“I’ll get them.”
When he carries Calvin’s glasses back to him, Calvin’s cursing under his breath and is flicking something to the ground—his other contact. While Chase is still alone on the other side of the pool, Gil is nearby and watching Miles quietly. Rather—them. Gil is watching both Calvin and Miles closely, his expression calculating.
“Here.” Miles hands Calvin his glasses.
“Thanks. Can you hold it for a second?” Calvin mumbles. He pulls his shirt off.
Miles finally gets to see Calvin’s tattoo in its entirety. The flowers and vines map his shoulder, the edges of the vines reaching his collarbone and downward toward his elbow.
He looks away.
“Thanks.” Instead of putting it on, Calvin puts his shirt on the ground, and his glasses on top of it. Then he turns toward Chase.
“You’re not getting out?” Miles asks, maybe too eagerly.
“I’m going to drown Chase first.”
Chase yells for help when he sees Calvin paddling over to him, and Miles snickers when Calvin tries to dunk his head underwater, the same way Chase did to Gil earlier. Amazingly, Chase lets him—just splashes water back at him.
Chapter Seventeen
Calvin seems happy. Despite his scowl and how he’s trying to drown his friend, Miles can tell he’s content. He can see it in his expression, at the way his mouth threatens to curve into a smile, and how he’s not tense all over. And… he looks good, which Miles already knew, but seeing him shirtless hits him like a punch in the gut.
His muscles are taut, and when he pulls himself up on a boulder, still scowling at Chase, Miles stares at the tattooed vines, the outline of his spine, and his narrow hips. He had felt those hips against his last night, pressed against the parapet while they kissed…
“Easy.” Gil’s gentle voice snaps him out of his reverie. Startled, he realizes that Gil’s been quietly watching him this entire time. “You’ll burn a hole in him.”
Miles’s cheeks heat up. There’s really no point denying it—he was staring, and he was staring hard. Miles scratches the back of his neck, shrugs, and Gil gives him a knowing look.
After that, Miles distracts himself. Chase figures out that he can cannonball off a particularly high spot, and he drags Gil with him. Miles watches them do it several times, then joins them, remembering when he and his friends used to do this as well. It’s nice being back here. The lake town has a lot of fun landmarks, and while he’s thankful that the falls are empty right now, he wishes more tourists knew about it.
Camilla Hotel probably didn’t promote it so much because of the apparently not-easy hike.
“He’s like those cats he’s obsessed with,” Chase snickers, pointing at Calvin, who’s fallen asleep on the boulder he had climbed on about half an hour ago. He’s sleeping right where the sunlight hits, an arm over his face. “Look, Miles.”
Miles doesn’t look, suddenly very interested in a rock that he’s convinced is shaped like a face. “Yup.”
After some more messing around, Chase asks if Gil brought food—and he did. He has sandwiches and sodas which he took from the inn’s kitchen before they left, and Chase cheers as he swims to the shore. Gil lays picnic blankets on the ground so that they can laze around. They find a spot under the shade of the trees, and it’s cool how Gil quietly takes care of everything behind-the-scenes because Miles never even knew he came this ready.
“Mother hen,” Chase teases.
Gil shrugs. “Don’t lie here, then.”
“You wish.”
“Cal!” Gil cups his hands and shouts, but Calvin doesn’t even flinch. He’s on the other side of the pool, much closer to the falls,and the running water drowns out Gil’s voice. “Calviiin!”
“I’ll get him,” Miles says. He walks along the rocky shore, careful not to slip. When he reaches Calvin, he’s still got his arm over his eyes and his chest rises slowly with every breath, one knee’s bent, and Miles realizes how stupid he was for volunteering to get him. Heat creeps to his cheek and he inwardly groans.
Swallowing, Miles crouches down and taps Calvin on the arm. Right on his tattoo, on his stupidly toned arm, and yeah, this was a terrible idea.
“Calvin,” Miles says, tapping him even harder on the arm.
“I’m sleepy,” Calvin mutters, his voice barely audible. He puts his other arm over his face as well to block out more of the sunlight. At least Miles knows he’s awake, only ignoring him. Over on the picnic blankets, Chase wolfs down his second sandwich, and Gil is saying something to him that Miles can’t hear from the distance and over the running water.
“Gil brought food,” Miles says.
A slight shrug of the shoulders. Calvin doesn’t budge. Smirking, Miles plops down and sits cross-legged, rethinking his strategy.
