Chapter 33
TWO WEEKS LATER…
“Y ou’re supposed to pull it tight , Estelle!”
“I am pulling! It’s not my fault I’m small!”
“Rufus, you help her. Who’s got the hammer?”
“I thought you had it.”
“Of course I don’t have it! Why would I be asking for it if I did?”
“Will you idiots stop arguing and get this fastened? Preferably before my arms drop off?”
“Well, I can’t hammer in the tent peg without the hammer. Flora, didn’t you have it last?”
“No, I gave it to Finley. Finley! Where’s the hammer?”
“It’s right—no, wait, it isn’t. Ig, did you take it?”
“How could I possibly have taken it? With my third hand?”
“Right, sorry. Archie, can you— no, don’t let go of the pole! ”
Crash.
“ARCHIE!”
“Do you think we should help them?” Honey murmured to Buck.
He didn’t so much as open his eyes. “They’re building character.”
“That may be so, Buck, but what they’re failing to build is a tent.”
He shrugged, making their hammock sway a little. “I wasn’t planning to sleep in it. Were you?”
She grinned, pillowing her head more comfortably against his shoulder. “I suppose there’s no actual rule that we have to stay in the tents with the kids on campouts.”
“Nope. I checked with Zeph.” His thumb brushed slow, lazy circles against her hip, just under the hem of her t-shirt. “Who do you think lent me this hammock?”
“I was thinking it wasn’t quite your style. Don’t you usually just stretch out on some rocks?”
“Only when I can’t find any thorn bushes.”
“Careful,” she teased him. “Word of this gets out, people will think you’re going soft.”
“Woman, I will show you how soft I’m not going.”
CRASH
“Estelle!” Beth groaned. “Now we have to start all over again!”
“It’s not my fault! You let go before I was ready!”
“I am surrounded ,” Ignatius said, somewhat muffled, “by idiots. ”
“Rufus says that technically, you’re surrounded by canvas.”
“BUCK!” Flora hollered. “IGGY IS STUCK UNDER THE TENT AGAIN!”
“We’d better help them,” Honey murmured to Buck. “Otherwise those tents are going to be collapsing throughout the night.”
He grunted, not moving. “Then the kids will learn from experience.”
“I commend your commitment to education, but I have to point out that this will also mean that they keep waking up.”
Buck growled something under his breath, and started the inelegant process of extracting himself from the hammock.
Even with Buck’s assistance—which mainly consisted of standing back with his hands in his pockets, commenting on the campers’ efforts in increasingly colorful terms—dusk was falling by the time both tents were solidly pitched.
The kids flopped around the campfire, each face glowing with exhausted triumph.
Honey handed out juice boxes, then showed the campers how to cook sausages over the flames.
There was grilled corn on the cob too, and jacket potatoes slow-baked in foil until the skins were crisp and the insides soft and fluffy. Gooey s’mores rounded out the meal.
“All right, kids,” Buck said, when the last bits of melted chocolate had been licked from sticky fingers. “Bedtime.”
The kids were too tired from the day’s adventures to put up more than a token protest. Honey put the girls to bed in one tent, while Buck wrangled the boys into the other.
Sleepy murmurs soon faded to the soft sounds of slumber. In the low glow of the banked fire, Buck and Honey moved around each other in companionable silence, tidying up the campsite and setting things out for the morning.
By the time they climbed back into the hammock Buck had strung between two trees, Honey’s own eyelids were feeling heavy. It was a mild night, but Buck drew up a blanket, tucking it tight around them. She nestled on his chest, listening to the low, steady beat of his heart.
Honey was just drifting off to sleep when his voice rumbled against her ear. “Summer’s over half gone already.”
She’d been trying not to think about that. All her drowsy contentment instantly fled. She opened her eyes, staring up at the leaves rustling above them. Somewhere, an owl called, low and mournful.
She tried to sound upbeat. “Who’d have thought we’d last this long?”
“Yeah.” His hand rested on her shoulder; still now, and heavy. “Honey—”
“Buuuuuuck! I gotta go! Real bad!”
Buck muttered a curse, then lifted his voice. “Why are you telling me? You hear the call of motherloving nature, answer it yourself.”
“But there’s no toilet!” Archie appeared at the side of the hammock, squirming in the universal dance of urgency. “Where am I supposed to go?”
Buck’s chest rose and fell under Honey’s ear in a long sigh. “Archie, we’re in the woods. You’re a bear. Use your initiative.”
Archie considered this. “Oh. Right.”
“Finley, can you go with him, please?” Honey called as Archie trotted away. “Make sure you stay within sight of the tents.”
“Of course, Honey.” Honey heard the rustle of Finley crawling out of the tent. “Archie, wait up!”
“I should probably keep an eye on them, just to be safe,” Honey murmured to Buck. She started to push away from his chest, but he caught her in his arms.
“It’s fine. I’ll keep track of them. Might as well get some use out of this damn freaky hearing for once.” He pulled her back down. “So. Five weeks down. Three to go, because I doubt Conleth’s going to pull a replacement counselor out of his ass at this stage.”
Honey silently blessed Conleth’s unusual ineffectiveness. “He hasn’t given you any updates on that?”
“Haven’t asked, and I think he’s avoiding the topic.
Probably the first time he’s ever failed at anything in his life.
Sometimes I wonder if he was ever really looking.
” He heaved an exasperated sigh. “Motherloving shifters. Even the sharpest of them is a damn romantic at heart. Can’t help playing Cupid. ”
Thank you, Conleth . “We’ll just have to make it through three more weeks, then.”
Three more weeks of sunlit hikes and campfires at dusk. Three more weeks of laughter and silliness and magic. Three more weeks of stolen touches and long, heated nights in Buck’s cabin. She knew it couldn’t last, that the seasons had to turn eventually—but not yet. Not yet.
“Yes.” Buck was silent a moment. “Honey, the end of summer’s coming up fast.”
A muffled giggle came from the girls’ tent, followed by a piercing whisper: “We’re supposed to be sleeping!”
“Come onnnn, Beth,” Estelle’s voice carried clearly even through a layer of canvas. “It’s not a proper campout without a scary story!”
“I know one,” Flora volunteered. “About a guy with hooks for hands.”
“What, like a pirate?” Claire sounded perplexed. “That’s not scary at all.”
“Well, I’ve got one that is.” Estelle dropped her voice dramatically. “Did you know that there’s a real, actual ghost that haunts these very woods?”
“There is not,” Beth objected.
“There is too! I heard it from some of the older kids. They’ve seen it.”
“I know an even scarier story,” Buck said loudly before the argument could escalate further. “About a cranky counselor who can hear your every motherloving word. ”
Instant silence.
“Is there a real, actual ghost who haunts these very woods?” Honey whispered.
“In this place? Nothing would surprise me.” He dropped his head back. “So, have you been thinking about it too?”
“What, the real, actual ghost?”
“Damn it, woman. You know full well what I mean. The other thing.”
“I know.” She sighed, watching the faint flash of fireflies drift overhead like phantom stars. “Do we really have to talk about it?”
“I think we do. Honey, we only have three more weeks.”
I am not going to cry. I am not going to cry.
“Can’t we just live in the moment?” Her hand tightened in his staff t-shirt, holding on even though she knew she had to let go eventually. “Pretend that this doesn’t have to end?”
Buck had gone very still underneath her. She held her breath, waiting for his response.
Gently, he turned, so that they were side by side, facing each other. Honey tilted her chin up, searching his shadowed face. Even practically nose-to-nose, she couldn’t make out his expression.
“Honey,” he said softly. “Who says that this has to end?”
“Buck!” Ignatius’s aggrieved voice cut through the stillness like a buzz saw. “Shouldn’t Finley and Archie be back by now?”
“Oh, for the love of dog,” Buck growled. The hammock swayed as he sat up. “Archie! If you’re pissing around out there, it had better be literally!”
There was the hasty scuffle of pants being quickly pulled back up. “Just finishing!”
“Sorry, Buck!” Finley called. As the boys returned to their tent, he whispered, “I told you not to try to cover that grizzly’s scent mark.”
“Archie!” Claire said from the girls’ tent. “Gross!”
“I wasn’t doing anything!” Archie’s protest of innocence would have been a lot more convincing if he hadn’t followed it up with a muttered, “I could have covered it, if you’d agreed to lift me up higher.”
“Archie, there are limits on my friendship.”
“Some of us are trying to sleep .” A rustling sound, as of an aggrieved dragon shifter turning over and stuffing his head under a pillow. “You disgusting savages. ”
“ The next person who makes a noise,” Buck announced to the world in general, “gets dragged out of their sleeping bag at four in the morning to run a lap round the field while belting out an enthusiastic chorus of Puff the Motherloving Dragon.”
A pause.
“I don’t know that one,” Claire whispered to the other girls.
“Then you’ll be getting up at the asscrack of dawn every morning until you do,” Buck growled. “Heads down, eyes closed, mouths shut. Now.”
The silence took on the specific texture of six children carefully not making a sound. Honey didn’t dare speak, though for very different reasons. Her heart thundered in her ears.
Buck remained sitting bolt upright for a moment, glaring in the direction of the tents. Muttering under his breath, he slid back down, gathering her in his arms again. They both lay still, neither daring to speak, as the children’s pointed silence turned into the more natural sounds of slumber.