Meg cracked her knuckles. “You know everything Hannah just told you?”
Lindsey and Nick nodded.
“Fucking forget it.”
This threw Lindsey for a loop. She wasn’t alone. Nick’s eyes had widened.
“Trev and I have been here for ten long weeks. That’s ten weeks of mosquito bites. Ten weeks of Kumbaya. Ten weeks of bug juice.”
Trevor grimaced.
“Bug juice?” Lindsey asked. Jesus, what kind of place was this?
“It’s just Kool-Aid, with, like, extra sugar or some shit.”
“Oh, I thought it was something awful,” Lindsey replied.
“Ten fucking weeks of only bug juice is awful,” Meg said as Trevor grunted in apparent agreement.
Lindsey met Nick’s gaze. He looked just as freaked out as she was.
“Okay,” Meg said, pacing a few steps. “We need to regroup.”
“Sure,” Lindsey said. Talking to Meg was like interacting with a caged animal. “What can Nick and I do to help?”
She caught Nick’s gaze again. He nodded in agreement. He also seemed keen on keeping Meg from some kind of camp counselor meltdown.
“I’m so glad you asked,” Meg said, then turned to Trevor. “See, we’ll be fine. These two have at least half a brain.”
Trevor grunted again—clearly his communication modus operandi.
Meg glanced at the preteen campers. The kids were unloading their packs and sleeping bags off the back of the bus. “Trev and I have enough weed to get us through this last week, and we intend on staying high as a mother fucking kite for the next five days. Got any problem with that?”
“No, no problem,” Lindsey answered.
Nick nodded. “Whatever you say.”
“Perfect. Here’s how this week is going to go. You two are going to follow the schedule. If it says to take the campers to the dock, you’ll take them to the…”
A beat of silence hung in the humid camp air.
“Dock,” Nick offered.
“Yes, the dock!” Meg said, raising her hands to the sky like her prayers had just been answered.
“There’s a bluff.” Meg continued. “Did Hannah mention it to you guys?”
“Yes,” Lindsey answered.
“It’s steep and shallow at the bottom. Do you know what happens when a human falls off a high bluff into shallow water?”
Nick clapped his hands together, making a splat sound.
Trevor gave a nod.
“Yes, and don’t forget night patrol. Your shift is from two a.m. to three-thirty a.m. every night, morning, whatever the hell you want to call it. Do not wake us up. Think of Trev and me like two zombies, minus the brain eating. Our bodies may be in the same cabin with you, but we’re going to be totally and completely checked out.”
Lindsey nodded. If Meg and Trevor planned on being stoned for five days straight, there wouldn’t be much difference between them and a zombie. It was a decent analogy.
“What are we patrolling for?” Nick asked.
Trevor grunted.
“Aren’t you sweet!” Meg patted Nick’s cheek like he was a toddler. “This is a coed sleepaway camp with twelve and thirteen-year-olds. They sneak out in the middle of the night to make out. Your job is to catch them and send them back to their cabin.” Meg raised a hand and paused. “We’re okay with them getting to second base, though. Right, Trev?”
Grunt.
Meg nodded. “You can let them hookup. Just don’t let them get to third base.”
Trevor made another sound and Meg turned her attention to where one of Nick’s boys named Rory and one of Lindsey’s girls, Rachel, were standing together, heads bent and whispering back and forth.
“Keep an eye on those two. Trev’s got great tween hookup radar. He’s called every couple we’ve caught kissing in the bushes.”
Lindsey glanced over at Rory and Rachel. They weren’t doing anything that seemed out of the ordinary to her.
Meg leaned in and lowered her voice. “And don’t mention any of this to Hannah. We’ll tell her you guys are lying and then Langley Park will get banned from Camp Clem.” She turned to Trevor. “Anything else?”
Trevor pointed to the Langley Park flag balled up in Lindsey’s fist.
“Right,” Meg said, narrowing her gaze. “You can slack off on almost everything. Don’t think you need to master pottery or swim across Lake Langhorne. But, do not fuck with capture the flag. That shit is the real deal here.”
Without another word or even a goodbye or a good luck, Meg turned on her heel. Trev followed her into the woods surrounding the camp, and they disappeared into a sea of green.
“Can you believe…” Lindsey started, but Nick was already at the back of the bus grabbing his pack.
Didn’t they just have a moment? She would have sworn they connected over that insane exchange with Meg and Trevor.
He’s had an entire summer to get to know you. Hell, he didn’t even know you were from Maine. Did you think setting foot in Camp Clem would make a difference? The guy’s a jerk! He cares for nobody but himself.
Lindsey shook her head and walked to the back of the bus. Her pack and sleeping bag were laying in the dirt next to the wheel. She was the last to collect her personal items. She looked up at the sky and listened to the squeak of the cots and the rise and fall of preteen voices as the boys and girls chose their bunks inside their respective cabins.
“You don’t want to forget these,” the bus driver said, holding out her camera bag and the package from her mother.
She threw on her pack, nestled the sleeping bag under her arm, and accepted the items.
“Are you ready for the best five days of your life, young lady?” the driver asked.
It hit her like a punch to the gut. In less than a week, she’d be going home—wherever that was.
The sound of Nick’s voice caught her attention. She glanced over at the boys’ cabin. He was assigning the kids to their cots, calling out their names like a Drill Sergeant. He met her gaze through the cabin’s screened windows. No smile. No nod of recognition. He stepped forward and pulled down a window shade, and she was left staring at a tattered, sun-bleached cloth. Was her godmother right? Could Nick just be a prickly pear? Was there kindness inside of him somewhere? She thought she’d glimpsed it, but doubt set in. Who was she to know what was going on inside anyone’s head? She thought she knew her father and all that had come crashing down on her.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and met the bus driver’s gaze. “You bet I’m ready.”
Nick took one last sip of his bug juice. Meg and Trevor were right. It was fucking awful.
The Langley Park campers were on dining hall cleanup duty. Nick eyed the boys and girls as they went from table to table collecting the abandoned dinner plates. He zeroed in on one of his campers. “Hey, Rory,” he called out. “If you keep following Rachel, I’m going to let her pull you around on a leash.”
A red blush crept up the boy’s neck, but Rory kept his chin up. He gave Rachel a sheepish smile then left to go collect glasses from a table at the opposite side of the room.
Lindsey was back in the kitchen with the campers washing dishes. He could hear her singing with the kids—that stupid fruit song again where you fuck with the vowel sounds.
Ba-na-na
Ba-nu-nu
Ba-ni-ni
His grip tightened on the glass. He hated this place already. It wasn’t that the camp was rundown or didn’t offer anything interesting to do. As far as camps go, this one was pretty decent. They had completed a scavenger hunt shortly after they arrived, and he had learned the lay of the land.
Most of the cabins were fanned out along the north and east side of the camp, each backing up to the dense forest. But Langley Park’s Becky and Sawyer cabins were located higher up, near the west side of the camp, closest to the bluff and set apart from the other cabins. The lodge and health clinic were located at the top of the hill near the camp entrance. The
dining hall was at the bottom, perched next to Lake Langhorne. The boathouse was at the far end of the camp tucked between the waterfront and thick Ozark foliage. There were sports fields, tennis courts, a zip line, and a meditation garden—which made him laugh. Lindsey had given him the stink eye for that.
He’d attended summer camps back in Kentucky when he was younger. He knew the drill. He knew the songs. He’d loved those long, carefree summer days. But those memories reminded him of a different time. A life that was light-years away.
Lindsey walked out of the kitchen with a dish towel draped over her shoulder. The kids ran past her in a tangle of whoops and bony elbows. “I told them to go get the flag. They’re excited to play capture the flag.”
Her cheeks were flushed. She’d arranged her hair in a messy bun, exposing the gentle curve of her neck. Chestnut wisps of hair curled against her skin. A sheen of perspiration on her chest drew his gaze to the neckline of her t-shirt where the subtle hints of virgin white lace peeked out against her tanned skin. His chest tightened. His body ached to have her back asleep on his shoulder. The rhythm of her breath. The soft, endearing words she mumbled as she talked in her sleep. And that scent. He wanted to be encased in it, have it wrapped around him like a blanket.
“Did you say something?” he asked. He had to stop this daydreaming shit.
She removed the dish towel and wiped her hands. “Capture the flag starts in about fifteen minutes. I sent the kids to get the flag.” She took a tentative step toward him. “I’ve never played it before. I read the rules, but—”
“It’s not that hard,” he cut in. “Hide the flag. Protect the flag. Get the other team’s flag.”
She looked at the floorboards. “Sure, I’ll see you on the field.”
Fuck!
He ran his hands through his hair. He’d managed to keep everyone at arm’s length this summer. He didn’t want to make any friends. He didn’t want to fucking be there at all. Spending the summer with his great-aunt in Langley Park was his mother’s idea. She had sent him away. She’d wanted him gone. Then his aunt insisted he do something of value with his time. The job as a camp counselor was the icing on the shitstorm of a cake he was forced to live through this summer. Despite behaving like a mute during his interview with the camp director, they still gave him the job. He knew the buckets of money his aunt donated to the Kids’ Camp program over the years had everything to do with him getting hired.
The door to the dining hall creaked open. “Mr. Nick, they’re going to be ringing the bell for capture the flag. Miss Lindsey sent me down to see if you were coming.”
Rory Rogers.
While most of his campers shied away from talking to him, Rory was different. Rory didn’t meet his gaze, but at least he had the balls to come and get him. Christ, he probably seemed a lot like Trevor to his campers. Moody. Mute and grunting. “Rory, tell Miss Lindsey I’m coming.”
Rory gave a quick nod and was off like a shot, running up the hill.
Nick followed behind, but he didn’t run. He was not fucking running to anyone or anything. He didn’t care how much this camp loved their capture the flag. At the top of the hill, he saw the Langley Park campers huddled around Lindsey. Across the field, another group of preteens huddled around a male and female counselor. Hannah Harris stood in the middle of the field holding a stopwatch and a cowbell.
Nick walked up to the cluster of Langley Park kids. Lindsey was holding a torn out page of notebook paper. There were notes scribbled all over a hand-drawn diagram of a square.
She glanced up at him. Those blue-green eyes. Jesus, he couldn’t let himself fall for her. He turned away and crossed his arms.
“Okay, guys,” Lindsey said, turning her attention back to the campers. “The boundaries are marked with red rope. Austin, did you and Andy make the jail?”
“Yeah, Miss Lindsey,” two stalky boys called out in unison. “We made sure it wasn’t close to the flag.”
“Perfect! Everybody knows where the flag is, right?”
Twenty heads nodded in unison.
“Okay, Langley Park,” she said in a shaky voice.
Nick could tell she was bullshitting. She kept looking down at the piece of notebook paper, and she wasn’t smiling her real smile.
“Lucky for us,” Lindsey continued, “this game doesn’t count. Whatever happens, we’re going to learn something useful, and we’ll take all that information into our next game.”
“Hands in,” she said. The kids made a circle and reached their hands into the center. “Nick?” Her eyes were pleading with him.
He shook his head and took a few steps back.
Lindsey had her fake smile back in place. “Langley Park on three!”
The cowbell rang, and total pandemonium broke out. Langley Park kids went running this way and that. Nobody was guarding the flag. Nobody was on the jail. She didn’t even assign offensive or defensive positions. Before he could even blink, Hannah was ringing the cowbell, and the opposing team was high-fiving and fist pumping.
Lindsey called in the Langley Park kids. “Don’t give this game a second thought. Remember—it’s just practice. Now we’ll know what to expect tomorrow.”
The kids nodded, but none of them spoke, disappointment etched on each of their faces.
“Let’s head back to the cabins,” she said, patting kids on the back as they filed past her. She turned and captured him with those blue-green eyes. They cut into him like shards of sea glass, like a thousand tiny slashes into his soul. She didn’t have to speak. Her eyes, wide and shining, said everything.
She followed the kids up the hill and faded into the inky twilight. He blinked. His throat tightened. Jesus Christ, was he about to cry? His father would have gotten one hell of a kick out of that. He let out a ragged breath. The image of Lindsey staring at him, her eyes welling with pain and disappointment was too much to bear.
What the hell was happening to him? Why was he feeling like this?
It hit him like a right hook to the jaw.
She was the first person to make him feel anything in a very long time.
3
Tap, tap. Scratch. Tap, tap, tap.
Lindsey yawned. “Five more minutes, Mom. Can you make eggs for breakfast this morning?”
“I’m not your mother, and I’m not making your breakfast.”
Lindsey scrambled to sit up. She wasn’t at home in Camden, Maine. It took her a moment to orient herself to her surroundings. A chorus of cicada chirps and bullfrog calls hung in the darkness. Her eyes adjusted. She focused on a row of cots lining the opposite side of the room. Camp Clem. Becky Cabin.
“Hey,” came a sharp whisper.
She startled again. Nick was on the other side of the window screen.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Night patrol. Trevor just got in from fuck knows where and pulled me out of bed.”
Lindsey looked over at Meg’s cot. “Meg’s asleep.”
“Yeah, they just got in.”
Lindsey yawned again. “Okay, give me a second.”
She’d slept in her clothes. It seemed like the most reasonable choice. Swinging her legs to the side of the cot, she pulled on her sneakers.
“Hurry up. I’ll be at the door.”
Hurry up? Nick Kincade hadn’t hurried for anything this summer. He’d barely arrived on time and did nothing to help. She’d let a lot slide. She never bothered him when his campers were out of control. In fact, she had engaged more with those boys than he ever did. After ten weeks, she’d bet he didn’t even know all his campers’ names.
Lindsey opened the cabin’s door and closed it gently. She didn’t want to wake the girls. Nick’s back was to her. He was looking up at the sky and hadn’t noticed her arrival. The moon was full and bright tonight, casting him in a silver hue. He was a work of art. All broad shoulders, toned arms, and muscled legs. If he wasn’t such a jerk, she may have asked if she could photograph him. The composition came together in her m
ind. Strong, clean lines. She pictured a close-up shot of his hands gripping a boat oar or twisting a thick length of rope.
She shook her head and pushed the thought aside. “I’m ready,” she whispered.
He turned, and, for a beat, she saw him. The real him. At least, she thought she did. His face wasn’t screwed up into yet another insincere smirk. His gaze wasn’t empty. She parted her lips to say something. I see you. I know you’re not this asshole you’ve been pretending to be all summer. But his next words broke the spell.
“Took you long enough.”
Lindsey crossed her arms. “I’m here now. What are we supposed to patrol?
“Trevor said to walk the perimeter.”
“He said all that?” Lindsey asked.
An amused look crossed Nick’s face. “After he kicked me awake, he made a circular gesture with his hand. I took that to mean that we were supposed to walk around the camp.”
At dinner, Lindsey learned that four other groups were attending Camp Clem this week. That made four other cabin areas and eighty preteen, hormone-crazed campers in addition to their own twenty from Langley Park. This could be a long night.
She followed a step behind Nick into the forest. Despite downed limbs, rocks, and no real path, he was walking at a decent clip.
“For Pete’s sake, slow down!” she whisper-yelled into the darkness.
“For Pete’s sake?” he parroted back, turning to face her. “Is that what they say in fucking Perfectville, USA?”
Lindsey stopped. “Excuse me?”
“You know, where you’re from, Perfectville.”
“What makes you think I’m from anywhere perfect?”
“Perfect camp counselor. Perfect, perky little smile. Perfect little care package from mommy and daddy straight from your perfect white picket fenced house. Or do you live in a log cabin up in Maine?”
Lindsey clenched her fists. Hot irritation pulsed through her body. “You want to know about my perfect life, Nick?”
He crossed his arms.
She took a sharp breath. “My father left us. It turns out, he’s been having an affair with one of his out of town clients. They have a baby together. A child! And he picked them. He moved out in April. He hasn’t even tried to contact me. Not once!”
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 53