Chapter 24 Charlie
CHARLIE
I am in SO MUCH TROUBLE. Rosie and I offered to bring ten gallons of nacho cheese to the back-to-school party for the brand-new seniors.
Today, I let Rosie convince me to “borrow” the Johnstons’ backhoe to haul the cheese.
The keys were in it—which probably meant they were fine with other people using it—we’d take care of it, and no one would miss it for the few minutes we were borrowing it.
(According to Rosie.) Anyway, when the flashing police lights came behind us, we panicked and accidentally pushed a button that dumped the hoe part of the backhoe, along with ten gallons of nacho cheese, all over me and Rosie and Uncle Ken, who had come to find us.
Because someone HAD missed the backhoe. And Uncle Ken is the sheriff.
I’m going to smell like nacho cheese for the rest of my life.
Worst of all??? When Bennett picked Rosie up from the station, he saw me and called me the Nachonator. UGH!
Nothing like being called champ to make you feel like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on the pleasantly hot fire burning through your body.
And that answered my question. Bennett was not feeling what I’d been feeling. At least I was in familiar territory. An unrequited crush on my best friend’s older brother? I’d already swum countless laps in that emotional pool.
It was for the best. Imagine. Bennett Forrester falling in love with me.
Me. The girl who partnered with his sister to steal all his aluminum foil and turn his east-facing deck into a tanning dreamscape.
The girl with the tragic backstory—and the current one wasn’t so hot either.
The girl who used to follow him around like an injured animal looking for a home, and maybe never stopped.
I sat and dropped my head onto my knees while I made a mental list of real and fake.
Real: our friendship.
Fake: anything that looked like romantic love.
Real: Bennett catching me before I fell because he wasn’t a jerk.
Fake: Bennett’s fingers on my lips being anything more than fodder for the camera.
Real: Bennett’s touch making my brain lose all thoughts, except how much I wished he’d do it again.
Real: Bennett only thought of me as a friend and would continue to do so.
Case in point? Champ.
I hurriedly dressed after Ben stepped outside to drink his tea, and then I chugged my own lukewarm tea down while we made a plan for the day.
I was going to begin with fishing—which included making my own pole, finding bait, and scouting out the perfect fishing location—while Bennett was going to work on making and setting some small-game traps.
We wouldn’t last long out here if we didn’t get more food in us than berries.
Then, this afternoon, we’d work on a more permanent shelter to get us through the even colder weather heading our way in a few short weeks.
Keeping busy was the right move for getting my head on straight.
We worked in easy silence as we both searched for the supplies we needed. I found the perfect straight stick and shaved it smooth so my fishing line wouldn’t get caught on the bark.
Bennett bit his tongue in concentration as he bent a stick and tied it with a bit of orange paracord. He set his finger on the base of his trap, and the stick was sprung, slamming down on his finger and leaving a small welt. He flung his hand back with a yelp but grinned.
“How’d you learn to do this?” I asked.
“My dad,” he said as he reset the trap. “He used to take us hunting before he left.”
“Did you ever catch anything?”
“Yeah. Dad’s a great hunter, so we always caught something. That’s usually what we ate for that year. Caribou, elk, deer, rabbit, grouse. Even several squirrels to practice our bow hunting.”
I tried not to wrinkle my nose, but it took concentrated effort. I was likely going to have to eat a squirrel out here. I only hoped I was hungry enough when it happened that I wouldn’t have to think about it too much. “Who all went?”
“At first, me, Jules, and Haydn.” Bennett pressed his finger on the stick, testing the tension, and then undid his knot and retied it.
“But Jules always hated hunting. He’d much rather play ball.
And once Haydn discovered girls, the last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of nowhere for a week with his brothers.
“After a while, it was just the two of us. We started researching how to make indigenous traps and experimenting with different materials. I’d read a few books on honoring the land giving thanks, and those trips became … holy.” He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “It sounds stupid.”
“Not to me. I feel that way when I’m scuba diving. Like I’m existing in this liminal space separate from the real world, where anything is possible.” I looked up from my pole and found him watching me closely.
“That’s it. My dad could spend hours talking about everything under the sun and then go days without a word between us.
If I tried to talk, Dad told me I was ruining the moment, and if I wanted to come with him, I was there to listen and not be heard.
” He paused, and blinked a few times. “I totally forgot about that. Anyway, I was a pill on our last trip. I didn’t feel well, and I was missing a party I’d been excited to go to.
I complained the whole time and refused to help my dad do a single thing. ”
Unease settled along my spine. Everything I knew about Orin was that he was manipulative and selfish, and I imagined a young Bennett doing everything he could to please this man he’d clearly idolized.
Bennett focused intensely on his trap. “Dad left right after that.”
He had to know that his dad’s leaving had nothing to do with his very normal-for-that-age attitude. I debated saying it anyway, but it sounded awkward in my mind, no matter how I tried to word it. I settled with, “Did you ever go hunting after he left?”
“It was all too tied in with him,” he said, sounding resigned. Did someone ever get over losing their dad, no matter how he was lost? “Even if I’d been in an okay headspace about it, our mom got sick, and …”
“Adulthood came fast.”
“I was cooking and cleaning, taking her to appointments, making sure the laundry got done and the bills were paid. Escaping to the woods wasn’t within the realm of possibility.”
“Is that when you dropped out of school?”
His hands stilled on his rope, his gaze darting to the cameras. I’d completely forgotten we were being filmed. The idea was sobering. What else might I say or do, forgetting that people could be watching this?
“Haydn needed to work full time to afford everything, and Jules was too young to legally drop out.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but the fact that he would sacrifice so much for his family?
Not a surprise, but so massive it was hard to comprehend the size of it.
“What sounds good for lunch?” he asked, and I knew we were done with the subject for a while.
“A huge, steaming baked potato with salt and butter and sour cream.” My stomach growled.
“How about … berries?”
Any more berries, and I was going to become close and personal acquaintances with the log that was doubling as a toilet seat, and which I had dubbed my Log Loo. “There’s some edible greenery out here. I’ll fish for a bit, and if we don’t get anything, I’ll go foraging.”
We split up, me heading toward the water, and Bennett into the forest. I hunted for a spot where I hoped there’d be good fishing. I’d dug up some grubs on the way to the lake, so I slid one onto the hook and launched it into the water.
Fishing gave my mind plenty of time to wander. Out here, with the wide expanse of space all around me, a bald eagle soaring over my head, and the lazy lap of ever-moving water hitting the rocks at my feet, my problems appeared small. Manageable.
I flipped through each one like they were bills on my mom’s counter—unpleasant, adding up to potential disaster, but also a small part of what made up the whole of our lives.
Greg and I weren’t together anymore. Flip.
Greg accused me of being hard to love. Flip.
I was not going to be Charlotte Miller. Not going to live in a house on the hill. Not marry the boy I’d been with since middle school. Flip. Flip. Flip.
Who was I without Greg?
So many parts of me had rearranged and molded to fit into Greg’s life. Instead of speaking, I’d listened when we were out to dinner with his work friends. No one liked someone who talked too much.
Instead of beaming with pride at every animal I rescued, my joy was tinged with shame, knowing Greg would be upset if he found out.
I minimized anything that wasn’t reflective of the kind of woman the Greg Miller, from the rich family on the hill, would be with.
I’d squeezed myself into the cracks of Greg’s dreams, believing it didn’t matter because it would lead me to the biggest dream of all—belonging.
My emotion overflowed, the salty water streaming down my cheeks expelling my hopes and expectations for the future I’d planned so carefully. I didn’t know what my new future would look like. I had no contingency plans.
“And you don’t need to know yet.” My voice joined the birds singing and the bugs chirping and the whistle of wind drifting through the leaves all around me. For the first time in weeks, genuine peace settled over me.
Hopefully, Bennett had more luck catching something for us to eat than I had. I’d dug up a few freshwater mussels and gathered some lichen so we’d at least have a little something for lunch today if Bennett struck out as well.
I was quite the sight, carrying my pole, a dented pail I’d discovered lodged under a log (now filled with our lunch), the jacket I’d shrugged off when the sun made its first appearance, a camera strapped around my chest, and another one on a selfie stick in front of me.
I trudged up the hill and around the copse of trees hiding our small meadow, stopping in my tracks at the sight that met me.
Bennett Hunter Forrester.
Trying his best to kill me completely dead.
He’d shucked his shirt off and sawed a log he’d set up between two X-shaped stands.
His back was to me, and I could see the muscles in his shoulders flexing as he pushed and pulled the saw back and forth.
The subtle expansion and contraction of his muscles from breathing heavily was mesmerizing.
His golden skin glistened with sweat. He’d pulled his hair back into a bun, which put his firm, whiskered jawline on display.
And he was whistling one of Lia Halifax’s songs. Her new one about velvety lips.
“Oh boy,” I said under my breath, but of course, the camera was going to catch everything. Bennett. My reaction. Maybe even the sound of my heart thumping wildly, since my chest camera was resting right above it.
This was so going viral. How could it not?
Bennett was fantasy personified. A sexy woodsman.
I didn’t know that was a very specific thing I was attracted to until this moment.
Bennett sweaty, his muscles straining, the rhythmic back-and-forth pulling of the saw, his body taut then relaxed. It was alluring. Hypnotic.
He set the saw down as the log split into two, and then wiped at his brow with his forearm. His arm flexed as he—oh no. He grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it over his head. Water sluiced down his back and arms in rivulets.
Dead. I was dead.
My mouth watered. This was why they called them thirst traps.
I leaned against a tree, my knees suddenly weak. I’d never felt like this before. So restless. So ready to fling myself into his sweaty arms and wrap my legs around his waist and—
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
I blinked away the image and grasped for reason. Any reason. Any logic. Scientific, if possible.
Bennett removed his hair tie, shook his hair out, then ran his fingers through it, not helping at all. My temperature shot up a few degrees. Almost like I was getting a fever … almost as if …
I was ovulating.
Thank you, science.
My knees grew even weaker with relief. I’d read that ovulating can make you feel all hot and bothered over simple things, like your teenage crush engaging in manual labor. Shirtless. With a bucket of water nearby.
Terrible timing. Seriously.
I tried to do the math forward from the first day of my last cycle, but Bennett was too distracting. It was the only explanation, though.
I jumped in place to encourage my spicy organs back into serene, vanilla behavior. “Are you guys seeing this? Or is it a berry-induced mirage?” I said to the camera, my voice unnaturally high, as I fanned myself.
Bennett spotted me with a huge grin that made my stomach feel like I’d gone upside down on a roller coaster. “Hey, beautiful!” he called, and I swear, I swear, my ovaries perked up at the endearment. What happened to champ? “I hope with my whole soul you have lunch in that pail.”
Act normal. Act cool. Act like you’re not one surge of hormones away from climbing him. I held up the pail, unaffected and calm. Actress of the freaking year. “Have I got some good news for you.”