by Meg Harding
Once they’re all there and two new family groups have joined them, they pile onto yet another bus.
One of the men getting on—tall, brown-haired, and bearded—flicks Laurence in the middle of the forehead when he walks by. “I’m going to kick your ass,” he says and goes to take a seat at the back.
Aaron turns to Jackson for an explanation as Laurence rubs at his forehead and mumbles.
Jackson sighs. “That’s our cousin Charlie. Laurence, many years ago in a clay pigeon shooting contest, shot Charlie in the ass.”
Laurence turns in his seat. “I didn’t do it on purpose, and I said I was sorry!”
“Charlie didn’t feel very forgiving. Still doesn’t, I guess.”
Denver chimes in. “It was Charlie’s first time playing with the adults.”
Marcy’s snickering, trying to hold back peals of laughter, no doubt. Aaron would be inclined to giggle if he wasn’t worried about Laurence accidentally shooting him. A paintball will do less damage, by far, but it still won’t feel pleasant. He eyes Laurence warily.
“I haven’t shot anyone since!” He throws up his hands and faces forward with a huff.
Aaron doesn’t find those words all that comforting. He’s even less comforted when he sees Laurence actually handling the paintball gun. “We’re all going to get taken out by him, aren’t we?” he asks Jackson in a whisper.
All he gets in answer is a snort.
The course is set on ten acres of Hawaiian forest, with obstacles and bunkers built in to aid what’s already naturally there. They’ve got three hours to chase each other around and try to eliminate the opposing teams. The point system works the same as the day before. All they need is one hit to be out, and when that happens they can retreat back to the start and watch the game on the monitors set up in the little hut outside the forest. They’re all hooked up with mics, and there are cameras on the trees, so if they get lost, someone should be able to direct them back.
Aaron’s really fond of the “should be able.” He thinks it’s very reassuring.
A guide leads each team through the woods to show them where their team bunker is, and then he leaves them there. The bunkers are fully stocked with ammunition.
James stares after his retreating back. “Does that mean we start now?”
“I think so,” says Tristan. He disappears into the bunker. “I wonder if they gave us a map.”
“Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose to tell us where the other teams are?” asks Georgina.
“Probably. But you never know.”
They wait around till he emerges, shaking his head. “No map. I think we just go for it.”
It’s easily agreed that they should split into pairs, and Aaron and Jackson wander off in a random direction. Jackson looks surprisingly at home in the gear and with the paintball gun held confidently in his hands.
“Have you played before?” he asks quietly.
Jackson nods. “We do stuff like this on days off from filming sometimes. It’s a good way to loosen up and get everyone to have fun. What about you?”
“Used to in college,” he replies. “It’s been a while.”
It’s ages before they encounter anyone else. Aaron feels like he’s taking a leisurely stroll through the woods rather than playing a game. They hear the crunch of footsteps over the underbrush and duck for cover behind two wide trees. Their bodies are easily concealed by the ginormous width. Aaron crouches down, not able to see Jackson from his angle but at a better advantage to aim.
The two guys who emerge are twins, with pitch-black hair and their guns up and ready. Aaron vaguely recalls Jackson saying they are—of course—cousins. Apparently he has thousands of them.
He waits till they’re closer, and then he shoots.
Everything becomes a little less like a sightseeing walk after that. Turns out that the two of them were front men for a group of four others hiding behind them, and what follows is a lot of running and dodging and a fair bit of shouting. Fleeing through the woods isn’t all that easy. While the trees make good cover, they also serve to provide obstacles. There’s a lot of stumbling over protruding roots and banging into low hanging branches as they take sharp turns.
They don’t really have a destination in mind.
Jackson’s foot catches on a fallen branch, and he starts to tilt forward. Aaron reacts on instinct and grabs the back of his shirt, hauling him up. The smile Jackson gives him is mesmerizing. Jackson has two deep dimples, one on either side, and when he smiles, his whole face looks animated.
It’s too much of a distraction, leaves him frozen in place. Several paintballs slam into his backside, hitting his thighs and calves, his back, and one even hits his right buttcheek. He holds his gun up in surrender. That was a bit of overkill, don’t they think? Jackson’s still standing there, staring at him in shock. His body is blocked by Aaron’s.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks him. “Run!”
Jackson takes off, and Aaron turns to berate Jackson’s extended family for thinking it was necessary to shoot him so many times.
THEIR TEAM comes in second, but Jackson manages to shoot Charlie before he can do any damage to Laurence, so he’s counting it as a minor victory. He searches out Aaron when it’s over and plasters himself along his side. Aaron’s arm automatically goes around him. He’s never particularly cared for doing this, found it too cloying, but he doesn’t mind it as much with Aaron.
“Thanks for taking those hits,” he says, tilting his head up to make eye contact. Aaron has the prettiest brown eyes. They’re so dark, the irises finely striated. If he wants to have a fling and nothing more, he probably shouldn’t be thinking about how he could get lost in them.
Aaron laughs. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I should be congratulating you for not getting hit till the last few minutes.” He nods at the monitors. “You’ve got some impressive moves.”
Jackson has to resist the urge to squirm, knowing that Aaron was watching him play the game. He tripped a couple of times. Not at all graceful, and he completely forgot about the cameras.
Despite the air-conditioning in the building, Jackson’s starting to overheat. Aaron runs hot. He reluctantly pulls away but makes sure to stand close. “I was thinking,” he says—he hadn’t been, he’s making this up on the fly—fidgeting. “Why don’t we go out and do something touristy when we get back? They do glass-bottom boats here. We could go out over one of the reefs?” The sun won’t be going down for a while yet. They’ve got time before they need to be back for dinner.
Now that he knows what he wants, he’d like to get it in the open, to make it happen before he can second-guess himself. He’d like this to not be something he thinks to death before it can even happen.
“That would be nice. Are any of your siblings coming?”
Jackson starts to shake his head, “no” halfway out of his mouth.
Georgina interrupts. “Coming where?”
Jackson holds back a groan of annoyance as Aaron says, “He was thinking about going on a glass-bottom boat tour of one of the reefs.”
“Ooo, that sounds fun,” says Dorian. “We can all go!”
If he was alone, his head would be in his hands, and he’d be releasing a short scream of frustration. That is not at all what he wanted. He’s going to have to be more precise with his wording next time. “Just you and me” is going to be a phrase he crams into his proposal.
When they start to head out to the bus, he catches Bastien’s sympathetic look. Jackson shakes his head ruefully, and his gaze dips down. There’s a massive purple bruise blooming over his collarbone. His brother keeps looking at it in concern, trying to touch it, and Bastien continuously bats his hand away.
Jackson got shot twice at the same time, once in the join of his elbow—he has no clue how that was accomplished, but now it hurts to bend his arm—and once on his hip. Once they’re seated and the bus is rolling, he extends his arm as if he’s examining the mark and sighs, disgruntled.
/> He hears Bastien snort from behind him.
But it does what he wants it to, so Bastien can shut up. Aaron’s gaze goes right to the mark, and he hisses in a breath of sympathy. “Ouch,” he says. “That can’t feel great.” He reaches out, fingers barely brushing over the mottled flesh. “We can pick up an ice pack before we go out.” He appears to be genuinely concerned. Warmth bubbles in Jackson’s stomach, and he fights back the pleased smile that’s tugging at his facial muscles.
He might not get to act on his decision today, but there’s always tomorrow.
Chapter Seven
AARON WAKES to the smell of sizzling bacon, what he suspects are chocolate-chip pancakes baking, and eggs. He’s also the only one in the bed. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he wanders into the main area to find Jackson in the kitchen. Both of Jackson’s brothers are on the couch, looking at him like he’s an apparition. Aaron doesn’t think he’s going to get an explanation from them.
He scratches at his stomach and walks over. Jackson doesn’t even turn around when he says “Coffee’s over there” and points to the left-hand side of the counter. It’s made exactly how he likes it. Aaron takes a deep draw and lets the sleep fog scatter from his mind. Something is up with Jackson, and he doesn’t need the twins’ confounded looks to tell him that.
The man has gone from shy and awkward to bubbly and touchy in no time. He’s nothing but smiles, and he touches Aaron at every opportunity. He practically sat on Aaron’s lap on the glass-bottom boat tour the evening before. Every time he spoke, his breath fluttered over Aaron’s sun-warmed skin. Aaron specializes in people. He knows flirting when he sees it, and Jackson is definitely flirting. Not at all subtly. There’s a naïve part of him that likes to think Jackson is coming out of his shell and he’s just that good that he accomplished it so quickly. But he’s been around the block. He knows that’s not it.
He just doesn’t know what it is.
This breakfast only confirms that something is going on. He now knows why last night at the grocery store, Jackson was so nosy about what Aaron likes to eat. He wonders if this is some excessive way of paying him back for pretending to date him. That explanation doesn’t feel right, though.
He props his hip against the counter. “I didn’t know you cooked,” he says conversationally. He got the impression that out of the siblings, only James really did.
Jackson shrugs, smiling sheepishly. “I do sometimes.”
“When the cow jumps over the moon,” says Denver.
Jackson blushes, glaring fiercely at him. “I know how to cook,” he mutters. Louder, he says, “We can all cook. Some of us just do it more often than others. I’m out a lot, so I tend to eat prepared meals or takeout.” He expertly flips a perfectly round pancake. There’s already a plate stacked high with them beside the stove. “How many do you want?”
Aaron looks at the large amount of bacon and eggs cooking on the other burners. “I’ll start with four?” They’re really thick. It makes him think of the proper pancake stacks old-school diners serve.
“Help yourself,” says Jackson, nodding at the ready pile. “I’ve got a bit more batter left, so there’ll be leftovers even if you want more. The bacon and eggs will be done in a sec.”
Dorian and Denver have snuck closer while they talked, and Dorian attempts to slide a pancake onto one of the set-out plates. Jackson swats his hand with the spatula. It makes a loud slapping noise.
“Aaron gets to go first. He’s the guest.”
Dorian stares down at his now-red, and no-doubt smarting, hand. “Did you really just smack me?”
“Do you really not have manners?”
Aaron takes some pancakes before a fight can break out and they all end up on the floor. He’ll work on figuring out Jackson once he’s had some food. His dad always tells him that he should never try to do hard thinking on an empty stomach. He drizzles a hefty amount of maple syrup over his stack and takes a large bite.
“Ungh.” It’s so good.
There’s a clatter, and he glances up to see that Jackson’s dropped the spatula on the floor. He’s bent over retrieving it, plump butt waving in the air, and both of his brothers are smirking.
“Did you burn yourself?”
“No,” says Jackson, his cheeks and the tip of his ears glowing. “Just clumsy.”
When he’s done with his June Cleaver impression, Jackson takes a seat beside him with his own full plate of pancakes and eggs, and they all eat together. Jackson’s knee bumps against his. They reach for the syrup at the same time. Their arms brush.
Aaron’s got an inkling of what might be going on, but he hopes he’s wrong. He can ignore his own feelings. But Jackson’s too…? His self-control is good, but if Jackson starts trying to chip at it, it’s going to tumble like a house of cards.
“So do you like it?” Jackson asks after a little. There’s something to his tone that makes Aaron think he’s asking more because he wants to fill the silence rather than because he wants reassurance the food he made is great. Which should be pretty obvious. Aaron’s already gotten up for seconds.
“You’re a really good cook.” He means it. He has a hard time believing Jackson only cooks every now and then.
Jackson beams, and while he doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the meal, he looks incredibly smug.
Aaron’s suspicions deepen.
He pulls Georgina aside before their paddleboard excursion. Apparently they’ll be receiving two hours of lessons and then competing in races against the other teams today. It’s a lot of time spent directly in the sun. He had to badger Jackson into putting on sunscreen. How someone so vain could keep forgetting to put sunscreen on his face, Aaron will never know. But he’s sidetracking himself now.
“I think we’ve got a situation,” he says to Georgina, gaze darting around to make sure no one’s close enough to overhear.
Her blue eyes narrow. “What type of situation?”
“I think your brother likes me,” he says.
She blinks. “Well, isn’t that good? It would be awkward if he didn’t.”
He sighs. “How can I put this in a better way? Jackson’s trying to turn our fake dating into real dating.”
Her long blond hair sashays around her face as she shakes her head. “No way. It’s only the third day! You’re hot, but no offense, I don’t think you’re ‘oh I’ve gotten over the issues I’ve had for a year in three days’ hot.”
Aaron honestly doesn’t know how to respond to that. He runs his hands through his hair. He doesn’t think Jackson has gotten over any of his issues. He thinks Jackson’s decided Aaron might be the solution to some of them.
“He keeps touching me. He’s flirting. He made me breakfast this morning. He does this stuff when no one’s around to see. When he wouldn’t need to be faking it.”
She’s narrowed her eyes so much now that they practically look closed. “He made you breakfast?” she asks slowly. “Fuck,” she mutters, before he can answer. “Fuck, fuck.” She scrubs her hands over her face. “I didn’t expect this. He was supposed to realize that not everyone is scum and get comfortable with himself, and then try to date someone after you!” She groans. Her hands drop, and she props them on her hips. “Keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll think about this, and I’ll talk to you tonight.”
It doesn’t sit right with Aaron, but none of his other options are exactly pretty. This is why he should never do favors for friends.
MUCH LIKE paintball, paddleboarding is something that Jackson has done before and is relatively good at. Technically he doesn’t need the lesson, but it’s a nice refresher either way. And watching his family and Aaron is priceless.
The lessons start out on the beach. It’s the normal run-through of: this is how you stand on the board, and please for the love of god don’t do this with your body or flail your arms. It’s similar to surfing, and Jackson thought—since Aaron lives in California—that he of all people would be fairly adept. And he appears to be so. Up u
ntil they go out on the water for the real lesson.
Everyone keeps falling off their boards anytime a wave rocks them. Jackson doesn’t fall over until he sees his sister take a dive with her feet in the air and her paddle nearly whacking her face. And then it’s only because he’s laughing so hard at her startled squawking. He can see his extended family getting their own lessons, scattered about and covering a good portion of this section of beach. It’s the only reason he’s not concerned about them losing. Apparently no one can grasp the act of balancing.
He’ll admit that the waves in Hawaii are a little rougher than some, but all they have to do to remain upright is shift with the movement. He knows for a fact the twins can surf, so he doesn’t understand the issue.
“It’s the paddle,” says Dorian crankily when he asks. “I don’t know what to do with this paddle.”
Jackson stares. Isn’t it self-explanatory? “You paddle,” he says.
Dorian makes a disgruntled noise. “This is like canoeing. The paddle never does what I want it to. It just keeps unbalancing me.”
He can kind of understand that. He’s been canoeing with the twins before, and the experience ended with the canoe upside down in the lake and the three of them completely soaked and minus several belongings.
Their instructor is busy working with Jackson’s mom and Aaron, correcting their form. Once he can drag his eyes away from the way Aaron’s bronze skin glistens with sweat and water in the sun, he decides that he can try to help the twins.
“Sit on your boards,” he says. If they get the paddling down, they’ll be able to do the rest. He sneaks another look at Aaron. Every muscle in his leg is clearly defined as he braces himself on the board. It makes Jackson’s mouth dry.
“Earth to Jackson,” says Denver. “Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”
His cheeks are hot, but he isn’t sure if it’s from embarrassment or the sun. “He’s my boyfriend for the next two weeks. I think that means I can stare.”