“And you would love being a dick,” I bit back but regretted the harsh words. “What do you have against horses, anyway?” There had to be a reason behind his clear hatred toward the majestic animals.
“I didn’t grow up going to camps, like most everyone else here.” His voice was quiet, and I waited with bated breath for him to continue. “But I was a Boy Scout. Our troop went to a horse ranch, and it was stupid.” He emitted a soft sigh. “A kid spooked the horse I was learning to ride, and it took off running. I clutched the reins, but I was thrown off anyway. I got a broken arm and a forced apology out of the ordeal when his motherfound out what had happened. I swore I wouldn’t get back on one of those deathtraps if I could help it.”
“That sounds awful.” My heart squeezed for him. I almost hadn’t expected him to answer, and now that he had, I oddly felt the need to keep this conversation alive. “Maybe the reason you can’t sleep is that you read scary books before bed,” I observed.
He lifted his screen back up, his face taking on that soft blue aura again as he turned back to his book. “It’s not. And sleep is overrated.”
I laughed, surprised. “Um, no, it’s one of the best things a human can do.”
“I wouldn’t know.” There was a wistfulness to his tone that I wasn’t used to from him.
“So this is normal for you? Up at all hours?”
“Insomnia is a bitch. But it means I’m up early for bird-watching. Or whatever I’m doing that day.”
I also remembered last year’s admission, when Jack commented about never sleeping more than four hours a night during a game of two truths and a lie. Back then, I’d thought it was an exaggeration, but now I figured that might actually be the case for him. “I’ve never been bird-watching.”
“It’s one of my favorite things to do. That, and yoga, help clear my head. You could probably use something like that,” he suggested.
It surprised me to hear that Jack did yoga when I saw him as more of a lumberjack, but the man clearly contained multitudes.
“I’ve tried meditation, but I couldn’t turn my brain off.” I thought about all the noise in my life and the things I was behind on. I’d never felt settled. There was always something I should be doing.
He paused, as if considering my words. “I hate to offer this, because it always annoys me when someone says it to me, but maybe you could use a break?”
I let him in on a little-known secret. “Let’s just say my running to-do list is a mile long.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve been go, go, go for years. My time out there is the only quiet I usually allow myself.”
“So, what I’m hearing is we’re two completely healthy individuals.”
A puff of a laugh escaped him. “You’re not wrong. But I’ve recently decided to live by a new mantra: that list will always be there tomorrow. And I’m going to adopt it the moment I’m done with your cabin.”
“When you figure out how to do it, you can teach me your ways.”
He nodded softly. “Time for bed, princess. We’ll work on ourselves tomorrow,” he said, turning back to his e-reader.
I smiled to the ceiling and tried to go back to sleep. Tomorrow meant new campers. Even though I worried that sleeping this close to Jack would be impossible, I was out within minutes.
The haulingof debris should not have been this sexy. But unfortunately, not being able to sleep for the couple of days since the storm meant my sleep-deprived brain didn’t get that memo, as the man who’d kept me up the past couple of nights with his constant movement wasted no time getting to work on my mangled cabin.
It had been a few days since the storm. The bad weather had made cleanup difficult, but Jack had done what he could. Things had been tense in the cabin because we were tiptoeing around each other. Every day, I worried about doing or sayingsomething I’d regret. Because, of course, I was getting too familiar and far too close to someone who didn’t like me. That was always going to be a stupid risk that I didn’t need to explore.
Jack worked behind my campers as I sat with my podmates at the Andromeda campfire, just as I did every morning before breakfast. This morning time was usually my chance to talk with campers, to build some camaraderie. It would have been helpful, considering this new cohort of campers was a motley crew of a family that wasn’t getting along, but I kept getting distracted by the sultry view of Jack hauling the large branches out of my cabin.
He’d been friendly as he greeted my podmates and asked them to excuse the noise as he got to work. But when said noises were mostly grunts from swinging an ax to chop branches, combined with the way his T-shirt clung to him, I found myself questioning if this whole display was ethical.
When I heard him hauling what sounded like glass, emotions clogged my throat as I continued to process that night. The fear, pain, and adrenaline. All of it came back in an instant, and then I calmed myself down by remembering how I’d felt oddly safe in his hold.
I’ve got you.
And he hadn’t been lying. I’d felt it in my bones that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. It was as if the imprint of his strong arms had been left on my body. But this fascination with listening to that broad-shouldered, muscled man was so much better than listening to my current pod members bicker, which was what they were dead set on doing.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but by the time Jack pulled the starter cord on a chainsaw, I knew I’d be done for if I watched him lumberjack anymore. It was time for a change of scenery.
I broke out of my stupor to encourage everyone to follow me, using the tactic of feeding them good food to get them to relax. “Let’s go to the mess hall.”
And if going to the mess hall happened to get me away from a far too attractive and unsolicited roommate… well, that was icing on the cake.
