Twice Shy, Sarah Hogle [100 books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

topic alive when it brings out such a marvelously, talkatively zealous side of Wesley. It’s clear he’s given myths and conspiracies a lot of thought.

One side of Wesley’s mouth hooks back in a grin. He reaches toward me, hand grazing my chest as he touches the pendant on my necklace. It lasts only a second, then he lets go, gaze averted to the ground. As soon as I can breathe again (it takes several seconds), I touch the pendant myself and it hits me.

The engraved 51.

On this jewelry that I thought was Violet’s, since I found it under Violet’s bed, which was actually . . .

“This is yours!” I cry.

Wesley bites his lip to keep back another grin, but it escapes. “Yes.”

I gape at him openmouthed. “Why didn’t you say anything? I thought it belonged to Aunt Violet.”

“I know.”

“I thought it was for her—for her fifty-first anniversary or something!” I sputter.

“I figured. Violet bought that for me as a present. It was an X-Files key chain; we used to watch that show together.”

“And here I’ve been wearing it! Well, don’t I feel stupid.” I immediately reach for the back of my neck, fumbling with the clasp, but his hand shoots out, fingers closing over mine.

“No, keep it,” he tells me earnestly. “Please.”

I grumble, embarrassed. It’s good I can look away, busying myself studying the ground for any markers, any disturbances that might hint at treasure in the vicinity.

“I like that you wear it,” he tells me in a tone so soft and genuine that my chest cavity feels hollowed out. “For months, I wasn’t able to find it. Then one day, there’s that missing piece of my key chain around your neck.”

“Wesley.”

He stops. I raise my arm to a tree with a trunk curving into the shape of an S, the side facing us scratched with a large X at eye level.

Wesley stares. “Well, that was a lot easier than I thought it’d be.”

“No kidding. An actual X?” I glance from the tree to the map and back again. “They guessed the location with perfect accuracy.”

He unzips the outer pocket of his bag and withdraws a tool that resembles an oversized box cutter. Then he presses a button and waves it over the grass at the base of the tree. “What’s that?” I ask.

“Handheld metal detector.”

“Ooooohh, aren’t we a Boy Scout.” I’m teasing, but he nods in the affirmative.

“Eagle Scout.” He scans my face, adding wryly, “I was super popular in high school, as you can imagine.”

To look at him, you’d think he would have been super popular. A hot jock type. But Wesley Koehler isn’t anything at all that he seems.

Every new detail about him makes me want to know more. “Did you grow up near here?”

A small light on the metal detector flashes green as it beeps. He switches it out for a shovel, then juts a thumb. West, according to my compass. “In Stevenson, where my family still lives. You won’t have heard of it, it’s a very rural town.”

I’m amazed that he knows which direction is west without looking up. “I bet you were big into FFA in high school.” He definitely seems like the Future Farmers of America type.

“I got detention for being late to English all the time because I was taking care of other students’ plants in our ag class’s garden.”

“Giving those kids A’s they didn’t deserve, I bet.”

“Worth it. None of them knew anything about tomatoes.”

The tip of his shovel clinks against something underground. We lock eyes. “Aye, here be ye gold, matey,” I say, dead serious.

Wesley snort-laughs. We kneel, dusting dirt away, and wrench a dinged-up cookie tin out of the ground. Royal Dansk Danish butter cookies.

“Not quite a treasure chest, is it?” I observe doubtfully, the bars of gold in my mind shrinking down. Maybe it’ll be gold coins instead.

“Hey, I like cookies. I’ll take it.”

“Mmm, decades-old cookies.” I try to prize the lid off but it’s rusted shut. I hand the tin to Wesley, who pops its lid off in one easy motion. I’ll be honest, it makes me a little bitter.

“Well, it’s not cookies.”

It isn’t gold, either.

I lift an art deco diamond ring from its bed—a faded washcloth—and twist it to catch the light. Wesley selects another piece of jewelry, an engagement ring with a large emerald flanked by two diamonds on a gold band. The third item in the tin is a diamond bracelet.

“Holy cow!” I exclaim. “I bet these are worth a crap-ton of money.” I pick up a small white card that has one line on it in gold typeface: We’ll always have Paris. “Interesting.”

Wesley eyes the card from opposite me, reaching for it. “May I?”

I hand over the card, trading him for the emerald ring. The metal is cold as I slide it over my finger, mentally pressing play on the scenario of standing on the Pont des Arts in Paris while a man on bended knee proposes to me with such a ring. Below us, the Seine glitters.

“This is extraordinary,” I murmur, trying on the bracelet. “We have to check the others. What if there’s treasure in one of the other spots, too?”

Wesley nods. “We should definitely check them all.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •

IT ISN’T LONG BEFORE I’m regretting that bottle of water I chugged right before we left. I order him to stay put on the bank of a stream while I find somewhere to relieve myself. Paranoid he’ll see me from across a football field’s worth of distance, I get hopelessly lost in the weeds and don’t stumble my way back for thirty-six minutes. Wesley rises from his designated rock on the riverbank when I emerge, face white with panic. His hair is a mess, like he’s been running his fingers through it nonstop. I notice he has rerolled his sleeping bag to compress every molecule of air from it and tucked it into the top of his pack along with the many bells and whistles he’s also reorganized during my absence. “I was about to go