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The last thing I remembered was reaching across the narrow space between the bunks, where Alvin usually dropped a hand down to poke me in the face, my fingers closing around nothing but memories. Because that was all I had left of him. Memories and that stupid spider…

CHAPTER 33

I’d started running every morning again. But I wasn’t looking for Dee anymore. I was avoiding him. The twat-waffle had made his position perfectly clear. The window was closed. Locked. Probably fucking nailed shut for good measure.

And what happened between us?

Fun. Fun. Fucking fun. That was the word he’d used. Fun.

Like I hadn’t spent half my life loving him. Like I hadn’t handed him pieces of myself I’d never even touched before him. Like lying beneath him, hearing his breathing break against my skin, had been no different from some stupid game we’d played behind the cabins.

So, fine. He wanted distance? I could give him distance.

I’d practically moved out. My shit was gone, minus Sprigey 2.0, but only because I loved torturing the asshole with my beloved darling’s presence.

For the last few nights, I’d been crashing at Trevor and Mason’s cabin. Technically, counselors weren’t supposed to do that. But technically, counselors weren’t supposed to do half the shit that had happened at Camp Dix this summer.

Rules had started feeling more like polite suggestions.

Trevor didn’t ask why I showed up with my pillow tucked beneath my arm and the river that was my face full of snot that first night. Mason didn’t either. They just shifted. Mason climbed into Trevor’s bed and made space for me beneath them.

Trevor had even tossed me one of his blankets. It smelled like that cheap blue laundry detergent they used in the camp washroom but it was the thought that counted and I’d slept better there than I had in days.

Not good. But better.

And yeah, they were kids. Campers. My responsibility. But at some point between Trevor’s gay awakening, our shared church heist, and his boy Mason threatening to throw my glitter high-tops into the lake, they’d become my friends too. That was probably wildly inappropriate according to some counselor handbook nobody had bothered showing me.

I didn’t give a shit. I cared about them. Especially Trevor.

Maybe because I understood him. Every time he smiled after someone had tried to make him feel ashamed, I saw a younger version of myself grinning too loudly so nobody noticed I was bleeding inside. And Mason? That boy was as closeted as Dee—for Trevor’s sake, I hoped it didn’t take fifteen more years for the kid to wake the fuck up.

I was awake enough for everyone right now. So fucking awake my soul burned. I needed to escape the pain. I couldn’t handle seeing Dee anymore. I was convinced I could live out the rest of this camp sentence without seeing his breathtakingly painful face.

Ironic that this fucking punishment definitely hurt me more than anything else I’d ever been given in my “troubled youth” times. I didn’t want to think about Dee. I didn’t want to remember his mouth, his hands, his dick. Nope, certainly not that monster.

Fuck.

So I ran. Same trail. Same old sneakers beating against dirt. Same burn in my lungs and, yep, the same desperate attempt to exhaust myself into not thinking about the man I loved who couldn’t love me back.

It never fucking worked.

The woods were unusually quiet today, though. Just birds and my breathing and the steady crunch of leaves and sticks beneath my shoes.

I checked my watch. 6:17 AM. I’d been out maybe twenty minutes. Another mile and I’d loop back towards the cabins before breakfast just in time to avoid Dee waking up and gathering his group of shitheads.

I rounded the bend near the lake and stopped dead in my tracks. Something was lying on the dock. A towel? Clothes? Trash maybe? Anything. Anything but⁠—

As I got closer, I could see a body and my heart jumped, flashbacks of something similar crashing into my brain and jarring my reality versus my past.

“Trevor?” I stepped closer. This couldn’t be happening again.

He didn’t move and his words from that night swirled in my mind: You’ll make it worse. They’ll kill me next time.

“Trevor?” I was running towards him before I realized I’d started. My knees slammed into the wet boards. “Trevor!”

His skin was pale. His light hair was soaked and plastered across his forehead. His shirt clung to him. No blood this time but mud streaked his arms. There were marks around his wrists. A bruise blooming dark against his cheek. And…

He wasn’t moving.