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My throat tightened. It wasn’t enough. Not anymore. I stared towards the lake beyond the trees. The water was perfectly still. A liar. Just like the man in front of me.

“For what?” I asked, and he didn’t answer.

CHAPTER 36

Iwent for my run, trying my best to turn this last week into anything but shit. The trail behind camp was familiar enough now that I could navigate it half-asleep, and I’d missed my routine.

Past the maintenance shed. Along the narrow path behind the cabins. And down towards the old service road.

The air was so wet and cold mist kept clinging to my skin, making my breath taste like the wet rain. For the first mile, I managed not to think about anything. Then Camp Dix came back to me.

It was almost over…

In a few days, the cabins would be empty. The trails would go quiet. The lake would lose the voices and footsteps while clinging to the memories none of us could fully shake loose. I’d spent the summer pretending I could survive anything as long as I kept moving. But now that the end was near, I couldn’t stop thinking about what waited beyond the gates.

Home. College and my ass-fuck of a father’s disappointment. The same rooms, the same silence, the same life I had been trying not to think about. And Dee?

Dee wouldn’t be there. That was the part I couldn’t force myself to accept.

Without Dee, camp would become another place I’d lost. The jokes, the late-night conversations, the way he could make even the worst day feel bearable—all of it would end when we left. I would go back to being alone with my thoughts, carrying everything that had happened without the one person who’d helped me feel less invisible.

I wonder if he will miss me? The question hurt more than I expected.

Maybe he would move on without giving it much thought. Maybe I was the only one who had let this place become something important, the only one who had let what happened between us become important.

I kept going, trying to outrun the ache gathering beneath my ribs. I told myself I had more time. A few more days. A few more mornings when I could see him. A few more nights when camp still existed and Dee was still close enough for my eyes to find him.

Then I heard a fucking truck. It was funny how sounds could paint a perfect picture without you ever having to see anything.

This thing rolled behind me, the tires grinding over the dirt beneath my feet. It was going too slowly, and I glanced over a shoulder. Dark pickup. Tinted windows. No camp markings.

I kept running, veering off a bit and waving my arm for the twat-waffle to pass. The truck stayed behind me, keeping the engine growling low and steady. My pulse changed and not from the run.

I told myself it was nothing. A delivery. A lost driver. Anything but the thing my body already understood.

I cut left onto the narrower trail where the truck couldn’t follow. For three seconds, I thought I’d lost it. But then two doors slammed somewhere ahead. The sound cracked through the trees, making me stop.

That was my mistake.

A figure stepped between a couple of trunks and another appeared behind me. I backed up, my shoes slipping in the wet leaves. My lungs burned, but the fear was colder than the air, spreading through me with the certainty of a trap closing in on all sides.

“Easy now, boy. We ain’t gonna hurt ya,” one of them said, grinning in a way that told me that’s exactly what they planned to do.

I recognized the voice as Brandon’s father. The man who had called the camp office and spent ten minutes asking what kind of people forced kids to wear dresses.

Like father, like son.

I looked past him. Kyle’s father stood near the hood. Ethan’s father was beside him. And in front of them all was Billy’s mother. Three grown men and a woman. Four furious faces. The truck idled at their backs, exhaust curling white through the trees.

I forced out a laugh. “You drive all the way out here to collect a photo?”

“Nah, for what you did to our sons,” Brandon’s father grunted.

“Your semen demons nearly killed a kid.”

His face twisted, and the woman spoke up. “They’re just boys being boys. Rough-housing is all.”

“No.” I took another step back, and a branch scraped my running jacket. “They made a choice, one that nearly cost another boy his life.”