“You know, I thought you were being a moody bitch all week,” Ty said as he juggled several water bottles and the small map they’d given us for directions to our cabins. “But now that Cal is also being a moody bitch, consider this as me demanding to know what’s up.”
“Politely for a change,” I grumbled beside him.
“My hands are full. If you need me to rough you up a bit, you’ll have to wait.”
I snorted, then glanced around to make sure no one was near enough to hear. Cal and Nick had left right after us but were several paces behind.
“Cal and I sort of hooked up,” I admitted.
Ty jerked to a stop. “Say that again?”
I fisted his shirt and yanked to get him moving, then snatched the map out of his hands so mine had something to do. “You heard me the first time.”
“Okay.” Ty cocked his head and nodded slowly. “Do I need to kick his ass? Give me context here.”
“I started it,” I said, then gave him the short version of me cornering Cal all over school and this last time ending in way more than I could mentally handle.
“He never mentioned it,” I continued. “After he said there was nothing to talk about, I saw red. Maybe somewhere in there, he might’ve wanted to talk, but I was too gone to listen. Then, this last time, I figured out I was gone onhim.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Cal and Nick were still too far behind to hear.
“In the library and the bathroom, I’d been messing with him. I got him hot and left him cold. It’d been fun, you know? He hadn’t chased me down to beat the shit out of me. He hadn’teven gotten me back for the sucker punch. No, he …” He’d melted. He’d moaned. He’d made me see fucking stars. He’d shocked me so thoroughly, I was now addicted and had no clue what to do.
“So now what?” Ty asked instead of pushing me to continue my last thought. Thank fuck for that. I loved Ty. I’d tell him anything. However, no one needed to think about Cal’s sexed-up sounds but me.
“Now? Hell if I know. Hours of therapy says it’s okay to let people in.”
“If that’s what you want to do. You think he’s into guys, then?”
The jury was still out on that. What if Sasha was right? “Or closeted,” I muttered an alternative.
“You won’t know if you don’t give him a chance to tell you.”
“Think he would? I mean, that he’d tell me? Even if I wanted to let my guard down, let him in, how do I do that when all we do is fight?”
“And make out.” He chuckled. “For real, though? Not sure, but I think you’ll regret it if you never try.”
I sighed and lifted my face to the sky. Huge pine trees clinging to their needles in the colder weather shadowed the wide trail that wove through the scattered cabins.
“I ran away this last time, not to be a dick, but because I was afraid,” I confessed, wishing I were brave enough to say it to Cal.
“Tellhimthat.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said and was saved from listing the excuses not to when we came upon our assigned cabin number.
Adam certainly hadn’t been kidding about the size of it.
The room wasn’t bigger than my own at home and had four single beds crowding it. Two against one wall with a table between them and two on the opposite wall. A bathroom was at the far side and looked more like an afterthought they added a few decades after the cabin was built.
“This is cozy,” Ty said as he slung his bag onto one of the beds. I did the same to the one next to him. Ty slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “Time for ghost stories?”
Nick chuckled as he and Cal moved to the opposite side. “Entertain us, monkey.”
“The fuck you say?” Ty marched over and grabbed Nick. They wrestled for a few seconds, laughing the whole time.
Cal sat on his bed, moving his knees this way and that so as not to get hit. He didn’t even smile.
Eventually, they settled, and Ty went back to his bed and plopped across it. “So what’s the real reason we’re doing this?”
