“Tell the truth or take a dare,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not playing.”
“Come on, Sean. One question each.”
“I’ll take a dare every time, Jess.”
“Because you’re afraid I’ll learn the truth about the map. You know I’ll ask about the map.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” He stood up.
I scrambled to my feet. “You didn’t swap out the maps. Your brother did. And you lied to protect him. I remember you were talking to him—”
“Let it go, Jess.”
“I’m right,” I stated emphatically.
“What does it matter?”
“Why would you let me think you were a cheater?”
“Because that’s what big brothers do.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m supposed to look out for him.”
And I realized that, before Sean’s dad remarried, Sean had never been a big brother to a little brother. To sisters, yes, but not to a brother. He’d been trying to protect Billy.
“Will you at least confirm that I’m right? I won’t tell anyone. I just…I just always liked you, Sean. Even when you put a snake in my bed.
“And then you confessed to cheating, and it wasn’t so much that my team lost…it was that I’d started to really like a guy who could do something like that. So not only didn’t I think I could trust you, but how could I trust my own judgment?”
He dropped his head back, stared at the sky that was beginning to lighten. “You have to promise not to tell.”
“I promise.”
“He did some other things last summer. They said if he got into trouble one more time, they’d send him home. He was just a kid, acting out, angry because suddenly he had a dad and an older brother, and he wasn’t the oldest anymore, wasn’t the one in charge.” He shrugged. “At least that’s what the family counselor said.”
“So you took the blame so they wouldn’t send him home?”
“Yeah. And so they’d let him come back this summer. Summer camp is the absolute best. And Billy has changed a lot. Like I said, family counselor. He had some anger issues. But he’s basically a good kid.”
And Sean Reed?
My instincts had been right. I shouldn’t have stopped trusting them.
I dangled the blindfold that I’d been wearing the day before. “Maybe you should wear this today.”
“Maybe we should work together.”
“Don’t you trust me?” I asked.
“Jess, seriously. We are way lost.” He looked around. His brow furrowed. “Does any of this look familiar to you?”
I glanced around. “A little maybe.”
“I think we’re back where Ed dropped us off.”
“I’m not sure that information helps us much.”
He spun around. “You still have the pictures on your phone that you took yesterday?”
“Why wouldn’t I have them?”
“You can delete them, right?”
“I can, but I didn’t.”
“Great. Show me the last one you took.”
I pulled out my phone, brought up the picture. Sean looked at it over my shoulder, standing really close to me. That little electric charge went through my body again.
“There’s Ed,” he said slowly. “Why would you take a picture of Ed?”
“I was crushing on him.”
He looked horrified. “Seriously?”
“No! But he’s part of the camp experience. I like to document my experiences.”
“Right.” He looked back at the picture. “The tree he was standing in front of is…right there.”
He pointed across the clearing. Then he spun me around, grinning broadly. “All we have to do is look at your pictures backward and find the same landmarks.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Is that cheating?”
“It’s genius, Jess. You’re a genius. You discovered a way to mark a trail that’s better than bread crumbs.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said. “But it doesn’t really matter. Let’s go.”
We walked until we found the next spot I’d taken a picture of.
“I don’t understand how we got so lost yesterday,” I said. “You should have had the sun to keep you oriented. It’s not like you’re in the jungles of a rain forest or anything.”
“I wasn’t in any hurry to get back to camp,” he said.
“I don’t understand. Once we got back to camp, we’d have the rest of the afternoon to goof off.”
I saw his jaw tighten. “And you would have goofed off with Liz.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You’re really thick, Jess.”
Like an ancient tree.
“You wanted to spend the time with me?”
He stopped walking. “Is that so hard to believe?”
I stepped back and leaned against a tree. “So were you working up the courage to tell me you weren’t a cheat?”
He leaned back against another tree. “I was never going to tell you that.”
“Because you didn’t trust me to keep the secret?”
“Because you don’t trust me. You would have just thought I was lying, trying to score points.”
I nodded, looked down at my hiking boots, my scraped shins. Scary how alike we were. “Can we agree to be totally honest with each other from now on?”
“Not totally,” he said. “I’ve got secrets.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”
“You’re crushing on Edna, aren’t you?” I asked as I pushed myself away from the tree.
“I’m crushing on someone,” he admitted.
My heart skipped a beat, maybe two, while I watched him shove himself away from the tree. “Let’s see the next picture,” he said.
I brought the next picture up on the screen, and we started comparing the surrounding area.
“I think this bush is that bush,” Sean said, pointing west, according to my compass.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
It was kinda strange to work with Sean instead of against him. To cooperate.
It was strange but also nice.
He did have a killer smile. The most beautiful blue eyes.
And if I was honest with myself—which I usually was—I admired what he’d done for his brother. I wasn’t convinced it had been the best thing for Billy, but who was I to judge? Alex had been my brother since the day he was born. I didn’t know what it felt like to suddenly find yourself with three extra sibs.
To try to be an older brother to a younger brother.
“Hey, this is really starting to look familiar,” Sean said. He took a deep breath. “I think I smell bacon.”
“Here, take my camera,” I said.
“I don’t think we’re going to need it anymore,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the main camp is…Hey, what are you doing?”
I was wrapping the bandanna around my head. “You’re supposed to lead me back to camp.”
I felt his hand circle my wrist. He pulled the bandanna away from my eyes.
“I’m not going to take credit for something I didn’t do,” he said. “We did this as a team.”
I smiled at him. I’d really been hoping he’d say that, but I’d been willing to give him the credit if he wanted it. Although what I was starting to feel for him would have come to a grinding halt. Instead I felt it expanding. Scary.
Before I could say anything, I heard a scream and then—
“You’re back!”
I spun around. Liz ran to me, nearly knocked me over, and hugged me tightly.
“I was so worried!” She leaned back, looked me in the eye. “Are you okay? I wanted to form a search party, but Edna said you were all right—”
“How did Edna know we were okay?” Sean asked.
“I don’t know. She said Ed was with you.”
“Ed?” Sean and I asked at the same time.
br /> “He wasn’t with us,” I said.
Then I heard whistling. I looked up the path along which Sean and I had trekked.
And there was Ed, ambling toward us.
“Learned to work together, I see,” Ed said as he walked by.
“Did you know where we were?” Sean asked.
Ed stopped walking. “Yep. Kept an eye on you all night.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked, seriously ticked. “Help us get back here?”
“You were supposed to get yourselves back here.” He winked at us. “And you did.”
He walked on to the dining hall.
I looked at Sean. “I guess we were never in serious trouble.”
“You sound disappointed,” he said.
“I thought we’d survived, that we’d done it on our own.”
“We did do it on our own.”
But that wasn’t exactly right. I looked at him and smiled. “Come to think of it, I guess we did it together.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sean and I weren’t hailed as heroes or anything. As a matter of fact, most of the CITs razzed us because we hadn’t made it back to camp the evening before. That we’d gotten lost.
Sean liked to say that we were just delayed.
And I thought maybe that was the truth. He’d taken us on a detour, so we’d have a little more time together, so maybe I would come to know him a little better.
The fact that Ed had been acting as our guardian—unbeknownst to us—really didn’t change anything.
Sean and I had finally bonded.
“I can’t believe you and Sean didn’t kill each other,” Liz said while I was eating breakfast. She’d eaten earlier but had decided to join me in the dining hall to hear the details of my night alone with Sean.
Apparently, Trent, Jon, and Jet wanted Sean’s version of events because they’d ushered him off to another table for some guy talk.
“Do you like him now?” Liz asked.
I bit off a bit of bacon, chewed slowly, and thought about how I should answer that question. “I no longer don’t like him.”
She furrowed her brow. “So you’re saying you like him.”
I nodded. It was easier than admitting the truth with words.
“So what happened?” she asked quietly, leaning closer to me. “Did he kiss you?”
“No, we just talked.”
“About what?”
“Different things. Nothing important.”
“But now you like him?”
I glanced over at the table where Sean was sitting. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be experiencing any more practical jokes. He looked over at me, winked, and smiled.
“Yeah,” I said to Liz, taking a deep breath so I could say the words. “Yeah, I like him.”
The next morning, I woke up early, just as the sun was coming up, got dressed, and walked down to the lake. It was our last day of training. Tomorrow the first group of campers would arrive.
The red banner was still hanging limply from the lifeguard platform. No one had tried to get it. At least not that I’d heard of.
I walked out to the edge of the dock. I sat with my legs crossed beneath me. Stared at the banner. Wondered if only the top of the water was cold, if it would feel warm after I’d been in it for a while. If I could reach the platform before I froze to death.
“Painting your toenails?” a voice asked.
I looked over my shoulder. Sean was walking toward the dock. Swaggering, really. Like he thought he was some tough guy. His shirt was unbuttoned, and it looked like he was wearing swim trunks.
Which was fine. Beneath my hoodie and shorts, I was wearing a bathing suit.
“No,” I said as he crouched down beside me. “Not painting my toenails.”
He looked toward the lifeguard platform, the red banner. “You gonna go for it?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”
“That morning when I saw you out here, you said you thought I’d cheat to get the banner. How was I going to cheat?”
I was a little embarrassed now to realize how much I’d mistrusted him. “I thought you’d row out in a canoe, get the banner, then stand under a warm shower until you got wet.” I shrugged. “Tell people you’d jumped into the lake.”
“Man, you really do have some trust issues where I’m concerned.”
I bit my lip. “Not as much now.”
“You know if we swam over there together and got it, that would sure prove something to Ed and Edna, wouldn’t it?” he asked.
I laughed. “Yeah, it’d sure prove something.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what. Or maybe I was simply afraid to admit what it was. Because if I was willing to jump into the frigid water, swim to the platform with him, if I was willing to risk—
“Do you trust me?” he asked quietly.
Did I?
I swallowed hard. Nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“Close your eyes, Jess.”
I didn’t hesitate. Not a second. Not a heartbeat. I just slid my eyes shut.
And then I felt his lips on mine. He was kissing me! And it was everything I ever thought it would be. I felt like I was falling, falling…but I knew that Sean would catch me. No matter how far I fell, he would be there.
He drew back. I opened my eyes.
“I’ll race you to the platform,” he said.
“Winner gets the banner?” I asked as I got to my feet and removed my hoodie and shorts.
“You bet,” he said. “But no cheating!”
“As if I’d ever cheat,” I said.
He grabbed my hand.
Laughing, we jumped off the dock…
Screamed as we hit the cold water…
And swam for the platform.
Winner takes all! I thought, knowing whether or not I beat Sean, I was still going to end up a winner.
About the Author
Rachel Hawthorne lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and two dogs. Before writing full-time she was a programmer, but quickly discovered that creating stories was more fun than creating code.
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Read all the FIRST KISSES books:
Trust Me by Rachel Hawthorne
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Copyright
TRUST ME. Copyright © 2007 by Rachel Hawthorne All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition DECEMBER 2006 ISBN: 9780061973598
Version 03112015
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006928092
ISBN-10: 0-06-114308-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-114308-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Rachel Hawthorne, Trust Me
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