Chapter 5
Chapter Five
NOAH
V ictoria Griffin is the last person I’d ever expect to see in a place like this. And really, I never expected to see her again at all.
I can’t decide if this is a dream come true or a nightmare.
But here she is, standing right in front of me, leaning against our rental car in a way that draws my eye directly to her delightfully round hip where her hand is firmly planted. Her lean legs still go on for miles, and I definitely don’t need to be staring at them like this. I can’t help myself, though, because Victoria looks like a goddess. She’s curvier now, with a softness to her that’s like stones polished smooth by a river. Her blonde hair’s brighter, the chic shoulder-length cut drawing my eye straight to her collarbones. When she crosses her arms over her chest, I drag my gaze back up to her face, where her lips are pursed just enough to remind me of how they felt against mine.
When her stormy eyes drift over me, I feel like I’ve been knocked over by a rogue wave.
This camp is a sanctuary for me. It’s a place where I can be myself, do the job I love, and be surrounded by cool kids that leave me feeling inspired. I don’t have to think too hard about what I do here because this is the one place where all the pieces just come together naturally. There aren’t many places where I feel like I belong. Here, I’m an integral part of the system.
But Victoria makes all of that more complicated. I know her—or rather, I used to—but how she’ll affect this program is a mystery. How can she be both a known and unknown variable at the same time? She’s Schrodinger’s cat at summer camp, and my brain doesn’t like this puzzle one bit.
My body, though. That’s another story. It remembers her softness, her warmth, and I’ve already caught myself leaning closer to her twice, like a tide pulled by the moon.
I need to tear my gaze away from those pouty lips and focus on something neutral, like the grass between our feet. I don’t need another thought experiment right now—I need to pull myself together and be a professional.
“Please tell me those aren’t the only shoes you brought,” I say, pointing to her hot pink sneakers. With hardly a scuff on them, they look like they can’t handle terrain more rugged than a sidewalk.
Victoria narrows her eyes at me and says, “Of course not. I also have hiking sandals.”
I groan because she’s way out of her element here and still has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She’s traded the skirt she was wearing earlier for jeans that might as well be painted on her body and a fleece that looks fresh off the rack. It’ll be warm enough to get her through most nights here, but I’d be willing to bet my summer salary that she hasn’t thought to bring a heavy-duty rain jacket or waterproof shoes. These mountains see mild temperatures in June, but at this altitude, the nights can dip into the forties and the rain can be torrential. I know you can’t always judge a book by its cover, but Victoria looks about as at home in the outdoors as a deer would at your dinner party.
We climb into the SUV, and once she fastens her seat belt, I pull out of the parking lot and onto the narrow road that leads down the mountain into Laurel Creek—it’s the nearest town, a twenty-minute drive if you’re not stuck behind awestruck tourists. It’s only quarter past six, but the sun’s already dropped behind the ridge, turning the sky dark and the air chilly.
“You don’t have a good pair of hiking boots?” I ask her, knowing what the answer will be.
“These will be fine,” she says. “They’re like walking on a cloud.”
I grit my teeth. Those shoes don’t have one bit of traction or ankle support. One wrong step on a slippery rock, and she’ll land flat on her perfectly round backside and have a sprained ankle or worse. Most of the trails around here aren’t difficult, but we like to challenge the kids enough so they leave here realizing they’re a lot stronger than they thought they were. But even on the easy trails, this footwear won’t do.
“What are we picking up in town?” she says, staring out the window. It’s like she’s determined to avoid talking to me about anything but the camp—understandable, since things ended so awkwardly for us before. But every time her big blue eyes lock on mine, I want to ask her a hundred questions that don’t have anything to do with the kids or the summer session. Like, why did we never talk after? How could we have given up so quickly? Why did you push me away?
But I don’t ask because her answers might make the next three weeks even more difficult. Some truths are better left buried.
So I focus on driving down the dark, winding road, trying to ignore how I can feel the warmth of her body all the way over here. How each time the breeze blows in through her open window, I can smell that sweet vanilla-citrusy smell that I’d think was a nice perfume if I didn’t know it was one hundred percent Victoria.
The last time I smelled that scent, her hair was falling in my face, and her lips were moving against mine in a way that had nearly stopped my heart. A dozen thoughts were racing through my brain, but the only one that mattered was hell yes, finally , because I’d at last let myself have the one thing I’d been denying that I wanted for so long.
Victoria Griffin.
Holding her had felt amazing, electric, and terrifying. It was like trying to hold on to sunlight, and I’d been a complete idiot to let her go. I’ve thought about that night ten thousand times, and I can still close my eyes and feel the gentle pull of her lips and the warmth of her hands raking through my hair. Her soft curves had pressed into all of my hard edges, and it was no surprise that being with her felt so perfect—because with Vic, I always felt like I belonged.
The tires rumble in the loose gravel, yanking me back to the present. She squeaks with surprise, and I gently pull us off the shoulder and back onto the road.
I swallow hard, pushing that memory of kissing her aside because that’s the last thought I need to have about Victoria right now.
But of course, that one is the most persistent.
“You okay over there?” she says, her hand gripping the dash.
“Thought I saw a deer,” I mutter. “Sorry.” My face is burning up, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurts. Thank goodness it’s already dark outside, so she can’t see the effect she still has on me.
Her side-eye says that she knows full well there was no deer, but she just makes a little Hmm sound as she looks out the window, and that says everything.
“We mostly need some things for the afternoon sports,” I tell her, steering my thoughts back to our errand. “Some frisbees and soccer balls, a few more first-aid kits, some extra toothbrushes and such, because somebody always forgets their toothbrush.”
She snorts. “When I was a kid, I forgot my toothbrush every time I left home. Literally every time.”
My brain oh-so-helpfully reminds me that she forgot it when we took that road trip in college, too. I ended up buying her a goofy kid’s brush with a dinosaur on it as a joke, and a year later, I spotted it perched on the desk in her dorm room. She liked reminders of travel, she’d said, but even then, part of me hoped she was really keeping reminders of us.
“Laurel Creek’s a tiny place,” I tell her. “But there’s a decent pizza restaurant, a grocery, and a general store with the basics. And a roller skating rink that’s a straight-up time capsule from the 70s. You’ve never seen so much neon in one place, I guarantee it.”
Her lip ticks up in a smile, making me wonder if she remembers that time we went skating in college. One of our friends rented the place out for a party, and I only went because Victoria was going. I could barely skate and kept crashing into her, but she always managed to keep me on my feet.
That’s how it was with us, though. She always kept me grounded.
She flips on the radio and scrolls until the static clears. Otis Redding’s crooning about his empty arms, and there’s a tug deep in my chest that only makes me grip the steering wheel harder. Vic always had a soft spot for old soul. When I got a turntable sophomore year, she bought me a stack of old records for my birthday. I still have them all—even the Sam Cooke that skipped.
We drive without speaking the rest of the way down the mountain. Her fingers tap in time to the music, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distance with the evergreens. I want to ask her what she’s thinking, but it seems too intrusive. She’s finally starting to relax around me, and I don’t want to push my luck.
The last time I laid eyes on Victoria, I was twenty-one—a junior at the College of Charleston. She was twenty, and we’d become fast friends. She was hilarious and brilliant and shared my love of campy old horror movies and punk-ska bands. We saw each other every day back then, even though we rarely had classes together. After a few months, I started falling for her—hard—but kept telling myself she was off-limits because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. College was difficult because I felt weird around most people. Everyone called me a loner, but really I was just slow to open up to people I barely knew. I was more comfortable out hiking in the woods than making small talk with people who seemed to only hang out with me until someone more interesting came along. But Victoria didn’t shrug me off like most others did. She made me feel seen right from the get-go. She never indicated she had romantic feelings for me at all—until that one night that blew everything apart. I’ve had a lot of regrets in my life, but that night might be the biggest. If I had a time machine and could only use it once, I’d send myself right back to that spring break at the beach house, drag my sorry younger self into the surf, and talk some sense into him.
“How long have you been doing this?” she asks. We’re headed through town now, where most of the businesses have closed for the night. For a second, I think she means how long have I been wishing I could turn back time, but she’s talking about the summer camp, of course.
It’s misting rain as I pull into the parking lot of the store. It does that a lot here—in summer, the storms can come out of nowhere and soak you to the bone. “Off and on after college,” I say, and when I wince at that last word, I steal a glance at her. She’s biting her lip like she’s been yanked back in time, too.
Is she thinking about that same night, on the beach under the stars? Is she wishing things had gone differently, or that it had never happened at all? Maybe she hasn’t thought about us for one second since that night. Maybe that’s why she seems so uncomfortable now.
Or maybe she remembers how good we were together, too.
“Not this site in particular,” I say, hoping to skim right over college because we don’t need to touch that memory with a ten-foot pole. At least not here, like this, crammed into a giant boat of an SUV that’s about to hold a bunch of kids we’re charged with helping to see the wonders of western North Carolina and all the stars that hang above it. The adult thing to do is address the giant elephant that’s squeezed into the car with us, but right now, that thought is nauseating.
I don’t want to make the next three weeks awkward for Victoria. So I’ll keep my mouth shut and follow her lead. If she doesn’t bring up what happened all those years ago, then I won’t either.
“I was a teaching assistant first, at the home campus in Charleston,” I explain. “And then I did an admin job like Sophie for a couple of years, and they offered me this position. I did biology camps down in Beaufort and the Outer Banks and have been at this site twice. It’s a good one.” I tack on that last part because she still looks uneasy, like she’s considering taking the keys and driving this vehicle at the speed of light until this mountain is a tiny dot in her rearview mirror.
She nods as we get out of the car and head into the store. “Lots of experience, then.” Her tiny frown tells me that detail is more troublesome to her than reassuring.
I shrug. “It’s a pretty easy gig. Make sure everyone has fun, respects each other and the site, and make sure they all come home with ten fingers and toes each night after all the hiking and rafting and whatnot.”
She falls into step next to me, her brows pinched together as if she’s thinking hard.
“Why are you here?” I ask her. “You hate nature.”
“I don’t hate nature,” she says. “Maybe I wanted to challenge myself. To do something new. Different. Is that so strange?”
As we step inside the store and under the bright fluorescent lights, I see her cheeks are flushed. I want to snatch my words out of the air and shove them into my pocket because obviously I don’t know her that well anymore. And I really don’t need to talk about our past. If I’m going to make it through this session, then she needs to be Victoria, a charming stranger and colleague—not the woman who stole my heart before she strode out of my life and slammed the door behind her.
Her jaw clenches as she grabs a shopping cart and heads down the first aisle. “That’s not who I am anymore,” she says, her tone clipped. “I needed a change.”
“A change from what?”
“Everything.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, and the deep furrow in her brow suggests she doesn’t like this line of questioning one bit. There’s a wound there that I shouldn’t poke, even though I’m curious what brought her here, doing a job that’s usually done by college students like Sophie.
And six years ago, she wouldn’t go in the woods with me unless she lost a bet.
She steers the cart toward the center aisle and says, “What’s first on the list?”
“First-aid kits,” I say, wishing there was one big enough to patch us back together. The next few weeks are going to be brutal if we can’t figure out a way to be around each other without feeling like we’re two live wires trying not to cross.
Vic pulls two kinds of first-aid kits from the shelf and holds them up for me to examine. When I nod, she plops them into the cart and continues down the aisle, and I try hard to focus on the list instead of the mesmerizing sway of her hips and the tension that seems to have settled in her shoulders again—likely because of me.
Before long, the cart’s nearly full. After we get through the checkout line and pile everything into the back of the car, she starts to get in the passenger side.
“One more thing,” I tell her.
She freezes, her hand on the door handle, and gives me a wary look.
“Hiking boots,” I say. “For you.”
Her brow lifts in that way that means she thinks she doesn’t need any help.
“Come on. The outfitters over there will have what you need.”
“I told you, these are fine,” she insists.
“Fine for running around in the grass,” I say. “Maybe. But if you go hiking in those, it’s a safety hazard and I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger. Plus, the amount of paperwork we have to fill out for an injury would make your head explode.”
She narrows those big blue eyes at me, and I know she wants to argue because she always hated it when I tried to boss her around—even when I so obviously knew better, in times such as now. But then she sighs and says, “Point taken. You win.”
Not yet, but I’m working on it.
Inside the store, I lead her to the aisle with the hiking boots. There are only a dozen styles to choose from, but these are quality brands that will do the job.
She pulls a boot from the rack with soles thick enough to walk through lava. When she looks at the price sticker, her face scrunches up like she’s bitten into a lemon.
“A good pair will last you for years,” I tell her.
She frowns. “The next three weeks will likely be the most wear they ever get.”
I point to a few that are tough and not too expensive, and she tries them on with minimal complaint.
At last, she settles on a tan pair with green laces and says, “These aren’t terrible.”
“Hang on.” I can tell by the way the toes bend as she walks that the fit’s not right. The snap in each step says they’re too big. I pull another pair from the shelf and motion for her to sit in the chair at the end of the aisle. “Humor me.”
She slips off the too-large pair, and I undo the laces of the smaller boot. When she reaches for it, I kneel in front of her and reach for her foot.
As I cup her heel in my hand, she sucks in a breath. When her teeth sink into her full bottom lip, it sends a tingle from my chest all the way to my hairline. Being on my knees in front of Vic is waking up a whole bunch of feelings that I thought were gone forever.
Willing all my tingly parts to stand down, I force my gaze away from her perfect lips and back to the boots.
“You have to lace them up the right way so you get the support,” I say, holding the shoe as she slips her foot inside. I place her foot on my thigh and tug the laces tight, starting near the toes. When I get to her ankle, I pull the laces gently, showing her how to tighten them just right. “If they slip too much, you’ll get blisters,” I tell her. “And you want them snug enough to support your ankle. I’ll do this one looser so you see what I mean.”
As I tie the other one, I try hard to ignore the heat that washes through me when her foot presses against my thigh. When she stands to test them, her gaze falls so heavy on mine that I feel it deep in my belly. It would be so easy to close this space between us—two steps would do it—and then I could slide my hands along her cheeks and kiss her the way I should have all those years ago.
But I can’t. Because I have to earn her trust again.
After taking a few steps, she nods—though the furrow in her brow tells me she doesn’t want to drop a hundred and fifty dollars on them.
“You’ll thank me when you’re still upright after a full day of walking and your toes are warm and dry, Vic.”
She considers that for a moment and then says, “Fair enough,” with a tight little smile that nearly unravels me. She stumbles a little as she pulls them off and grabs my shoulder to right herself. A current zips along my skin, up to my ears and down to my toes. So much for those old feelings going away, because my body has decided that it very much likes being in close proximity to Victoria. Like a reflex, I drop my hand on her hip to steady her.
That was us back then—our relationship in a nutshell. Something about her was always drawing me closer, and it never occurred to me that I was flying too close to the sun.
Her eyes widen for a split second, and she yanks her hand from my shoulder like she’s touched a hot stovetop.
I try to swallow those feelings because I cannot feel this way about Victoria Griffin. I cannot feel all of this want . She broke my heart once, and she can do it again.
If we’re going to survive the next three weeks together, I need to not fall apart at the seams every time she looks at me. I need to hold myself together.
On the drive back, Victoria’s quiet, as if deep in thought. The moon is nearly full, but it still feels like we’re inside an ink bottle because the thirty-foot evergreens block out the light. That’s what I love about this place, though—it feels like you’re on the edge of the world, yet somehow connected to everything. The forest seems ancient, the sky above infinite, and it feels like even though I’m a tiny, insignificant human, I can make a difference with these kids for just a little while and know that what I do matters.
That’s the feeling that’s most important to me. But tonight, a little voice inside my head comes out of the depths to ask: But is it? Is that what’s most important to you right now?
When Victoria finally speaks again, it’s to ask me more about what to expect from the kids this week. She seems uncomfortable in the silence between us, which makes me wonder exactly what’s rolling around in her head. Usually, her face is a dead giveaway for her feelings—she used to joke that she had no control over her expressions and was incapable of hiding her emotions. But she’s wrong about that. Eighty percent of the time, her face is easy to read. Other times, she’s completely stone-faced. When I first met her, I thought she hated me—but then she cracked a smile as wide as the ocean, and I knew right then that she was someone I needed in my life.
I just didn’t realize how much.
Gravel crunches under the tires as we wend our way up the narrow road to the institute, and each turn winds something in my chest tighter and tighter. It feels so strange being this close to her again—like my heart’s pulling me closer to her and my head’s pushing us apart. She’s doing her friendly chatter now, which she always did when she was extra nervous with other people, but never with me. It makes me feel like a stranger, and that feeling is way worse than the knot that’s been in my stomach since this afternoon.
When I park next to the office, I switch off the engine and turn toward her. I can’t keep up this charade any longer, pretending that our history isn’t lurking around us like a storm cloud.
“So listen,” I say. “I think we should clear the air.” I keep my tone warm and friendly, though the words feel ragged in my mouth. “I expect you have some mixed feelings about being here together, given how things ended between us.”
That furrow in her brow deepens. I’ve hit a nerve, but there’s no backing out now.
“Given how things ended,” she repeats, turning to face me. “That’s one way to say it.”
My whole body tenses when I see the flash of hurt in her eyes. “How would you say it?”
She blinks at me for a moment, like she’s deciding whether she can tell me off and still keep her job. “You completely ghosted me,” she says. “Vanished like Houdini. Or D.B. Cooper. Poof!”
“You kissed me like the world was ending and then bolted,” I counter. “You wouldn’t even talk to me after.”
“I needed to clear my head,” she says, exasperated. “I made myself so vulnerable with you. And felt like I’d made the worst mistake and I didn’t know how to fix it.” She crosses her arms over her chest as if she’s holding herself together. “I was humiliated, and then you disappeared from the face of the earth. With your girlfriend that you kept secret from me.”
“That was a serious error in judgment,” I tell her. “And for what it's worth, she ditched me in Amsterdam when she met some Swedish guy with a platinum credit card and cheekbones that could cut glass.”
“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you?” she asks, her cheeks flaming.
“Not for a minute,” I insist. “Just wanted you to know that karma kicked me square in the balls, and I definitely deserved it.” My attempt at levity is failing because she looks like she wants to hurl those new boots right at my head. “There’s a lot I regret about that string of decisions,” I say. “But mostly, I regret not being honest with you. And not trying harder to fix things between us.”
She narrows her eyes, but that hard line of her lips softens. “You stopped texting me,” she says with a shrug. “I figured you lived happily ever after and forgot about me.”
“Not even close.” I slide my hand over hers, and to my surprise, she doesn’t pull it away. “I could never forget about you. I didn’t try to get in touch anymore because I thought that’s what you wanted.” I swallow hard, thinking of that night on the beach, that kiss that turned the whole world on its side—and that text she sent weeks later that read All good things come to an end, N—leave me be .
There were some other words, but those are the ones that feel tattooed on my heart.
“I never meant to hurt you, Vic. I thought you wanted me to stay away.”
“I just wanted my best friend back,” she says, and I feel gutted.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. “For all of it. Being oblivious, keeping my feelings hidden, not trying harder to make it up to you.” I give her a small shrug. “Your last words to me just felt so final. I was trying to do what you asked.”
Puzzled, she cocks her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“That last text you sent me, telling me to leave you alone. I took you at your word when you said you didn’t want to see me again.”
Her brows pinch together. “I never said that.”
“You did, though.” There’s no way I’m misremembering because at the time, those words were like a knife plunged into my chest. It had seemed so unlike her to cut me off so easily, but there was no mistaking her words—eventually, I convinced myself that there was no way to fix what I’d broken. “I thought if I gave you some space, you might get in touch again when you were ready. But you never did. I just figured I didn’t matter to you anymore. And maybe I deserve that. But I will do anything to make all that up to you.”
“But I—” She shakes her head, pulling her hand away from mine. She looks like she wants to say more, but she’s quiet for a long moment. When she finally turns back to me, her eyes are glassy. “You know what? It doesn’t matter now. We have a job to do. I think it’s best for everyone if we keep our past in the past and focus on making sure the kids have a good time here.” Her tone is cool. She’s building that wall up between us again.
Now I feel like I’ve made a mistake and shouldn’t have poked this wound.
Why do I always make everything between us worse?
“We’re adults,” she goes on. “And people with complicated histories work together all the time. I can handle being colleagues for three weeks if you can.”
Something about the word colleague makes me want to choke. It’s so cold and clinical, the opposite of how we used to be with each other. Back then, I broke her trust—I see that now. It’s a tricky thing, earning back someone’s trust when you’ve lost it. But that’s what I have to do—because I’m not that scared twenty-one-year-old anymore.
“Pretend you don’t know me,” she says, her tone icy.
“What?”
“I think it’s best,” she says. “For the sake of camp, we have no history. We’ve never met before today.”
“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“No.” She reaches for the door handle and gives me a look of disappointment that could burn a hole in my chest. “You said you’d do anything. This is what I’m asking.”
I study her face for a long moment, but she’s unreadable. “If that’s what you want,” I say at last.
She nods once and climbs out of the car.
My pulse pounds in my ears because I never thought I’d see Victoria again, and of course it would happen like this: here, in a camp full of kids, where she’s my co-worker and I have to be a no-nonsense role model and be on my best behavior—when all I really want to do is pick up where we left off and kiss her until we’re both seeing stars.
But clearly, she doesn’t want that.
These three weeks are going to be the death of me.