by Dawn Klehr
And there it was. She knew it! Justice had a problem with his dad dating another man. Wasn’t ready? Mmm-hmm. That was code for: my son is homophobic. A star football player at Eastview, he probably couldn’t risk anyone finding out. He had a precious reputation to protect.
It made her furious to think she’d been secretly lusting after him, and his impossibly perfect body, for months. God, she even began to look forward to the days when Stephen brought the family over—or the five times he brought them over—not that she was counting. Not at all. She also hardly ever thought about the time she’d confided in him on that rainy afternoon, before proceeding to cry into the crook of his strong, delicious-smelling neck. She remembered how cool he’d been about it. So kind and sweet, until she saw him again, and he didn’t give her the time of day. Asshole!
But hey, this wasn’t about her. It was about her dad and how he’d been a wreck for a week, now starting to show signs of broken-heart syndrome. Okay, maybe not. He was as healthy as a forty-year-old guy could get, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She sat on the bed and patted the spot next to her, and her dad took it. “Look, I’m not saying I have to play Dr. Drew or anything, I just think you shouldn’t be alone.”
“Rebby, I won’t be alone.” He put his arm around her. “I have a restaurant to open, remember? I’ll be working late, and I don’t want you to be neglected all summer.”
“You can trust me,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. The relationship with her dad was one boundary she never pushed. It was the only real thing she’d ever had.
“That’s not the issue. I do trust you. But you’ve had a lot on your plate all year. Too much. You need to get out of the city. Unplug and unwind.”
“I’m not thirty, Dad. People, and sirens, and noise are comforting to me. Plus, what are you going to do when you run into him?” Stephen was a wine distributor, so they worked with the same people. It was unavoidable that he’d bump into him at some point. And when he did, she couldn’t bear to think about her dad coming home to an empty house.
“Stephen’s switched territories.” Dad slapped his hands on his thighs, like that was that, the answer to all of his troubles. “So he’ll stay on his side of the city, and I’ll stay on mine.”
Rebel met his eyes but remained unconvinced.
“It’ll be okay, I promise,” Dad said with a nervous laugh. She was pretty sure he didn’t believe it, either. “But the issue of camp is nonnegotiable, so get moving. Connor will be here in a few minutes to pick you up.”
Rebel looked up at him again, hurt. He called her friend Connor to take her to camp? That was cold. This was not how today was supposed to go. At the very least, she expected him to drive and see her off. Their road trip to camp had been a tradition every summer, but he was clearly pushing her away, creating distance.
“How’d you work that out?” she asked, since Connor was basically on house arrest for missing curfew last week.
“His parents thought he could stay and visit his grandma in Charlotte after he drops you off.” Dad threw another shirt into the suitcase. “And I thought you’d both like the extra time together.”
That she couldn’t argue with. Being away from Connor was almost as bad as being away from her dad. The drive would give the two some alone time before they had to spend a month incommunicado. Camp Pine Ridge was about as backwoods as you could get. No phones allowed. No Wi-Fi or electronics of any kind. When she was gone, she was really gone.
“Okay,” she conceded, knowing she’d been defeated.
“Plus, you know me with good-byes.” He pulled her in for a kiss. “It’s better to do it in private.”
With hardly a chance to reciprocate, a honk rang out from the street. She jumped, but Dad didn’t miss a beat. Quickly loading up the rest of her bag, he grabbed it, and pushed Rebel out the front door. Meanwhile, she swallowed the lump in her throat, unwilling to admit that maybe she needed him just as much as he needed her, especially this summer.
Outside, Connor waved from behind the wheel and popped the trunk of his MINI Cooper. Dad shoved the suitcase inside, before opening the passenger door. “Thanks for getting my girl off to camp.”
“No problem, Mr. H.,” Connor said, flashing Rebel a sympathetic smile.
Traitor.
Her dad shut the car door once Rebel was safely inside. She lowered the window and said, “I left some notes about the house stuff, you know, before everything happened—garbage pick-up and stuff like that. It’s on the kitchen counter.”
“I’ll be okay, hon. Seriously. I won’t have to see or think about Stephen all summer. The beauty of living on the other side of the city.”
“You sure?” She wasn’t convinced.
“Positive,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “And you do the same. The camp is huge, so you don’t have to spend time with him if you don’t want to…”
Him?
“Who?” she said slowly, sensing something was wrong. Very wrong. “Who are you talking about?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Dad rubbed his jaw, looking guilty as shit. “Stephen loved the idea of camp so much, he signed Justice up.”
“Wha-whaaat?” she stuttered. No, this can’t be happening.
“It’s okay, Rebby. Just stay clear and ignore him. It’ll all be fine.” Her father’s words came out so fast, she barely caught them—exactly what he wanted. He gave her a quick peck on the forehead, threw her Wolf Wilks book in the window, and then signaled to Connor before slapping the hood of the car. “Go, go, go.”
And her friend was speeding away before she had the chance to release any of her choice words on her scheming Daddy. And man, she would’ve. He deserved it, brokenhearted or not.
She thought of ways to escape. Connor was a pushover, and she could talk him into pulling the car over in a matter of seconds, but something stopped her. And as her current situation began to sink in, she had a crazy thought. Maybe, just maybe, this was meant to be.
Well, good. Great. She could handle it. If her dad could stay away when he and Stephen worked in the same industry in the same city, she could stay away from his kid at a summer camp where there were acres and acres of land and water.
The question was, should she stay away?
Mr. Macho, Mr. Perfect, Mr. I-Have-a-Rep-to-Protect (even if it means destroying our fathers’ happiness) would be ripe for the picking. Forget the strip-o-gram. Imagine what she could pull off in thirty days at summer camp.
“I didn’t know about Justice,” Connor said. “I’m sorry. Your dad just seemed so desperate, I couldn’t say no.”
“It’s okay,” she said, staring out the window. Plotting. “It might actually be better this way.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.” She looked at her friend now. “It’s easy to mess with people’s lives when there’s nobody around to make you own your shit. Like Justice did with Stephen and my dad. Well, that’s about to change.”
“Oh no,” Connor said, scrunching up his face like he usually did when Rebel let him in on her machinations.
“Oh yes,” she said, feeling all tingly inside. Yep, she was going to make Justice Brody see the error of his ways.
And she had the entire month to do it.
Chapter Two
Justice
If there was hell on earth, it was spending the summer before senior year at freaking sleep-away camp. For. A. Month.
Justice knew he’d asked for it. The break Coach was making him take from the football team due to his many outbursts throughout the season had pretty much sealed his fate for the summer. Staying in his bedroom all day and using one-syllable words to communicate with his parents didn’t help, either. They’d felt like they had no choice. He’d heard them mumbling behind closed doors on more than one occasion. Despite their divorce two years ago, his dad continued to come over for family dinner a few nights a week. Their therapist said it was a great way to demonstrate a commitment to the family. But in Justice’
s mind? The therapist didn’t know jack. It was nothing more than a reminder of the way things used to be, which only made the situation worse. Though what happened with his parents did teach him to protect himself—after all, people were not who they appeared to be.
And that wasn’t the half of it. The crap he’d had to deal with from the guys on the team after his dad came out sent him on a downward slide to isolation and anger-management classes. It also kept him out of the gym most of the off-season, and when he showed up at summer training, Coach Wright was not pleased.
He couldn’t talk about it with them—Coach or his teammates. God, he could hardly say the words my dad is gay. Nobody prepares a kid for something like that, and whether you’re okay with it or not, it’s a goddamn shock. Just try Googling the subject—all that comes up are resources for parents with gay kids. Not resources for kids with gay parents. Sure, there are people at rallies and parades supporting their parents—people like Rebel, people whose parents didn’t hide this huge secret all of their lives like his dad did. So why couldn’t he be pissed off about it? Why did that make him a bad person? He didn’t have a problem with gay people; he knew what every letter stood for in LGBTQ. He supported marriage equality. But this was his dad for Christ’s sake, and that made a difference.
“You need to get your head right,” Coach told him after pulling him aside at practice. “Get rid of all the damn drama, play your last season, and land that scholarship. They have to be done in that order, which means I don’t want you back here until you can make it through a practice without throwing a punch at one of your teammates or walking off the field because one of the guys tells a little joke. Fix your head and come back for the walk-on tryout in August.”
“Okay, that might sound great in theory, but there’s no way I’ll be ready,” Justice had told him. How was he supposed to walk on for tryouts after taking a few months off? He was already out of shape and rusty, and without summer training, he’d be screwed. Maybe Coach wanted it that way. These days, it was hard to tell who was on his side anymore. Regardless, he needed that scholarship. Now that his dad was mostly out of the picture, who would be around to take care of his mom? That would fall to him, and football was the only way he could help.
“Son, trust me. Your arm isn’t the problem. You could take a year off and walk back on my team. It’s your mind that I’m worried about—it’s what the good schools will be worried about, too. Take care of that head of yours, and I’ll have a place ready for you when you return.”
Not much he could do or say after that, so summer camp it was. And if that wasn’t harsh enough, his dad had the brilliant idea of the co-op bus ride. Apparently a lot of kids from the city went away to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the summer, so Dad thought it’d be easier for him to acclimate to the group if he spent two hours on a stifling, cramped metal box on wheels with the other campers. That’s what they called themselves, campers. The hits kept on coming.
He spread out on the seat so nobody would think about joining him. At least here he could prevent people from invading his personal space, something he hadn’t had enough of this year. Over the past few weeks, he’d come to learn that he liked the quiet.
The ride was calming, especially as they drove north, leaving the city behind. That’s when something very odd began to happen. He actually started to relax. Maybe it was because nobody on this shitty bus knew who he was. He had absolutely no image to protect, no team to carry on his shoulders, and zero risk of anyone finding out about his family. Maybe he could finally chill, instead of gearing up for defense every waking second of the day.
Geez, what was this? Optimism sinking in for the first time…ever. He wasn’t sure, but he kinda liked it.
Of course, there was Rebel to contend with, and she could be a problem. Not her per se, but what she represented—namely his father and their, er, family situation. But she was cool, and it’d be nice to have a friendly face at camp. Well, he hoped she’d be friendly. He hadn’t exactly treated her the best the last time they saw each other.
Speaking of friendly faces…he looked around, admiring several hot girls on the bus. Okay, so this wasn’t so bad. Plus, there was sure to be a crap ton more at the camp. So that’s what he’d focus on.
For the entire ride, it’s exactly what he did.
Before he knew it the bus began to shake, they’d pulled off the Interstate and were now bouncing along the gravel road toward the foothills of the mountains. The road was flanked with pine trees, filling the bus with the fresh scent. The woods were dense, until about two miles in when the trees gave way to an open area of buildings and cabins, stretching out before the shore of what looked to be a large lake.
This would be home for the next month. It was a thought that brought him both dread and relief—right now he couldn’t be sure which one was stronger. Despite his newly found optimism, and affinity for being anonymous, he didn’t do well with people he didn’t know. That’s why the team meant so much to him—or did. They were a built-in support system, and he never had to be alone.
“Nice hanging out with you, bro,” a skinny kid, who’d been taking hits from his inhaler every ten minutes, said as they got off the bus.
Bro? He held in the laugh threatening to escape but remembered it wasn’t so long ago that he’d been just like that awkward kid. Who was he kidding? He was that kid deep down—if people only knew how much, he’d be laughed right off the team. But maybe this summer he could change all that.
“Yeah, you, too,” he said, trying to remember the guy’s name, but coming up with nothing. “See you around.” Justice vaguely remembered their conversation, or the kid’s conversation, for the past hour. He mostly nodded and uttered the occasional mmm and uh-huh.
The best part, though, was not one mention of football during the entire trip.
Justice slung his bag over his shoulder and walked off the bus, taking in his new digs.
Geez, it was bright. The sun was high in the sky and scorching hot. The reflections off the lake made it almost impossible to see. He searched the pocket of his bag for his sunglasses.
There, much better.
The grounds were full of counselors wearing light-blue golf shirts, helping escort the kids to the cabins, parents saying their good-byes, and campers congregating in several small groups. He followed the bus crowd to the welcome table.
Until he spotted her, leaning up against a tree and talking with one of the counselors.
Rebel Hart.
She had him stopping in the middle of the crowd, causing a human traffic jam. Thud, bump, crash. Body parts hurled into his back. He didn’t move, so they veered around him as he watched her. Or gawked. He tried to play it cool but wasn’t sure his act was convincing. And that was always the problem whenever she was near.
It wasn’t that she necessarily stood out. She wasn’t the type of girl that guys would nudge their friends about, salivating like she was a piece of meat they couldn’t wait to sink their teeth into. And he wasn’t the type of guy to act like that anyway. Except for now. Not that he was a Boy Scout where girls were concerned. He had thoughts, plenty of them. But with Rebel, it was different. She was someone…interesting. It’d been that way since he first saw her. They weren’t friends exactly, but they had social studies together once, before their dads had dated, and she always made him smile. Her snarky comments about current events, her passion about injustice, the concert T-shirts she always wore, displaying bands he’d never heard of. She was never afraid to be herself, so unlike him.
Standing just a few feet away, this Rebel seemed a little different. She was the picture of cool and casual, wearing a red flannel shirt and those tiny jeans shorts that all the girls like to wear, which he more than approved of. Her cap of wild black hair stuck up in all directions. That’s when he felt it—the familiar zing that always sparked whenever she was around. The feeling he tried to obliterate whenever it had the guts to show itself.
How had he almost forgotten about
her? Too busy wrapped up in his own world as usual—that’s how. And she was the reason he was here, or at least her dad was, bragging about what a great time Rebel had at camp every year. Somehow he doubted that.
When their dads started dating, and they had “family time” together, Justice quickly became captivated by her. And he did not use words like captivated very often. Read: never. But he and Rebel had a moment—once—before he really thought about the consequences of hitting on his dad’s boyfriend’s daughter—how’s that for a mouthful? Dad and Trevor were getting pretty serious at the time, so if anything happened between him and Rebel, it would’ve been like a major step-cest situation. And hadn’t he given everyone enough to talk about lately?
He’d had about all he could take of being the punch line of every freaking joke in the locker room and the topic of gossip all over school. So he’d sworn to stay away from her.
But now? There was no more Dad and Trevor. No more step-cest potential. Hell, he had absolutely nothing stopping him. In fact, coming to camp may have been his best move yet. He could sure use it after the year he’d had.
Justice made his way toward her tree, until she flashed a death glare in his direction. He immediately assessed the situation. It was second nature. Quick decisions were part of any quarterback’s life, and the way he saw it, she was pissed at him about something. He had three choices: call an audible at the line and change his play, throw the ball away, or run.
Once he met her eyes again, he chose to run.
They’d just have to deal with their situation later, when she wasn’t throwing flaming daggers at him with her eyes. She’d come around. Really, what reason did she have to be pissed at him? He knew it might be a little awkward, but it was their parents who broke up. So, whatever. Get over it.
“Hey,” a voice came from a group of girls near one of the cabins. Now that was more like it. “I hear you’re new.” The tall blonde waved him over.