Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
NOAH
W hen my phone’s alarm wakes me, I realize that I’ve wrapped myself around Victoria like a coat. My arm’s tight across her chest, one leg draped over hers, and there are so many other parts of us touching that it short-circuits my brain.
Because it feels even more amazing than I imagined, and I’d give my eye teeth to lie here all day with her.
When she begins to stir, I quickly disentangle myself.
“Sorry,” I whisper, as she turns to face me. “Apparently, I’m a snuggler.” I’m not sorry, though, because if I could spend the rest of my nights tangled up with Victoria, I absolutely would. Judging by the sweet half-smile tucked at the corner of her mouth, she wouldn’t argue.
“It’s okay,” she says, stretching like a cat in a sunbeam. Then she seems to realize where she is, and her eyes widen with alarm.
In one flutter of her lashes, the spell is broken. She’s throwing off the blanket, fumbling to find her boots. Her hair’s barely in its ponytail, and it takes everything in me not to pull it down the rest of the way and run my fingers through it as I draw her back down into these blankets.
No, no. No .
“I need to go,” she whisper-yells, throwing on her rain jacket. She’s a tiny tornado, half-crawling and stumbling around the tent as she tries to gather her things and not step all over me in the process. She’s doing all she can to avoid touching me completely. When I reach out to steady her, she pulls away and topples onto her backside, landing right by my shoulder with an exasperated, “Ooof!” She rolls away as if touching me would actually set her on fire and then lets out an adorable, frustrated little huff as she rights herself again.
She looks frazzled, avoiding my gaze. This would be funny if it wasn’t making me feel like I did something wrong.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says, thrusting my boot onto her foot. Her cheeks turn pink.
“I don’t believe you. Come here.” When I move closer and lean in to kiss her, she shoves her finger against my lips to hold me at bay.
“Freeze, mister,” she says, her voice low. “Bad idea.”
“Whoa,” I say, reaching for her hand. “Slow down and talk to me.”
“We have to get it together,” she says, eyes narrowing. “This never happened.”
My chest tightens. That sounds like regret.
She sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I meant what I said, Valentine. We definitely have unfinished business, and I’m all for unpacking it when we’re off this mountain. But for the next week, we have to be on our best behavior. No touching. No moony eyes. Act like colleagues and nothing more.” She points her finger at me in that bossy way that makes me want to tackle her and bite it. “Better yet, act like you can barely tolerate me.”
I snort. “I do not make moony eyes.”
She gives me an epic eye roll. “Yeah, okay.”
I grin. Maybe I moon a little.
Vic is still on a tear. “Sophie’s going to know something’s up if you don’t dial it back a notch. Or five.”
“And you think you don’t make eyes at me?” I say, edging toward her. “You look at me like I’m a double scoop of ice cream on a blistering summer day.” Not that I mind one bit.
She frowns and chucks my boot at me. “I’m serious, Valentine.”
I stifle a laugh because she’s so dang cute when she’s all riled up. “Okay,” I tell her, holding my hands up. “Whatever you say.”
She huffs like she doesn’t believe me and unzips a corner of the tent flap.
It’s still dark out, but just barely. I find her other boot, which was somehow under my side of the sleeping bag, and hand it to her. While she struggles to get it on, I peek outside. All the kids must be still asleep—there’s no movement at their tents. I can’t quite see all the way to Sophie’s tent, but I don’t see any lights or hear any sound besides the chirping of the morning birds and Vic’s heavy breathing. But there’s the barest bit of orange touching the sky, like tiny tongues of flame.
That means we don’t have much time.
“I’ll go out first, just in case,” I whisper, because someone might be lurking outside my range of sight.
She nods, and I slip out of the tent and do a quick survey of the campground. I’ve just decided it’s clear when I spot movement in the trees, a flash of bright blue twenty yards away.
Sophie. She sees me and waves, and then heads toward me.
I duck my head inside the tent, holding my finger to my lips. Victoria’s eyes go wide.
“Sophie’s coming over,” I whisper. “I’ll distract her so you can get out.”
Victoria bites her lip and nods.
I slip out of the tent, zipping the flap behind me, and stride towards Sophie. “Morning,” I say, heading her off. “Sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” Sophie says. “The rain put me right out. You?” Her eyes are bright, her smile wide.
“Fine,” I tell her. “I was just about to make some coffee but must have left my mug in the car. Take a walk with me?”
“Sure,” she says. “I think the firewood’s in your car, too.”
“Right you are.” I check my jacket pockets when we’re a few steps farther from my tent, hoping my keys are still there. Mercifully, they are.
Sophie starts talking about breakfast, and I hear giggling and chatter coming from inside a few tents. We’re almost to the parking lot, but Vic needs to get out fast—before any kids are up and about.
“You’re in big trouble,” Sophie says.
“What?” I blurt. We’re at the cars now, and I’m fumbling with the key fob to get the doors unlocked. I glance back at my tent, half-expecting to see Victoria frozen like a deer.
“You forgot to put the s’mores stuff away last night,” Sophie says. “When I woke up this morning, two crows were helping themselves to the marshmallows. When I went after them, one flew off with the whole bag.”
“Ha!” I snort out a laugh that sounds completely alien to my ears. Sophie must think I’m even more of a doofus than usual. Or else she knows something’s up. I open the back gate of the car. “Sorry about that,” I tell her. “You want to start the fire and let Vic and me unload the coolers?”
“Sure,” she says with a shrug. “You feeling okay?” Her brown eyes narrow as she studies my face. I think of ice-cold whitewater, mischievous crows, anything but Victoria—because suddenly I’m convinced she’s right and Sophie can read my mind.
“Yeah, fine,” I tell her. “I’m just useless before coffee. You know that.”
Behind her, Victoria slips out of my tent like a ghost. She looks around quickly, then straightens and strides off toward the bathhouse like nothing is out of the ordinary.
Sophie nods. “Tell me about it. I brought some cold coffee just because I can’t wait for boiling water over a fire. I’ve got one in the cooler if you’re desperate.”
“I’d owe you big time,” I say, and that seems to satisfy her. The furrow in her brow disappears as I hand her a bundle of firewood.
When I glance over Sophie’s shoulder, Victoria is gone.
After breakfast, we pack up the campsites in record time. We’ll have to lay everything out to dry once we get back to the institute, but that’s better than having the kids pack up at a snail’s pace after a full day of canoeing. A busy morning of breaking camp and loading cars should be plenty to keep my mind off Victoria.
But it’s not.
All morning, I’ve been trying to forget how perfect she felt curled against me. So far, I’m failing at that task. As a result, I double-salted my oatmeal so it was barely edible, tripped getting out of my tent and nearly brought the whole thing down on top of me, and then tried to start the car with my house key.
Victoria’s short-circuited my brain without even trying.
Sophie’s going on and on about ideas for the dance that we’re throwing for the kids in a few days, and all I can think about is the way Victoria tugged at my hair and pulled me against her, crushing her lips against mine. It left me completely unraveled and dying for more. Each time I look at her, she makes this startled face like she can’t forget it, either.
She was right, though. We can’t do that here. Roxy would have my hide if she found out, and the College of Charleston would fire me in a heartbeat. I just need to hold myself together until camp is over. And I can do that because I know Vic feels the same. When I whispered one week, she smiled, blue eyes glowing with promise. When I said date, she said yes .
Once the cars are full of kids and camping gear, we caravan over to the spot where we’ll pick up our canoes and launch them into a lazy branch of the French Broad River. With no whitewater, this stretch is wide and calm—an ideal spot to take the kids for an easy paddle. And that’s exactly what today should be: easy.
Near the water, two twenty-something guys are waiting by a van with a trailer. They’ve already unloaded our canoes and piled a bunch of life jackets nearby. The put-in is in a finger lake—we’ll paddle around here for a few minutes and get everyone comfortable, and then we’ll head downstream for a few miles to our pick-up point at another finger lake. The young guys introduce themselves as Jerome and Skyler and look like they’ve already spent every day this summer on the river. Jerome’s a tall Black guy with big brown eyes and a wiry frame that you get from swimming and paddling. Skyler’s a shorter white guy with shaggy blond hair, already sporting a tan line from a tee shirt.
While Jerome and Skyler give the kids a safety talk and paddling lesson, I see the first problem: There are seven canoes, but we reserved nine. They’ve subbed in one single-person kayak that looks just slightly bigger than a pool noodle. That means three kids per canoe, just as we planned. But now, instead of Sophie, Vic, and me each having our own canoe, two of us will have to share.
Victoria’s watching the paddling demo with an intense focus. I can’t decide if she’s never picked up a paddle or if she’s determined not to look me in the eye until camp is officially over.
I bite back a smile, relishing the idea that she can’t stop thinking about us, either.
“I should probably take the kayak,” Sophie says, mostly to me. “You’d have to fold yourself up like a pretzel to fit in that, and I’m guessing Victoria might not want to pilot her own boat.”
“In the interest of not drowning,” Vic says, strapping on her life jacket, “I would agree.” She smiles wryly.
“Not that I don’t think you could do it,” Sophie tells her, raising her hands in that way that means surrender. “It’s just tricky to handle that kind of kayak if you’re not used to it, and then there’s the whole rollover factor?—”
“Yeah, I’m good with having a boat buddy,” Victoria says, pursing her lips. “I know my limitations.”
My heart twists as she says that because this woman should never impose limitations on herself. And as soon as we’re alone for real, away from these kids who are slinging paddles around like hockey sticks, I’m going to tell her that until she admits that it’s true.
Sophie claps her on the shoulder and says, “You got this, lady. I bet if you ask nicely, you can sit in the front and let Noah here do all the work.” Sophie shoots me a wink, and the paranoid part of me thinks that somehow, she knows.
Victoria’s eyes widen as if she’s having the same thought. Her cheeks turn a delightful shade of pink as she quickly ducks her head and fidgets with her life jacket for the hundredth time, as if she’s somehow missed one of the three adjustment straps.
I’m a jerk for enjoying watching her blush like that, but I can’t help it. Seeing that heat bloom in her cheeks and spread down to her collarbones makes me think of all the creative ways that I could coax that out of her when we’re a million miles from this place.
I should just go ahead and dunk myself in the ice-cold river because my body already feels like it’s on fire, and sitting in a little canoe with her for the next few hours is going to be torture.
Sophie whistles loud enough to hail a cab all the way from Asheville, and the kids start climbing into their canoes, eager to get going on their adventure.
“Come on,” I tell Vic. “This’ll be fun.” Judging by the way she arches her brow, she’s not convinced.
After some practice paddling and steering, the kids make their way downriver at an easy pace. Sophie’s in the lead, nimble enough in the kayak to keep turning around and coming upstream when she needs to lend encouragement. Victoria and I are in the back, keeping an eye on the stragglers. Perched at the bow, Vic looks ethereal—like one of those carved maidens on the prow of a galleon. Her hair’s in two braids, falling just below her shoulders, and each time she turns her head to speak to me, the sunlight catches the gold of her hair, and I feel like I’m staring at the sun.
I’m at the stern because that’s where the more experienced paddler should sit. It’s the steering position, and it makes logical sense. It also means that for the duration of this trip downriver, I’m staring at Victoria’s back, tracing the line of her sculpted shoulders, the delicate curve of her neck, the way her hips flare out from her waist.
Just like I predicted: torture.
I try to focus instead on the pace she sets, the thwack of her paddle as it slaps the water, occasionally sending a spray of cold water across my face. After a while, she takes off her jacket, revealing a tank top with the world’s tiniest shoulder straps. I sigh, hoping she’ll hit me with a big wave of water soon because now I can see a constellation of freckles on her shoulder blade that I want to trace with my tongue.
Six days left. One hundred and forty-four hours. Then no more pretending.
“You must do this all the time,” Vic says, and I’m snapped out of my fantasy fast enough to have whiplash.
“Do what?” I ask. Apparently, my brain has stopped working entirely.
She looks at me over her shoulder and smiles. If I could burn that seductive image into my memory so it would last forever, I’d trade my soul to do it.
“Canoe,” she says, arching her brow. “Are you getting heatstroke back there?”
No. What I have is so much worse.
I scoff at her teasing. “It’s not hot enough for heatstroke.”
“You’re being weird, Valentine.” She’s more relaxed now that everyone else is focused on the river. Most of the tension has left her lovely shoulders, but I hate that there’s any at all.
“You just caught me daydreaming,” I tell her, lowering my voice. “Can you blame me?”
She turns her head just slightly, and the tips of her ears turn pink.
Her paddle hits the water with an indelicate thwack , sending a splash of water over me. That one might have been intentional.
From a few yards ahead comes a shout, followed by laughter. Two canoes have drifted closer to each other, and the kids are splashing each other with their paddles.
“Easy!” I call to them. “Watch for the rocks!”
Six heads swivel toward me and then turn back to the water. One more tiny splash, and then the kids are back on track. This section of the river is calm but still has spots where the rocks stick up like the worn teeth of giants. Aside from the occasional hollow thump of a collision, the kids are doing a good job of steering and staying on course.
I paddle harder to close the gap between us and the kids so we’re just a few yards from the last boat. More shouting erupts as we come around a bend in the river, and I soon see why: one of the canoes has veered too close to the riverbank on our left.
“Hey y’all,” Victoria shouts. “You need a little help?”
Layla and Priya, at bow and stern, are trying to push off the bank while Derrick, in the middle, paddles on the other side to pull them away. But they’re snagged by a downed tree limb. I steer us over so we’re between their canoe and the bank, where a canopy of low limbs hangs just above our heads.
“We’ll give you a shove,” I tell them. “Get ready to paddle away from shore.” They nod because they learned this maneuver from Jerome and Skylar earlier this morning. “Now!” I tell the kids, and Vic and I push their canoe away from the bank. They paddle hard, and in a few moments, they’re free, full of laughter and high-fives.
Vic uses her paddle to push a brushy limb away from her face while I dig mine into the shallows to pry us away from the bank. It’s all rocky soil here, thick with mountain laurels and scraggly bushes. The foliage is so dense you can barely see daylight through it—just the occasional glint of the silver-white trunks of the river birch.
“Push hard against the shore,” I tell her, and she nods as the muscles in her shoulders flex in that way that pulls my gaze like a magnet. I give us another hard shove as she bats at the low limb again. When we come out from under it, the leaves tickle my neck and something drops onto my shoulder—probably a branch—but when I move to brush it off, it falls into my lap. I see two eyes blinking at me, the flick of a forked tongue—and then the whole world tilts on its axis.
I yelp like a dog smacked with a rolled-up newspaper and feel my heart pound in my throat. There’s not much that I dislike about being in the woods, but snakes are at the top of the list. Even the non-venomous kind, like this one. Black scales, checkered belly, round eyes—this snake is harmless. But it’s five feet long, as big as my forearm, and my lap is the last place I want it to be. Because even rat snakes like this one get bitey when they’re surprised.
Victoria's eyes widen as I leap to my feet. I’m not being mindful of where my weight is, or worried about looking like a fool as I flail my arms and try to get this enormous snake away from my most tender bits.
In slow motion, Victoria stands and reaches for me, shouting, “Wait, freeze!” and makes the unfortunate choice to move her weight in the same direction I do. Our sudden shift tips the canoe and sends us sprawling into the water.
My head goes under, and I feel a shock of cold as my feet find the bottom. When I straighten, I realize that it’s only chest-deep here. Victoria’s standing a few feet away from me, the canoe upside down next to her.
She blinks at me like she can’t believe this is happening, and I search my body for the snake, certain it’s either slithered up my shorts or wrapped itself around my neck, ready to finish drowning me the second it gets a chance. A chorus of shouts cut across the water, and Sophie calls in the distance, telling the kids to stop paddling and drift.
I holler to Sophie that we’re okay and give her a wave. The snake pops out of the water by the canoe and climbs onto it with its freakishly strong serpentine muscles and I have a full-body chill that rattles my bones. With her paddle, Victoria slaps the water by the snake, encouraging it to abandon the canoe and head to the riverbank instead.
When I turn back to her, she’s biting her lip in a downright delicious way that I’ll remember for the next hundred years. I imagine she’s about to blow like a teakettle, but then she sputters out a laugh that’s like sunbeams breaking through storm clouds. Heat blooms in my chest and there are tears in her eyes as her body quakes with laughter. She gasps and lets out an adorable little snort and says, “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything, Valentine. Holy bananas.”
I shake my head because there’s a lot that I fear. Like messing things up with her and never seeing her again. Never hearing this laugh after next week, never again feeling the softness of her lips and her hands tangled in my hair. The way she says Valentine in that light, teasing tone—like she did all those years ago.
“Afraid is a strong word,” I say instead. “But I feel the opposite of fondness.”
She grins as we right the canoe and Sophie hollers to us again, telling us there’s a shallow place just ahead where we can climb back inside.
“This explains so much,” Vic says, teasing. “Like how you always covered your eyes during that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark .”
I shiver because poor, poor Indy. So many snakes.
“And why you refused to watch Anaconda with me,” she says.
“That was a legitimately awful premise for a movie,” I argue.
“It was hilarious!” she cries, still doubled over. “Wait, didn’t your sophomore roommate have a python?”
“Found the dang thing under my pillow one morning,” I mutter. “I hardly slept a wink that year.”
She covers her mouth. “How did I not know this about you? All this time I thought you just didn’t like them. Like, in that way that you despise hairless cats and flip-flops.”
“Ugh. Equally awful.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, straightening her face and holding her hand over her heart. “I’ll protect you from the deadly serpents. I promise.” She grabs our floating water bottles and puts them back in the canoe, trying to hide her grin while I wring the water from my cap.
“That monster could have swallowed me whole,” I argue.
“Yes, behold the fearsome Carolina rat snake,” she says, pointing toward the bank where the snake in question lies sunning on a rock. “You’re lucky to be alive.” She purses her lips again, enjoying this entirely too much.
But her laughter’s contagious, and that knot that’s been lodged in my chest for years is gone.
“Come on, Indy,” she says, one hand on the canoe. “Let’s get you back to safe waters. Here, there be dragons.”
We guide it toward the shallows, where the water’s only knee-deep. I get in first and then hold it steady as Victoria climbs in. We paddle hard to catch up to the kids, who are drifting toward a bend in the river where Sophie’s waiting. Layla’s voice rings across the water as she leads her boat in a spirited rendition of “Islands in the Stream,” which I try not to take as a sign that we’re so transparent that everyone can see what’s growing between us. Layla and Priya belt out the chorus like they’re on Broadway, and honestly, this song has never meant more to me. When we catch up to the group, Victoria pauses to wring out her tank top. It’s still plastered to her curvy frame, along with her hiking pants, and I’m never going to get this image out of my head.
Because Victoria Griffin, even when she’s soaked to the skin with her hiking clothes clinging to her, and her cheeks smudged with silt from the river, is still the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. She keeps saying that she feels out of her depth here, but that’s not how it looks to me. The way she smiles, the way she lights up here—it seems she’s still discovering all the ways she can fit in the world, like maybe she’s still surprising herself.
She’s always been whip-smart and strong, but when she showed up here two weeks ago, she seemed deflated, uncertain. Like she’d been knocked down hard enough to lose her confidence.
But now she’s practically glowing with aplomb.
It’s easy to imagine all the ways we could fit together. I’m letting myself believe what she said about wanting to unpack everything between us after next week, and finding what might come after.
And I really, really can’t wait to see what comes after.
When we’re just a few yards from the group, Sophie calls out, “You good?”
“Yep!” Victoria yells cheerfully. “All good.” She’s still grinning when she turns to me, a genuine smile that lights her up from within, and that cold river water has done nothing to put out this fire that’s raging under my skin.
One more week , I tell myself. You got this.