I shrugged. “I think I have more than enough proof that I’m right.”
Gia narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to be frank here. I think you get emotionally invested in relationships that are wrongfrom the start. We’re a perfect example. It was for the best that we broke up. We weren’t meant to be.”
I tilted my head. She seemed so sure. We’d been having problems for months. We’d hardly communicated about our issues, though. It’d been easier to ignore them. Our original plan had been for her to move here, but she’d changed her mind at some point and had asked me to leave Starlight. I’d hated the idea, but I’d considered it. Deep down, we’d both known that was never going to happen. I loved it here too much. I’d helped build this place. Literally.
But our problems hadn’t stopped there. Gia was kind of immature, even if she was two years older. We’d get in these passive-aggressive fights where we didn’t talk for days, and she wouldn’t answer the phone. She knew I worried about her during these moments, but she kept doing it.
And I was pretty sure she hated the outdoors, which was basically my life.
But Gia’s words had me starting to analyze my past breakups. The woman before Gia had been a commitment-phobe, and I may have convinced her to be in a relationship, one that had epically failed after six months. Then there was the woman who had acted like it was an inconvenience every time I wanted to hang out with her. Preceded by my first love, the one who had liked hanging out with my best friend more than me. There was a smattering of months-long relationships, but none of them had been right.
My brain was starting to hurt.
Gia let out her hands, which she’d been wringing in the silence. “Look, we had a lot of barriers, but I think the biggest thing was that there was no passion. No spark.” The apology in her eyes prevented me from getting defensive. Instead, despite my protesting brain, she made me actually think about whetheror not that was true. “We were more like friends than anything. You know? And I didn’t challenge you. You need that.”
I sighed. Maybe she was right. I wondered if my feelings over the breakup were less about it ending and more about how it was ending. This feeling I had over my treatment of Nat hurt so much more than my and Gia’s breakup, which, in hindsight, was unsettling. Were my feelings for Nat deeper than those I’d had for Gia?
Shit.
No one could argue that there wasn’t a spark between us. If I were looking at our relationship through Gia’s lens, we checked all the boxes. We had passion, she challenged me, and the spark could have lit this entire forest on fire.
I remembered waking up with Nat in my arms and the feeling of the world falling away. With her, I was happy. With her, I felt complete. I’d seen glimpses of possibility when I was with Nat. Like maybe I could be in a relationship. Maybe it just took the right person to prove not all relationships were doomed. I may have been an idiot.
No, scratch that. I was definitely an idiot.
Nat had put herself out there. For me. For the hundredth time, I wished I’d talked to her that night. The way she wore her heart on her sleeve around me proved she trusted me. Maybe that meant she wanted to do this, and the prospect filled me with such an immense joy that I could hardly breathe.
Maybe I still had a chance with her. Maybe it wasn’t too late.
The first barrierto finding Nat came from one of my campers, who didn’t realize they were allergic to bees, and a sting causedtheir hand to swell up. I’d had to run to the office to get an EpiPen and calm them down before Sawyer took them to the hospital.
By the time I got away from my pod, I was sweating.
Then I got a radio call from Azalea asking for help when our commercial ice machine wouldn’t stop spitting out ice cubes.
Followed by another call asking where the hell I was because Hazel needed help with checkout. Normally, there was coverage, but for some reason, they needed me. I figured I’d find Nat in the chaos of today and pull her aside at the very least, but I hadn’t seen her. Which meant I was heading in the direction of her cabin now, in a rush, high on adrenaline.
I could do this. I could fix this.
I was almost to her place when I heard the two words I was tired of hearing today. “Hey, Jack?”
Leo stopped me when I was thirty feet from Nat’s pod. I wanted to get rid of him.
“What’s up, Leo?” The annoyance in my tone must have caught him off guard, because one of his eyebrows quirked.
“Did you happen to submit your monthly expense report? I’m too inundated to strong-arm it from you the day of, like Hazel does.”
No. The priority was begging Nat for forgiveness. And then kissing her. And living happily ever after?
I must have lost my mind.
“No, I didn’t.”
He zeroed in on my tapping foot. “Are you in a hurry or something?”
I stopped instantly. “I’m trying to find Nat.”
“She’s not here. Why do you think Sawyer is handling her end-of-session list? She left. Don’t know why, but I didn’t have time to get it out of Hazel.”
