Read Online Listed: Volume IV by Noelle Adams - Free Book Online Page B

they had seen that
morning and what they were going to do later in the day.
    Emily
was still hoping to be able to sleep out under the stars tonight, although Paul
was worried because the sky at the moment was completely overcast. It had been
mostly clear that morning, but now there was nothing but thick clouds overhead.
He hoped it wouldn’t rain, so she would be able to sleep outside like she
wanted.
    He
didn't really care if they slept outside or in the tent. He was mostly just
hoping for sex tonight.
    He’d
loved how she’d taken care of him the night before—it had felt amazing in every
way and had given him a intense physical and emotional release, one he’d
desperately needed yesterday—but he wanted to make sure he could give to her as
much as she’d given to him.
    When
they’d eaten, they picked up their stuff and started to walk again, following
the route in Paul’s navigator. He figured they had about another half-hour
before they reached the beach again, and then another half-hour before they
reached their car.
    Emily
looked cooler now that she’d shed her extra shirt, and she still appeared
bright and energetic. She kept mentioning spots she saw that looked like places
in the Anne books, and Paul pretended he found the connections intriguing. He
was glad Emily was having a good time. He didn’t mind hiking, but he had very
little interest in a series of books for girls about a red-haired orphan who
had a clear case of melodramatics.
    He
wasn't about to complain, though. Being here felt different, distanced, from
the life they'd left in Philadelphia. Emily's last bout of fever and the
aftermath—during which Paul had been almost crippled with wondering how he
could possibly get through Emily's worsening illness and death—had weighed him
down emotionally until he could barely breathe. Being with her lightened the
burden sometimes, and being this far away, all by themselves, had lightened it
a lot more.
    It
would just be temporary, but he'd needed it.
    Twenty
minutes later, Emily jerked to a stop, staring at a tree to their left.
    “What’s
the matter?” he asked.
    “We
already passed that tree,” she said, gesturing toward a small white birch.
“Look, it has this weird forked branch here. I saw it before.”
    Paul
checked his navigator. “No. We couldn’t have. We haven’t looped back.” He
showed her the small screen, which clearly indicated they were on the correct
route.
    Emily
frowned. “Okay. Maybe it’s just an identical tree.”
    They
kept walking for a few minutes. Then Emily gasped and tugged on his arm to get
him to stop. She crossed over in front of him and made her way through the
space between some trees. “Look! That’s where we ate lunch!”
    Paul
followed her and froze in astonishment when he saw that she was correct. They’d
somehow gone in almost a circle and ended up where they'd been a half-hour ago.
“What the hell?”
    He
stared down at the navigator, checking back to see what it displayed as the
route they’d just walked. Emily peered over to look with him.
    “This
thing is definitely confused," he admitted, feeling a swell of frustration
tighten in his chest. He’d been focused on following the navigator and so
hadn’t been paying much attention to the landmarks. "I wonder what's wrong
with it.”
    “It’s
broken,” Emily said, looking from the screen up to his face. “What a piece of
junk.”
    “It
cost a fortune!” He glowered down at the little device in his hand. "It
shouldn't be a piece of junk. I wonder what…" He fiddled with it for a few
minutes, hoping to find the trick to restore its routing capabilities.
    Evidently
getting tired of watching him fiddle with it, Emily said briskly, “Just give it
up. The more expensive a gadget is, the more dramatically it will fail. We have
a map. And I have a GPS app on my phone that might help.”
    “I
do too.” Paul lowered the little navigator in disgust and swung the backpack
off his back so he could