by Piper Shelly
“Whoever came up with that bullshit?” Tony added.
“It’s common knowledge,” she informed us in a dead-serious tone. “Have you never played this game before?” Then she winked my way.
This girl was impossible. But now my heart was beating in my throat as I waited for Tony’s answer to fall on my head like a house going down.
Tony hesitated, and everyone turned to him with a curious face. He looked at me briefly, then back at Susan and crossed his arms over his chest. “All right, I wouldn’t check the ugly box.”
“Hear, hear!” Ryan turned his head in Liza’s lap so that he could look at Tony. “There are times when you still surprise me, Mitchell.”
“Fuck you, Hunter.” Tony cast him a sneer, shoved a handful of crackers in his face, and rested his head on the log. “I don’t get what all your fuss is about. She looks okay…so what?”
Wait. I shot a dumbstruck look at Tony. Rewind and say that again. Threatened by scabies, he had just announced that I was not ugly. My mouth dropped open. Where had the witch gone? And the Hobbit, for that matter.
“So nothing,” Susan answered him and sent me a conspiratorial smile. “It’s your turn, Tony.”
I cleared my throat and fought to keep my expression calm and under control as we played some more, but the truth was, he’d surprised the hell out of me. I had more than expected him to dismiss the scabies shit and just tell everyone that he thought I looked like a halfling. He was that kind of guy.
With my thoughts still cruising around his last comment, I absently rubbed a chill from my arms.
Simone leaned forward and asked in a low voice, “Are you cold? You should get your hoodie from Susan’s car.”
I was cold. Really cold by now. But my point hadn’t changed at all. “I don’t want to wander through the dark alone,” I whispered back to her. “I’m afraid I’ll never find my way back here.”
Alex, who had just asked Tony truth or dare once more, heard me and apparently thought it a good idea to make me feel better. When Tony picked dare, Alex said, “I dare you to walk back to the cars with Sam, so she can get her sweater.” He flashed a wide grin. “And while you’re at it, bring my Gatorade. It’s in the backseat of my car.”
All muscles in my face gave out. I must have heard wrong. Or so I desperately hoped, as I slowly turned my head to find Tony’s bemused gaze on me. Why was everyone suddenly connecting Tony’s truths and dares with me?
Tony could have totally ignored the dare—tell them he was out of the game and just be happy by the warm fire. I would have done that. But for the third time since we’d come here, he threw me a curve.
“Fine.” That’s what he said.
He got to his feet and disappeared for a moment into his tent, then came out again with a black sweater on and a flashlight in his hand.
When he had Alex’s keys, he headed for the path that Susan and I had hiked through to get here, but after a few steps he stopped and sent me a stern look over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
Eyes wide open, I gulped. I cut an uncertain glance at Liza, but it was Ryan who responded with a subtle nod in Tony’s direction. His encouraging smile made me climb to my feet. Slowly. I stepped over Nick’s outstretched legs and warily walked toward Tony.
“Sam! Keys!”
The jingling bunch was already flying toward me from Susan’s direction when I pivoted, but Tony caught them in front of my face. “C’mon, Summers,” he said, and for once he didn’t sound as grumpy.
We hiked in silence. He was walking so fast, I nearly had to break into a run to follow the small beam of his flashlight. When we arrived at the cars, Tony went for the black Jeep and I tried to work the key into Susan’s ancient car lock. With no flashlight, I had to feel my way, but once I opened the door, a small light came on overhead and lit the interior. From the backseat, I grabbed my hoodie and stuffed my arms into the sleeves as I heard Tony shut and lock Alex’s car. I carefully closed Mater’s door and turned the key in the lock.
“I’m ready,” I said and turned around. But Tony was gone. Alex’s car was dark and deserted.
What? No…he didn’t.
“Anthony?” My whisper barely made it past a throat gone dry with fear.
The small light inside Susan’s old vehicle went out, and I was swallowed by pitch-black darkness. A cold shiver ran through me, and I froze on the sport.
CHAPTER 8
My heart pounded in my ears, a loud roar, drowning out the sounds of the gurgling stream nearby. He’d left me alone?
“Anthony? Where are you?” I whispered so as not to catch the attention of any mad psycho murderer waiting for me in the woods.
Hell, he couldn’t have gone back without me. He wouldn’t be so cruel.
At that moment, I was painfully reminded of Cloey’s spite in front of her parents and when she had later kicked me out of her car. Tony knew I was scared, and yet he was playing with me? All the things he had said and done earlier this afternoon…had they only been for show? Was this his ultimate joke on me?
At this moment I damned him to the flaming depths of hell.
A rustling in the trees to my left made my blood run cold. I took a tiny step back, feeling Mater’s cold metal behind me. Metal and something else.
A body.
My heart froze in my chest and I screamed my head off!
Dropping to the ground, I wrapped my arms over my head for protection. As if that would save my sorry ass.
Laughter rang out above me. A sound I hadn’t heard before but recognized anyway. I should have been relieved, but I couldn’t calm myself. The beam of a flashlight shone in my face shortly before Tony wrapped his fingers around my upper arm and pulled me—still screaming—to my feet, unable to hold the light still with his barking laughter.
“You goddamned bastard!” I shouted at him, hammering my fists against his chest. “You complete ass! I nearly peed my pants, you, you…jerk!” And if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, tears sprang to my eyes.
Now he could barely hold himself upright for laughing as he dodged my slaps. Then, in a move so fast I didn’t see it coming, he grabbed my wrists and twisted me so that he had my back pressed against him in a tight embrace to stop me hitting him. He mumbled meaningless shit into my ear while I was still firing all kinds of curses at him, trying to get my shock under control. Only when his lips brushed my ear did I go still.
“Shh, Sam, stop it. It’s okay. No one’s here to hurt you. I won’t.”
I drew in a few deep breaths, struggling to pull myself together as total astonishment rendered me motionless. His arms were around me. And they felt amazingly gentle. His scent of Axe body-wash overpowered the smell of conifers and moist grass and settled in my head like a tranquilizer.
I allowed my muscles to relax. He wouldn’t hurt me and he hadn’t pulled another joke on me. He’d just gone for a second to…do what?
“Where have you been?” I croaked.
“Went to pee. I didn’t know you’d freak out within ten seconds.” There was still a trace of amusement in his voice, and I didn’t know if I should hate him for it or sink even deeper into his embrace because of it. The feeling was too weird.
His phone rang, and he released me, then handed me the Gatorade.
“What’s up?” he answered, chuckling again. “Nah, she’s just a little jumpy. Everything’s fine,” he assured whoever the caller was and rang off, then tucked the phone back into his pocket.
I nailed him with a death glare in the dark. “Never. Do. That. Again!”
“For someone your height, you have a powerful punch.” Rubbing his sternum, he grimaced in a teasing way. “Let’s go back. They’re worried I lost you in the woods.”
“They heard me?” I whined.
“All Grover Beach probably heard that scream.” He wrapped his fingers briefly around my upper arm and made me move.
When he let go again, I rubbed the spot, which quickly grew cold. Gee, he’d touched me. I rolled
my eyes at myself. But the big deal was, he did it by choice, with no gagging sounds but a small smile I’d seen when I sneaked a look at his face.
Was this his way of making up for being such a dickhead? I couldn’t quite believe it, but if it was, I wouldn’t complain. I liked this Tony much better than the asshole I’d gotten to know in the past few days.
He walked slowly now, and I didn’t have to run to catch up with him. It seemed he wasn’t in a hurry to get back. And with this new side of him shimmering through, neither was I. But my wariness still lingered.
“So, is that you staying away from me?” I asked.
“I honestly intended to,” he confessed in a low voice. “But with those awesome friends of mine, you see how that’s impossible.”
Oh. So nothing had changed in the end. “I’m sorry they forced me on you, Anthony,” I muttered, feeling like…well, frankly, I didn’t know what to feel at all tonight.
He threw his head back, sighing, obviously exasperated. “Good Lord, would you stop calling me Anthony already? You sound like my gran.”
“You told me to call you that.” And it was not a nice memory I connected with it.
“Yes, I did. And now I’m telling you to stop. My name is Tony.” Then he halted and spun me around to look at him. “And you don’t have to be sorry. I didn’t say I didn’t want you to come along, did I?”
“Umm…no.” My eyes grew wide as he planted his hands on my shoulders. I took a small step back.
“So why don’t we just—”
I didn’t hear the rest of it, because the small step back took me over the edge of the river bank. With a hysterical shriek, I lost my footing, tumbled down the small slope, mowing down the weeds, and landed with a splash on my butt in the middle of the stream. Gasping and sputtering, I felt the cold water seep into my clothes, but I couldn’t move for what seemed like forever.
“Sam?” Tony’s anxious voice drifted down to me. The beam of the flashlight traveled systematically around me until it was pointed straight at my face. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, totally perplexed.
I couldn’t see his face because the light was blinding me, but his sudden laughter traveled through the woods. “Oh my God. Would you please get out of there?”
Yeah, like I enjoyed sitting in the cold water. The flashlight jumped about as he made his way down the small slope, then he leaned forward, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my feet. Water dripped from my clothes and my boots had filled up to the brim.
Tony helped me out of the brook and back up to the path. My teeth clattered. I shivered violently. “I—I lost Alex’s Gatorade.”
“I’m sure he’ll survive the night without it.” Tony squeezed the flashlight between two twigs of a bush with the light beam directed at us. “Strip,” he ordered and pulled his sweater over his head. The muscle shirt underneath traveled up over his rippling abs with it, but he adjusted the fabric a moment later.
I stood stiff like the snowman I’d started to become and stared at him with my mouth open.
“What are you waiting for?” Tony asked.
A nervous laugh escaped me. “I’m not getting n-naked.”
“Oh yes, you are. You’re wet to the bones. If I get you back with pneumonia, the others will never let me live it down. So off with your hoodie and shirt.” Then something appeared on his face that I hadn’t seen ever before. A teasing smile. “You can leave your pants on.”
I probably looked like I’d been hit by a stunning spell.
A moment later, he reached out and unzipped my hoodie. I sucked in a breath, but in fact I was too cold to object to anything right now. Until he shoved the hoodie down my arms and grabbed the hem of my T-shirt next.
I caught his wrists with my ice-cold fingers. “Stop!”
He waited.
“All right,” I murmured. “I’ll take it off, but you turn around.” He didn’t have to see the silly Snoopy bra I was wearing tonight.
“Of course.” With a glance skyward, Tony spun around and draped his sweater over one shoulder for me to grab when I was ready.
I yanked off the wet tee and tossed it over his other shoulder, which made him cringe and whine—and made me smile. When I put on his sweater, I had to roll up the cuffs three times to make my hands appear. Oh damn, did it feel good. Cozy, warm, and… “Oh my God, I didn’t know that you actually smell so good,” I said, teasing him by sniffing his collar as he turned around again.
“Yeah, you know, I do take showers every once in a while,” he replied. He looked at me for a couple of seconds and whatever he saw there made him grin. Then he grabbed the flashlight and pulled the hood of his sweater playfully over my head.
He wrung out my clothes, then made me move. We strolled back side by side, with him carrying my wet things. It was only a small act of gentleness, but it didn’t escape me.
While Tony’s sweater kept me warm on top, my legs and feet started to get numb. The thought of the fire was the only thing that kept me walking.
As we reached the campsite and the squeaking of my drenched boots announced our arrival, everyone turned their heads. Liza gasped at the sight of me, Ryan jerked up from his lying position, and Susan jumped to her feet and dashed over to us. “What in the world—”
“She fell into the brook,” Tony broke her off with a dry tone. “And don’t you look at me like that, Miller. I didn’t push her.”
“One can never tell with you,” Susan growled. “Are you all right, Sam?”
“Yeah,” I told her through a grimace. “Just wet from the waist down and awfully cold.”
She let me pass, and I hurried to the campfire. The first gush of warmth that hit me in the face pulled out a moan from me that made everyone laugh. I hunkered by the fire with the hood still up, holding my hands over the blaze. Ah, flaming heaven.
Tony told the others some vague details about my misstep and how I ended up sitting in the stream. I only listened with one ear. The comfortable warmth engrossed me totally.
After a while, I folded my arms around my bent legs. Rocking gently back and forth on my heels, I laid my cheek on my knees.
With my head tilted like this, my gaze landed on Tony, who sat in front of his former log again. We looked at each other for a couple of seconds while the rest talked about something else—soccer, as usual.
Tony said in a very low voice, “Take off your boots.”
He was right, I needed to get out of them. From my dad I knew that keeping on wet shoes for longer than a few hours could do serious damage. I wanted to keep my feet healthy, so I unlaced my boots and slipped my feet out, placing the boots so that the fire could dry them. My socks soon followed. I noticed my left foot was smeared with blood dripping from an injury on my shin. Rolling up the leg, I inspected the wound. It was a nasty cut about two inches long. Numbed from the cold, I hadn’t felt any pain. But it looked like it needed stitches.
I cut a quick glance around to make sure that no one had noticed what had happened to my shin, then I rolled the leg back down. Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all. A pretty little band-aid was probably enough to fix it, I told myself. Whatever the wound needed, it would have to wait until tomorrow. A small cut wasn’t worth destroying everyone’s evening.
Twenty minutes later, my pants were dry and warm like they’d just been ironed on me. Only they smelled like burned weed, as did the rest of me. I slipped into my still-damp boots to hide the blood on my leg from the others before I rose from my comfortable spot by the fire and went looking for my tee and hoodie. Totally forgotten, they hung over Tony’s log with no chance to dry.
“Crap,” I mumbled, gathering them up.
Tony’s gaze moved to the wet bundle in my arms then back at my face. “Keep my sweater on tonight.”
I really didn’t want to, but I knew I was smiling then. Mostly as a response to the corners of his compressed lips lifting slightly. I accepted with a single nod, then followed Susan into our tent as everyone else said goodn
ight and went to sleep, too. With my pants and Tony’s sweater still on, I crawled into my sleeping bag, zipping it up to my chin. The light of the small fire we’d left burning shone through the synthetic tarp, making shadows dance on the walls.
“Did you have a nice time?” Susan whispered next to me.
I tilted my head toward her. “M-hm.”
“So you’re happy you came with us?”
The summary of the evening was that Tony and I had made peace, he’d called me not ugly, and I was wearing his sweater right now. Some progress after a terrible start, I’d say. “Yes,” I whispered back.
A wide grin crept to Susan’s lips. “Welcome to the Bay Sharks, Sam.”
I knew what she meant by it. Everyone had welcomed me into their small circle of friends from the very first day. But it had never felt whole until tonight, when the last of them had let me in, too.
“’Night, Susan,” I said, and snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag, wrapped into a cloud of Tony’s body-wash.
Hard to say how much time had passed when a burning pain in my leg ripped me from a dreamless sleep. I buried my face into the crook of my arm to choke back a gasp.
The cut troubled me over the next couple of hours. Sleep was a thing of the past. I didn’t want to turn on the flashlight and wake Susan, who snored happily in her sleeping bag. The fire had gone out by now, so I was trapped in the pitch-black night. I tried not to whine as the pain grew worse.
When dawn finally crept through the woods, I sneaked outside, slowly going insane with the thumping pressure on my leg.
Closing the zip as quietly as possible, I left a sleeping Susan in the tent. Then I tiptoed away from the camping area. I didn’t expect anyone to be up this early, so I was startled to find Ryan leaning against a tree and Tony lying sprawled in the grass down by the brook, silently chatting.
When Ryan spotted me, a puzzled look appeared on his face. Tony tilted his head back and saw me, too. “Good morning,” they both said in low voices.
“Ugh, hi.” I shifted and angled my body, hoping they wouldn’t notice the huge spot of dried blood on my pants. “How long have you guys been up?”