I sent a quick response:Hunky-wunky. How bout there?
He replied:
Also hunky-wunky. Haven’t changed your mind yet, have you?
I quickly typed:Not a chance.
He didn’t text back right away. I waited and waited for him to reply, getting nervous when it seemed like he could be hesitating. Just when I began to wonder if I should amend my reply, his response appeared on my screen:
When we get back home, new rule. No clothes inside the cottage.
A thrill went through me. I texted:Being naked all the time might be cold.
This time, his response was swift:
I’ll keep you warm, don’t worry.
I grinned at the screen, but before I could reply, Benny’s deep voice came from the boys’ tent. “Can you two save the sexting for tomorrow? Some of us are trying to sleep on hard ground, and if those fucking screens don’t stop lighting up the tents, I swear to God...”
Jaz snorted a laugh and called back in the dark, “Thank you, Benny.”
“Fine. Good night, everyone,” Seb’s voice said.
I shouldn’t have doubted Benny’s and Jazmine’s reactions to Seb and I. Whatever happened in the future, I knew that night that the Wags were going to be okay.
When I woke the next morning to a chilly tent, Jazmine was already sitting up in her sleeping bag. Judging from the silence in the boys’ tent, we were the first ones up. I retrieved a change of clothes and some toiletries, and Jaz and I shuffled off to the pavilion to shower. By the time we got back to the campsite, Benny texted they’d already showered and gone to move the Land Rover back to the site so we could load up. Jazmine and I broke down the tents, and when we’d gotten most of the site packed, the boys drove up.
Seb jumped out of the Land Rover wearing cargo shorts and a long-sleeve red T-shirt that readWorld’s Sexiest Grandpa. When his eyes met mine, everything melted inside. We smiled at each other like absolute fools.
“Mornin’,” he said, holding up a bag of food. “Luke-warm breakfast muffin, anyone?”
“Is this an apology muffin?” Jazmine asked, snatching the bag from him. “Because I’m hungry enough that it actually might work.”
“Definitely the sorriest muffin I’ve ever eaten,” Benny said with a little humor. “Eat up, Wags. We’ve got to drive to the spot, blow up two paddleboards, and make sure the coordinates are right.”
“Chop-chop,” Seb said, clapping his hands twice before pullingdown his sunglasses over his eyes. “Let’s find Mabel’s rings so we can get back home.”
I couldn’t agree more.
When we ate and got everything loaded, Benny took a quiet county road that curved through the woods until they opened up to flat marshland farther east. The place we wanted to drop into the river was halfway between Sleeping Bear Dunes and Traverse City, and the Land Rover’s GPS turned glitchy. Too rural, I supposed. But we had Benny’s portable GPS, and after twenty minutes of driving, we found a tiny dirt road that dead-ended at our river.
“Holy shit, this is where backwoods killers dump their bodies,” Seb remarked when we parked in some underbrush. “Look, tire tracks. Fairly fresh ones. Hope we’re alone out here. Punkin, I’m counting on your warning bark, girl.”
Benny inspected the tracks and dismissed them. No way of knowing exactly how fresh they were, really, and more likely that they were made by people wanting to fish than anyDeliverancetypes. So Seb and Jaz divided the gear we’d be needing into a couple of backpacks. Then we pulled out the hard paddleboards and inflated the others. When we were all ready, Seb found a break in the underbrush with better access to the river. One by one, we put our boards on the shore, stepped onto them, leashed up, and pushed away from the bank, with Punkin joining Seb on the back of his board.
The river wasn’t wide, but it was fairly slow-moving. When I stepped on my board, it took me a second to get my balance. I hadn’t been boarding in a year, and it showed, unlike Jazmine, who was so happy to be back in the water, both arms functioning,that she whooped out a joyous call, loud enough to scare up birds along the riverbanks.
“I’m back, universe!” she shouted. “Let’s do this!”
I pushed off with my paddle and did a quick pivot to get myself going in the right direction, sharing Jazmine’s good mood as air rushed over me. It feltsogood to be moving. I quickly forgot about the chill on my bare legs. And once we were properly on the river, it turned gorgeous, with a canopy of trees bending over the water and dappled morning light coming through. The four of us streaked across the water’s surface, laughing and breathless as we tried to race one another, navigating around rocks and wayward tree branches. Seb and I couldn’t stop grinning at each other like fools. He breezed past me, holding out his arm to grab my ass, and I nearly knocked him with my paddle.
The GPS coordinates of the old military camp were about a mile and a half away. We made good time when the river was straight, but then hit a lot of twists and turns that Jazmine navigated breezily, but the rest of us had to slow down. All in all, it took us about half an hour, and once we rounded one final turn in the river, I spotted the stone tower.
“Look!” I shouted.
“Stone tower, check,” Seb said. “And completely deserted.”
Benny pointed. “Look, on the bank.”
