’s a long night.

Apart from her little brother, the men in Dawn’s life are uniformly shitty.

She’s never had a real boyfriend. She’s dated a bunch of weirdos and assholes, but, you know, that was more out of boredom than anything else. It was more out of wanting to fit in, be normal. Normal girls date. So Dawn dated.

Meh.

And Julian is obviously bad news.

You knew that, though. He’s a middle-aged bartender who smokes a lot of pot and can get Dawn into parties and whatever, but again, he’s middle-aged and he’s losing his hair and he always smells kind of funky.

(He’s a middle-aged bartender.)

Plus he’s always asking Dawn if she has any friends who’d be up for a threesome, and that shit gets old.

(Dawn doesn’t have any friends.)

(Also, ewww.)

So anyway.

You know how you can go through your life never noticing someone until you go on a trip with them or have to do an assignment together and you more or less have to hang out for long periods of time and you start to realize that maybe you might actually have a thing for them?

(And sometimes it lasts past the end of the trip, and sometimes you get home and you wonder what the hell you were thinking, but that’s kind of irrelevant right now.)

Yeah.

Dawn’s in the middle of that stage, I think. Like, she’s a total captive out here.

Warden is cute and brooding.

Lucas is cute and happy.

Where does it say that Dawn can’t at least try to enjoy herself?

(Actually, it does say that. OUT OF THE WILD RULES AND REGULATIONS. Rule No. 6: No cohabitation between group members.)

(I.e., No hookups.)

(#Lame)