I touched several of the bandages dotting my legs. He hadn’t missed a single cut, scratch, or gash. They’d all been taken care of. The pool of warmth in my stomach swelled. “I feel like there’s probably some moral to the story you’re wanting me to catch.”
He toed at the sand. “No moral to the story. That was my attempt at relating your traumatic experience with one of my own. Of sharing something personal about myself with you.” He fired a quick wink before rising. “Now that you’re bandaged up like a mummy from the knees down, my job here is done.”
“Let me guess. Campers to check on. Paddles and life jackets to account for?”
He spread his arms wide. “What can I say? A lead counselor’s job is never done.”
“Thanks for the mummification,” I called after him.
He didn’t make it far before he stopped. As he glanced at me over his shoulder, the look on his face made me swallow. “You know what I remember most about that day, though?” He waited, so I shook my head. “Realizing that no matter what came at me, I could face it. I’d come out okay on the other side. Come hell or whitewater”—he paused long enough to shrug—“I could save myself.”
I swept my arm in a lavish motion. “At last, the moral of the story is revealed.”
His brows came together as he tried to fake a serious look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I lifted my eyes to the sky. “Sure ya don’t.”
Callum looked like he was about to come back at me with something when a shadow rolled over me. Ethan. “Hey, New Girl. You know what they say, don’t you?”
I sighed. Now that he wasn’t responsible for guiding six lives down a treacherous river, he could jump back into his favorite role of camp charmer.
Ethan’s eyes ran up me, landing on my dripping-wet ponytail. “When it comes to rafting—actually, when it comes to anything in life…” He bounced his brows a few times. “The wetter, the better.”
My nose curled. “Could have done without that little Ethan-ism, but thanks for dropping that one on me before I ate my lunch.”
“I can swing back around after lunch and drop another Ethan-ism on you,” he offered.
“Actually, I’m one of those girls who prefer to keep her food down. Thanks anyway.”
Ethan’s face went flat. It was like I was the first girl who’d turned him down.
“You’ve got really beautiful eyes,” he said, putting on a strange expression that I guessed was his version of something sexy.
It looked more like he had something in his eye and had to add some fiber to his diet. “Ah, gee, thanks. And let me guess what’s coming next.” I worked up a wide smile that was all teeth. “I’ve got a really nice smile?”
His eyes narrowed. “New Girl? What’s your deal?”
Why he was being so persistent was beyond me. I wasn’t the obviously pretty girl who stuck out in every crowd. I wasn’t even the “naturally” pretty one. On my best days, I suppose I could qualify for the cute category, but Ethan didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who swam in cute waters that often, if ever. Why was he all over me like white on rice?
Glancing around at the campers, I knew I had my answer. The only reason he was hitting on me was because of low supply and chart-topping horny demand. That might have been the reason I snapped my response. “My ‘deal,’ Ethan, is that I’d rather make out with a marmot than you. My ‘deal’ is that I’m not looking to get mixed up in a summer romance today, tomorrow, or ever. Now, will you please leave me alone?”
Instead of walking away, shoulders slumped and ego in the gutter, he shrugged. “Who said anything about romance?”
I groaned. Talk about a person who could spot a silver lining.
I hadn’t realized Callum was still close by until he cleared his throat. “Hey, Ethan?” He waited for Ethan to acknowledge him with a tip of the head. “Shut the hell up.”
At the start of summer, my life had made sense. In a messed-up, dysfunctional sort of way, but it was predictable. I could count on the same things to happen each day and for people to act the same way.
Camp Kismet had blown the whole life-making-sense thing out of the water, though. In barely a week.
My world felt as if it had been flipped upside down, and people were not behaving the way I’d expected they should. All except for me…and you could also lump my dad into that pile. Great. Now I was lumped into the same pile as my dad. This summer was just made of win.
My mom was still acting all different and strange, like the old version, who specialized in nighttime snuggles and napkin notes tucked into lunch boxes. Part of me wanted to believe the old mom was making a comeback, but most of me wasn’t going to get my hopes up.
Then there was Harry. Sure, he was still the same good, thoughtful kid who was more likely the spawn of Einstein than Preston and Cynthia Ainsworth, but he’d gone and turned over a new leaf, too. He was a pint-size daredevil, a miniature Evel Knievel, a featherweight adrenaline junkie.
In addition to the packed activity schedule he handpicked each and every day, Harry had his own posse of friends now. By the way these boys talked, a person would have thought they’d been to war and bled together.
So that was how the first week of camp went. Mom became a…mom again. Harry became Mr. Popularity with a taste for living life on the edge. And I was making like Dad and holding on, white-knuckled and all, to the way things were and had been and would likely go back to when we packed up and left here at the end of the summer.
And then there were the boy issues. Not Ethan—though it wasn’t for a lack of trying to become an “issue”—but Callum. I couldn’t figure the guy out. One minute he was making jokes and grinning; a split second later he was practically snapping at me about tying sloppy knots. One second he seemed to like me; the next he barely managed to tolerate me.
He was absolutely, positively a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde, and that wasn’t even the most troubling part of that revelation. It was realizing that I wasn’t sure which one I was more drawn to: benevolent Jekyll or malevolent Hyde.
So yeah, I had some shit to figure out. The sooner the better.
That might have been the reason for my sprint this morning. I was scheduled to run a fartlek workout today, but it had turned into more of a let’s-pretend-we’re-running-for-our-lives session.
It was therapeutic, and shin splints could be fixed with a couple of bags of ice.
When I hit the Y in the trail that would send me back to camp in one mile if I went left or three miles if I went right, I hung a right. I don’t know why. I’d gone six miles and hadn’t planned on pushing anything higher than seven today, but I’d already pushed the speed way beyond, why not throw the rest of the plan out the window while I was at it?
I was so in the zone when I was pushing this kind of speed a cargo plane probably could have flown a hundred feet over my head and I wouldn’t have heard it. That was probably why I didn’t notice someone else fly up the trail behind me. I didn’t hear him at all. I didn’t see him until he started to pull in front of me.
Actually, I was surprised that he was able to keep up with me. Okay, I admit, it looked like he could have flown past me. And yeah, I was more than just a little competitive when it came to running.
“What in the world are you doing out here, running like you’re being chased by the cops, when you could be asleep?” Callum sounded a little winded, but not as much as I was. I wasn’t pushing a pace that made conversation comfortable, or even possible.
“Being chased by the cops?” There. That sounded relatively normal—not like I was sucking air by the lungful.
“Just something my brother and I used to say when we’d train together. This was our run-like-we’re-being-chased-by-pit-bulls pace, faster than run-like-we’re-being-chased-by-the-cops pace, but slower than run-like-we’re-being-chased-by-our-mom.”
How was he able to get all that out at this speed? We were holding sub-seven-minute miles. Breathing was a chore.
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“You and your brother used to run together?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious about how sweaty I was. At least I wasn’t the only one—most of his shirt was wet.
“Right up until he really did run from the cops, but you know, they have these handy things called cruisers. They go really fast, too.”
I nodded as he tore up the trail in front of us. That was the hard thing about being a runner, and a competitive one at that—no matter how fast I got, someone was always faster. “Did you guys run cross-country?”
“Track,” he said as we both ducked under a low-hanging branch cutting across the trail. “He ran the one and two hundred, and I ran the four and eight hundred.”
Well, that explained why Callum was so dang fast, but after watching him this past week, I wasn’t sure there was anything that he wasn’t good or fast at. “So he was faster, but you could—”
“Run faster longer.” I could feel his smile aimed my way. “In case you hadn’t noticed.” I huffed and kept my eyes forward. The sweaty, smiling image of him was stuck in my head. I’d barely glanced at him for half a second, and that brief flash was embedded in my brain.
“What do you run?” he asked, his breathing almost sounding normal. I knew he’d pulled back when he came up beside me. God, I hated knowing his heartbeat was practically normal when mine felt close to bursting through my chest.
“I run cross-country in the fall and track in the spring.”
“What events in track?”
I took a few seconds before answering, to catch my breath from my last answer. “The four and eight hundred. Sometimes the sixteen hundred, too.”
Even though we were bounding down a trail, he managed to nudge me with his elbow. “The four and eight. So we’re both masochists?”
I didn’t answer him, since it was pretty much common knowledge in the track circle that people didn’t normally gravitate to those events. Track coaches often had to beg, bribe, and plead with runners to get them to train and compete in these events. But I didn’t have to ask Callum if his arm had been twisted to the point of breaking to persuade him to run them, or if he’d volunteered for the punishment. He liked a challenge. The bigger, the better. It was one of the areas where we were alike.
“Why are you a runner?” he asked. “Running from something or toward something?”
There wasn’t anything in my path, but I almost tripped. “Neither,” I stated.
“Okay, so both. Good to know.”
His tone was infuriating. The look on his face probably was, too. Not that I was going to glance over to confirm it.
“Why are you a runner?” I threw back, trying to match his voice. “Running from something or toward something?”
“Neither.” I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Okay, so both. Good to know.” I had to swing to the side to avoid a chunk of rock sticking out of the trail, which made me bump into Callum. My bare arm against his bare arm.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what my PRs are?” he asked.
I checked my watch. Only a mile and a half left before we were at camp. I could manage another ten minutes of running next to a sweaty Callum O’Connor at speed Insane. Hopefully. “No, because from the way I can tell you’re dying for me to ask”—I took the briefest pause to catch my breath—“you must think your personal records are pretty hot stuff.”
“Oh, they are.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.”
“Yeah, more fun to leave it to your imagination, right?” He nudged me again. My skin experienced that same sparking, surging thing.
I scooted over a bit farther on the trail, reminding myself this guy was my trainer, probably split-personality, and irritated me as much as, if not more than, he intrigued me. Not that any of that mattered anyway, because I was a no-go for the summer romance thing. No how, no way. I didn’t need any other complications in my life.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what mine are?” I asked, kicking the pace up a notch when we crossed the last-mile threshold.
“Sure. What are they?”
I felt the burn start to fire in my legs, but I pushed through it. I didn’t slow down when things got uncomfortable; I kept charging forward. “More fun to leave it to the imagination, don’t you think?”
He grunted and matched my pace. His chest was moving a bit faster now, but not like mine was. I think I took two breaths to his one. “College scholarship good?”
I smiled. “College scholarship good.”
“Full-ride good?”
“If I can keep doing well in school, yeah, I think so.”
Callum nodded at me, impressed. “Aren’t you just an all-around overachiever?”
“What about you? Are your times college scholarship good?”
Callum shrugged. “That depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He gave his neck a quick roll. “Yeah, my times are solid enough to get some kind of college scholarship.”
“Full-ride good?”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “If I manage to not keep my grades where they’ve been and somehow manage to score in the genius category on the SATs, then yeah, maybe.”
“Is that your way of saying your grades suck?”
“That’s my way of saying my grades aren’t full-ride good, no matter how fast I can run.”
We were close enough to the camp that I could just make out some of the cabins. “I’m not used to you being so vague.”
“I’m not used to you being so specific.”
Callum wasn’t dumb, not by a long shot. He also didn’t strike me as the slacker type. Maybe he was one of those kids who got a B once in their life and thought it was the end of the world and, worst of all, their grade point average.
“So what is it? Your GPA?” I asked.
He huffed. “I think it’s more fun to leave it to the imagination.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He picked up the pace the last hundred meters to camp. It was all I could do to keep up.
I didn’t push him any further, but when we broke to a stop once we’d charged into the big grass clearing, he hung his hands on his hips, caught his breath, then said, “Let’s just say I’ve got two years of making up to do, and even if I kill it in my classes this year like I did last, the best I can come out with is a so-so GPA.”
I was walking slow circles in the grass to cool down, my arms wrapped around my head as I struggled to catch my breath. “For someone who is totally undecided in the college department”—exhale, inhale—“you’ve sure put a lot of time into thinking about this.”
He bobbed his shoulders. “Just because I’m undecided doesn’t mean I haven’t looked into my options.”
My breath was getting back to normal, and the burn had almost left my legs. “Want to meet here in ten and grab some breakfast?”
I didn’t know I was going to ask him until I’d asked him. Like the first couple of dinners I’d seen him at, Callum had eaten all his meals since then in the same way: alone. I wasn’t sure if it was a choice or a circumstance—maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but I was getting a little tired of flying meals solo. Mom had joined in for a few, and Harry always hung close by for a few minutes before beelining for the table where his team of troublemakers sat, and despite the enigma Callum O’Connor was, I liked him.
He shook his head, making drops of sweat fling from the ends of his damp hair. “Hey, thanks for the offer, but I’ve got to show up for my shift in an hour.”
I grabbed my foot behind my back to stretch my quads. “Which should be plenty of time to shower and eat.”
“Showering and eating comes lower on the hierarchy of needs than sleep does,” he said around a yawn. He’d just torn up who knows how many miles of trail, was still sweaty from the effort, and he was yawning? He was tired after that adrenaline punch?
I felt the opposite after a run. Almost like I could take on the whole world with my fists tied behind my back
.
“Didn’t you get any sleep last night?” I asked when he yawned again and started moving in the direction of the staff cabins.
“No. Did you?” He waved and kept moving. “Thanks for the run, Phoenix. I like being challenged.”
“Yeah, me too,” I called after him. “Though that wasn’t much of a challenge. For me, at least.”
He chuckled, his eyes telling me he was calling my bluff. “Same time tomorrow, then?”
I smiled. “Don’t be late.”
Two days later. He’d gotten me a pair of hiking boots. Nice ones.
They’d been waiting on the cabin’s porch when I got back after breakfast with the words To Mythical Bird, From Glorified Pigeon scratched onto the box. Thankfully, I’d found them before my parents or Harry had. Wasn’t eager to explain the boots or the note.
They weren’t wrapped. There wasn’t a card attached. Not a receipt so I’d know how much to pay him back. Just a box of boots that made me wonder what kind of agenda or expectations were attached to them. If any at all. He was eighteen. He should know by now that a guy couldn’t leave a random gift for a girl without some kind of explanation. There were rules against playing those kinds of head games.
I was trying to figure out something witty and confusing to “thank” him with while I ate breakfast later that morning.
I had the day off because Ben had made it a point to not schedule me when a family day was on the docket. If he would have checked with me first, I would have informed him that those were the days I wanted to work overtime.
He hadn’t given up on the idea of reuniting the Ainsworth family like I had, but he had to eventually. There was no way a person could observe the way we functioned and hold on to hope that we’d all just work it out.