“I’m so sorry,” I said, pushing up the edges of the scarf. “I overslept. I usually don’t sleep so late.”

Last night it had taken me hours to fall asleep. I’d jumped at every sound, and there were lots in the trailer park. People yelling, doors slamming. Wind and trees. A car alarm.

But finally I’d drifted off after two in the morning. Usually I’d be up at dawn, but sleep since I’d left Oklahoma had been in fits and starts.

And honest to God, who would have thought that mattress would be so comfortable?

“You’re the one who said you wanted to start today,” he said, his eyes wide under bushy eyebrows. “I thought you was nuts.”

“Nope, just broke.” When I’d asked about work in the area while doing the paperwork for the RV, he’d told me they were hiring at the park to do some groundskeeping, and I’d jumped at the opportunity.

Physical labor, right where I was living. I wouldn’t have to go into town. Meet other people.

My gut, which had been silent for my entire life—seriously, not a peep out of the thing for twenty-four years—had been yelling at me nonstop since I woke up on my kitchen floor two weeks ago. And my gut seemed to think this arrangement, this job, was not to be passed up.

“Did I tell you what you’ll be doing?” he asked, walking in front of me down the dirt track between my trailer and the next one.

“No. You just mentioned some lawn work.”

Kevin laughed, but I didn’t find any comfort in it. I had the distinct impression he was laughing at me. “Well, that was clever of me,” he said ominously.

The trailer next door was nearly identical to mine, though it seemed to be a newer model. White, where mine was totally ’70s beige, with a darker brown racing stripe down the side. American Dreamer written in sort of an old-timey Western print.

Yep, she was a beaut.

But the white RV next door had a wooden deck on the outside with a chair, a table, and an ashtray.

Deluxe.

I had trailer envy.

“Does anyone live there?” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the neighbor’s trailer.

“Joan,” Kevin said. “Keeps to herself. Not too friendly. If you’re smart you’ll stay away. She’s kind of a bitch.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickled as I walked by, as if someone was watching me from between two slats on the blinds. But when I glanced back there was nothing.

I’d been paranoid most of my life—it’s not like I could just make it stop.

“Ben, on the other hand,” he said, pointing past Joan’s trailer to the trailer the man…Dylan…had asked me to look in on.

Just the thought of his name electrified part of me, like a filament in a lightbulb starting to glow.

Don’t. Don’t think about him.

“Nice guy. Quiet, but not rude about it. Grows a hell of a garden.” He pointed over at the far end of the property, where I could see fencing and some plants.

Hardly sounds like a guy worth watching, I thought, wondering if Dylan wasn’t looking after the wrong person.

“Other side of the park,” Kevin said, jutting his chin out at the trailers just visible over a giant rhododendron bush, “that’s where the families are. Some are great. Some are screamers and drinkers and scene makers, so I try to keep the people without kids on this side.”

“Are you quarantining them? Or us?” I asked.

He gave me an arch look. “Hell if you won’t appreciate it by next Friday.”

Probably true.

We walked single file across a wooden bridge over a rain ditch that because of a recent storm was gurgling along happily under my feet.

Black-eyed Susans and forget-me-nots and tons and tons of Queen Anne’s lace covered the banks of the small stream. Crickets were loud and jumping into my legs. The highway was a bunch of miles in the distance, but I could feel the hum of trucks on asphalt rumbling in the boggy ground beneath my feet.

“It’s nice,” I said.

“What is?”

“This place.” I flung out a hand toward the flowers, the stream. A cricket smacked into the back of my leg and then buzzed away.

Kevin’s look made it clear he doubted my sanity. “You must see some real shit holes if this is nice.”

Oh Kevin, you don’t want to know.

Because the truth was, I hadn’t seen anywhere. Shit hole or otherwise.

Mom had been on a campaign practically since the moment of my birth to convince me that the world outside of the farm was a godless, terrible place. Full of selfish people doing selfish things. Men who’d want nothing but to hurt me, and women who’d look away while they did it.

When you are told that shit day in and day out, you start to believe it.

It’s probably why I stayed so long with Hoyt. Because the unknown was just so…unknown.

But here I was, in the thick of it, and so far, my new life was a million times better than my old life.

So, yes, it was nice.

“And here it is,” he said, coming to a stop in front of an overgrown field full of black garbage bags torn open by animals. Cans, dirty diapers, and newspapers spilled out in the weeds growing as tall as my head. He had to shout over the drone of black flies.

And the smell…

Oh dear God, I take back all that “nice” stuff.

Behind the wall of weeds was a giant oak with a ratty old rope hanging from one of the branches.

“What’s the rope for?” I asked, because surrounded by all this filth it looked like the scene of a terrible crime. The cover of a horror novel.

“Behind the weeds is a real nice watering hole.”

“That’s a watering hole?” I’d been joking about a weedy watering hole last night on the phone, but this was ridiculous.

“Kids play in it all summer, but it’s quiet now that they’re back in school.”

“So…what is this supposed to be?” I looked at the surrounding field. It was huge. An acre at least.

“The Flowered Manor Camp Ground,” he said.

“You’re joking.”

“Absolutely not.” Kevin looked only marginally affronted by my slack-jawed surprise.

“People actually camp here?”

“They will when you’re done.” He nudged my shoulder with his massive one and I was nearly knocked off my feet.

“You really can’t believe the things you read in a bathroom stall,” I muttered.

Dylan would laugh. The thought made me smile before I could stop myself and my lip split again. I licked away the warm copper tang of blood.

Dylan.

I remembered his laughing groan. Low and explict. Dirty, really. One of the dirtiest things I’ve ever heard. Last night, staring up at the plastic dimpled ceiling of the trailer, I’d convinced myself that the conversation had been a product of exhaustion. The fact was, stepping into the trailer for the first time, my fear slipping nervously into tentative relief, I’d been momentarily…not myself.

It would seem only logical that after the stress and focus of the last week, I’d go a little nuts.

And that’s what that conversation was. Nuts.

That’s why I’m not talking to him again.

Because in that wild nuts moment—that moment when I was just not myself—something had changed. Shifted.

And I wanted to talk to him.

I still did.

Which was weird, if not terrifying, because that bikini girl in my dream looking over at that boy, saying everything was fine, whose skin was about to be shredded—I’d already been her.

Only I had been wearing a wedding dress.

“Come on, now,” Kevin said. “I’ll show you our tools.”

Good. Right. Tools. Kevin led me over to a shed and opened the padlock on the door. “I’ll give you a key,” he said. “Once I’m sure you won’t steal nothing.”

“Steal?” I’d never been accused of stealing in my life.

“No offense,” he said. “But we’ve had some real unsavories looking in on this job.”

Inside the shed it looked like I’d have everything I needed for campground cleanup: a tractor mower, a weed whacker. Rakes, shovels. Granted, they were all older than I was, but I could work with it. There were even some gloves and boots by the door.