Chapter Nineteen

Davis tilted his face to the sun as he waited for Chloe outside the hotel. It felt good to have some fresh air. Yesterday had been…something else. Between sleeping in, then kissing Chloe until dinner, his body was screaming for some vitamin D.

Chloe wouldn’t tell him what their plans were, but he thought they might include this Songkran holiday everyone kept talking about. Davis had tried looking it up on his phone, but he had no idea how to spell it and had gotten some pretty weird search results.

“You ready for the best day ever?” Chloe asked, leaping down the hotel steps and wrapping an arm around Davis’s waist. She seemed happier than he’d ever seen, her whole face lighting up as she spoke, her eyes bright and hopeful. It was nice. Everything about this was perfect.

He tried to not think about his parents coming to town the next day, partially because he felt guilty about hoping their bus was delayed. Anything to give him and Chloe more time. Because once his family arrived, he and Chloe couldn’t act like they were the only two people in the world. He wouldn’t feel comfortable sneaking in kisses and holding her tight.

But he also knew this time with his parents and his brothers was important, so he would need to put those thoughts aside and enjoy today the best he knew how.

“Where to first?” he asked, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.

Pink tinged Chloe’s skin where he had kissed her. He loved that he could make her blush—he couldn’t remember ever being able to illicit that type of response from a woman before. Even Bridgette. The thought caused another pang of guilt, but he shoved that one aside as well. Because she wasn’t here. And Chloe was. And the additional onslaught of guilt that thought caused was just going to have to wait.

“The only taxi they could get to come out here is a tuk-tuk,” Chloe said, wincing. She was obviously preparing herself for his protests.

Davis merely smiled and took her hand in his. “Perfect. Do you think if I pay him extra, he can do that maneuver where you fall into me again?”

Chloe’s mouth opened and closed, like she was searching for words that just didn’t want to be found. “Seriously, what happened to you, and what did you do with Davis Jones?”

Davis laughed and squeezed her hand. “Travis and I took a tuk-tuk to the hostel two nights ago, and I’m feeling better about it, that’s all. Do you know what I realized that evening?”

“That you should never go with the cheapest place?”

“That it’s the touristy parts of Thailand I don’t like. The papaya people.”

Chloe laughed so hard, her head tilted back. “Farang,” she said. “And we’re farangs too, you know.”

“But we’re not like them,” Davis insisted. He was fine with being a farang. But he wasn’t going to be like the ones he’d met in the hostel. “Take me to the places where the farangs don’t go. I want to experience Thailand—the real Thailand.” He paused, realizing he was taking over again. He was used to insisting things be his way. Whenever he traveled with his family, they knew that they’d only be visiting Davis-approved locations. Ones that weren’t too loud, too chaotic, no strong smells—he wasn’t going to put Chloe through that. “I’m sorry. You had a whole day planned. We’ll do whatever you were already thinking of.”

Chloe let go of his hand, and Davis’s heart fell—except, she was smiling. “Actually, you’ve given me an idea. And it’s better than the one I’d had in mind.” She sprinted up the hotel steps and returned a few minutes later. “All set,” she said with a grin and grabbed his hand.

“Shouldn’t we be waiting for our tuk-tuk?” Davis asked as she pulled him in the opposite direction. Toward the river. His nervousness returned. Sure, he’d said he wanted to experience the real Thailand, but he now realized that he wasn’t entirely sure what that entailed.

“We’re going to take a different mode of transportation today,” Chloe said with a smile that told him he might be better off not knowing.

When they reached the water’s edge, Davis saw a long, narrow boat he hadn’t noticed before. A rectangular piece of fabric covered the middle portion, providing some shade.

The boat was tied to a small dock with a man standing alongside it. He seemed to brighten as they approached.

“Sawadii krub,” he said, bringing his hands together. “You go up river?”

“Yes,” Chloe said. And then she said several things in Thai that all sounded like it was made up, but the man seemed to understand and nodded enthusiastically, speaking rapidly in response.

Seeing Davis’s confused expression, Chloe apologized. “Sorry, I was just giving him directions.”

“Looks like wherever it is, he’s super excited to go there. Must be good.”

Chloe grinned. “It is. Everyone else seems to be going into town, so we should be able to avoid the crowds and still get in the Thai experience you’re looking for.”

Davis’s smile slipped. “I didn’t want you to have to plan your whole day around me. If you want to go to where all the fun is happening—”

“Don’t you even think that way,” Chloe interrupted. “Yes, I changed our plans. I hated the thought of putting you in a situation where you’d be uncomfortable. But I’m more excited for what we’re doing now. I didn’t feel like spending the day wet anyway.”

Davis blinked. “Wet?”

The man with the boat didn’t give Chloe a chance to say more, ushering them onto the vessel. “You good? Seat not too hard?” he asked Davis as he sat down.

The seat was nothing more than a plank of wood, but the boat seemed sturdy enough. If you ignored a few holes. And the creaking. It wasn’t a surprise that tourists weren’t lined up to hop aboard.

“Dii maag,” Davis said, remembering the phrase he’d studied on the airplane. It meant very good. The man smiled, like Davis had said it wrong.

“I am Somsak.” He still smiled but didn’t give Davis the chance to introduce himself, instead turning back to the boat.

“Welcome to your river cruise,” Chloe said, leaning back on her hands and watching the water as Somsak pulled away from the shore.

They moved a lot quicker along the river than Davis had expected, the lean shape of the boat allowing less resistance. It helped that no one else was on the river and they had it to themselves. The wind whistled past and water sprayed. This was how he imagined heaven. So peaceful. Beautiful. And he was with someone he cared about. The thought that it wouldn’t last more than a couple of days persisted, despite Davis’s attempts to push it out, so he instead focused on the water as Chloe was doing.

The combination of wind and water was too loud to strike up a conversation, but Chloe attempted it anyway. She leaned in close to Davis’s ear. “My parents dragged me to Thailand as a teenager for humanitarian work. I didn’t embrace it as readily as your brothers have.” She paused. “Do you know why I stayed?”

Davis turned to look at her. She was close, her nose nearly brushing his. “Why?”

She looked back out over the water. “A boat ride just like this. It wasn’t in Chiang Rai; we were in the east of Thailand at the time. But I realized this was something you couldn’t find back home in Tennessee. This was…something special. And I wanted to explore more of it. Then, as I came to know the people here—really got to know them, not the occasionally forced pleasantries—I no longer felt the need to explore, but to become.”

Davis raised an eyebrow, trying to prompt her to continue, but she wasn’t looking at him, her gaze landing somewhere in the distance. “Become?”

“I suppose I wanted to become a part of the country—feel like I belonged. But in the end, the country became a part of me. I couldn’t leave. Just after I turned twenty-four, my parents left to go back home, having spent eight years here. I didn’t follow them. Not this time. I could speak the language well enough by that point but had no useful job skills. So I decided to do the one thing I knew how. The thing I’d been taught to do for the past eight years. Help people.”

Davis knew a thing or two about that. It was why he’d taken over his parents’ hardware store. It wasn’t for his customer service skills—any of his customers could attest to that. But they knew they could count on him to help. Whether they wanted to hire him for a handyman job or had questions about how to use a certain tool, they knew Davis would be there.

The difference was that he’d never felt like he’d belonged—Starlight Ridge had never become a part of him.

Davis leaned in close to Chloe. “I wish I was as brave as you.”

She stilled, then gave him a side glance. “It’s not bravery when I can’t see myself doing anything else—being anywhere else. Everything is easy at that point. What’s truly brave is leaving what’s comfortable for something better. Those are the people I admire.”

Somsak yelled something to them in Thai, and Chloe yelled back.

“We’re here,” she said, throwing a grin at Davis.

Everything looked the same as it had for the past forty-five minutes, with palm trees lining the river and stretching as far as he could see. But if he squinted, he could just make out a small dock to their right. Somsak slowed the boat, and the noise dropped, making the air eerily quiet.

“Naan taow rai?”

Chloe glanced from Somsak to Davis. “He asked how long we’ll be. He’ll go off on his own and meet us back at the boat when we’re ready to leave.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Yes, well, with how far we are from anything, he can’t very well leave us stranded,” she said, her lips quirking up at the edges. “Is six hours all right?”

Six hours seemed plenty. More than enough. To be honest, Davis didn’t know if he wanted to be wandering around the jungle for that long, but Chloe had gone out of her way to plan a special day that he’d enjoy. The least he could do was just that—enjoy it. And he had a feeling that as long as Chloe was there, no matter what they did, that would be no problem.

“Six hours would be perfect,” he said with a wink.

Davis inwardly cringed. Since when did he wink?

But Chloe didn’t seem to think it as lame as he did, and she smiled, pink tinging her cheeks. “Six hours it is, then.”

Somsak tied up his boat, gave them a wave goodbye, and disappeared quicker than it took Davis to get his land legs back. “Guess he has plans,” he said, watching as Somsak followed a wide trail in front of them and disappeared around a bend.

“He has family that lives in a village close to here,” Chloe said. “A brother and sister and their families. That’s why he was so excited to bring us. Somsak said that he works so much, he doesn’t get to see them often.”

Even without having gone anywhere or done anything yet, that already made the trip worth it. Davis took in their surroundings. Trees. Trees. More trees. “Where to, boss?”

Chloe winced. “Let’s not call me boss. That makes me feel weird, because I’m not supposed to be out here alone with a volunteer, and we’re definitely not supposed to be doing what we’ve done the past couple of days.”

Davis chuckled and waved a hand through the air. “I’m not a full-time volunteer, more like a guest who you allowed to help on your project.”

Chloe’s expression smoothed. “I like the sound of that better.” She grabbed Davis’s hand, interlocking her fingers with his. “Since you’re a guest, I suppose I better take good care of you.” Chloe gave him a quick wink of her own, and Davis’s insides went gooey. So, that was what a wink did to people. “Where we’re going is about a half a mile up the trail. You okay with that?”

“Sure. Are you planning on telling me where we’re going?”

Chloe’s hand merely tightened around his, and she gave him a playful smile before sauntering up the trail, dragging Davis along with her.

He laughed, feeling absolutely free for one of the first times in his life. He would follow Chloe anywhere, because he knew she wouldn’t steer him wrong. And he would be with her. And that would be enough.

That was what he thought for the next half a mile.

Until he saw the elephants.