He opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a camper wearing flip-flops and a vengeful sunburn. Yikes.
We jumped apart as if we’d been caught doing something wrong. Was this wrong? Yes, it was.
I walked out the door, back to Jack’s cabin, clutching the towel around me for dear life. How stupid. Of course, it couldn’t happen.
Always on my heels, Jack walked with me and tried to talk to me all the way back to his cabin. “Nat, wait up.”
I punched in the door code with ferocity. I didn’t need to hear him reiterate what I already knew. Nearly kissing him again was stupid enough. That kiss was a one-and-done thing. It couldn’t be more. Why had I almost let it happen again?
More mad at myself than at him, I stormed off to his room and shut the door behind me, our universal sign to stay out while the other dressed. I threw on comfy clothes as fast as humanly possible, opened the door, and changed places with him.
He didn’t shut the door completely, still trying to talk to me from the other side. “I’m sorry that you’re upset.”
“Upset?” This man was infuriating. “You’re so hot and cold. One minute, your tongue is down my throat. The next, you can’t imagine the idea of us kissing?”
He opened the door in joggers, yanking a tee over his wet hair. “None of that matters. What matters is that this”—his hands flew wildly between us—“isn’t happening.”
“Can’t happen anymore,” I corrected haplessly as I pushed my way into the room and sat on my bed. He sat across from me and gave me a terse nod. The urge to regain control slammed into me. “You act like I’m begging for it. Believe me when I say this: I’m not.”
“The point is, we will never be a thing.” He said it unflinchingly, and I died a little bit inside. But not enough to stop pressing him.
“Because we’re enemies?” I asked, still not entirely certain what had started the issue between us that had been boiling since day one.
“It’s never going to happen for more reasons than that,” he said, redirecting his gaze to the ceiling.
But it did bring up an interesting question. “What if I don’t want to be enemies with you, Jack?” I asked his back, feeling less angry and more vulnerable.
Nothing made sense. Not his face as we almost kissed again. Not the tension he exuded. His eyes pleaded with me to listen. So I waited for him to start talking.
“I don’t want to be enemies either, princess. But sometimes when I look at you, it’s hard not to remember.”
My heart raced. What was he getting at, and why did he look heartbroken?
“Remember what?” I asked softly.
His face changed from resigned to disappointed. “You’re really going to act like you don’t know?” he asked in disbelief. “You hooked up with my girlfriend last year, Nat.”
Girlfriend? I flipped through my memories of last year like a photo album in my head. Jack had had a girlfriend? And I’d hooked up with her? The only one I’d done anything with was a blip on my radar, a deep kiss that had ended as soon as it had begun. And then she’d ghosted me.
“You were with Gia?” I recalled Gia, pixie-like and fun, then regretful when I’d moved to go further. My heart crumpled as the pieces I should have seen toppled into place.
“Yes, Gia. My girlfriend of two years. Who wasvisiting me.”
I hung my head. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have done that to you, to anyone?—”
His face went from anger to understanding, ending with an, “Oh.”
I let the word sink in. Jack thought I’d broken up his relationship last year, and he’d been angry with me ever since. It was sad. It was heartbreaking. It was… making me clench my fists.
My heart sped up, and I swallowed back tears I didn’t want him to see, before I took a solid breath and spoke as calmly as I could. “So, what you’re saying is, you were wrong about me? And all this time you’ve been putting me through hoops because your ex cheated when I didn’t even know you were together?”
So many things made sense. The way he’d acted since my arrival. The pained look in his eyes after that romantic kiss, a moment neither of us could control. Then there was the distance between his best friend and me.
“Is this why Autumn has only been professional with me?” Autumn hadn’t been rude or even cold, but she’d been closed off. In hindsight, it all made sense and felt night and day from how she’d treated me last year. We’d opened up to each other then. I’d talked with her after Jamie left camp. Now, the idea of her thinking I could be that type of person hurt. Almost as much as it hurt that Jack would think this of me. “Did she know about this?”
“Yeah, but?—”
“Does everyone know?” I sounded so small. It felt like everything was crumbling around me.
