“Maybe I’m waiting for the perpetrator to clean them.”
“Good luck with that.” A smug look spread across her face, further instilling my belief that she had been the one to prank me. How she’d gotten into my cabin, though, I was still trying to figure out. Maybe she’d popped out a screen to an open window?
“And to answer your question, the reason I’m lying down is that I’m tired.” And man, was that an understatement. Between doing my daily camp duties, attending to my pod, and working on her cabin, I’d barely had time to breathe. Which was why her griping like I was lazy the second I had a moment to sit down was getting on my last nerve.
“You’re tired? I’m tired of functioning in this mess. This is where I sleep. This is where I work.”
“Then maybe you should work elsewhere. Maybe you should get out of the cabin more.”
Her face twisted with shock and indignation. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.
“My job,” she said through clenched teeth, “requires my attention sixteen hours a day. I can’t just sit at a desk and stop at five o’clock. And I don’t have time to just rest.”
“Not all of us work the way you do, Nat. And it sounds like even you’re doing too much.” Coming from me, that was a hypocritical statement. We had a surprising number of things in common because I’d often been told the same thing, and just like her, I ignored it.
“I’m not about to justify…” She took a breath. “You know what? No.”
She threw her purple hard-shelled suitcase on her bunk bed and started shoving things from her nightstand into it.
I jumped to my feet. “What are you doing?”
“You just told me to get out of the house more, and this isn’t working. I’m just going to sleep outside.” That was the moment the rain started to clatter against the window. What was withthis summer? Her eyes raised, and she sighed in frustration. “I’ve done it before.”
“It’s pouring.”
“Fine. Then I’ll sleep in my car.”
This time, I was the one with clenched teeth. “You’re sleeping in your car over my dead body.”
I shut the case, and she turned around to find me right in her face. How were we always finding ourselves in this position?
“That’s what’s going to happen if I don’t get out of here.”
I sighed, resigned. I wasn’t mad at her. This was a product of circumstance. I had to remember that. “Look, I’m doing my best. I haven’t been able to get any of my crew to work on the cabin with me, and I keep running into supply issues. But someone just reached out, so I’ll follow up and see what we can do. It would make things go a lot faster, and I’ll have more energy to do… all of this.”
“Okay.” Her hackles lowered. “But why can’t I help?”
“At this juncture, the shit I have to do over there would take more time to explain than it would just to do it myself. Plus, there’s electrical work that even I can’t do.” I contemplated all the jobs I could give her, but it wasn’t the right time. “I’m sorry, Nat. I get that it’s frustrating.”
She let out a long breath. “It’s okay. I know that you’re doing a lot.” For once, it felt like she was getting it. “But you’ll let me know if I can help, right?”
Her optimistic gaze had me nearly crumbling. And she wanted us to spend more time together? That was a recipe for disaster, much like my cake during the baking competition.
“Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
The next dayhad me rushing. It was the final day for this session of campers, so I went through my typical last-day routine, followed by getting some time in at Nat’s cabin. I’d even given Autumn an excuse for why I needed to go to the hardware store later, so she didn’t ask questions about why I was gone while I accepted Jamie’s ring delivery. The only thing I needed were my keys, and I’d be good to go.
My phone vibrated, and I pulled it from my pocket as I power walked on the trail to my cabin. As soon as I saw Gia’s name, asking if we could please talk, I stopped dead in my tracks.
Talk? What did she need to talk about?
The week she cheated on me, Gia had been a visiting camper for the final camp session. After I’d confronted her about making out with someone else, she’d made her teary exit. I’d told her to ship the stuff I’d left at her apartment back to me, and I’d done the same for her. We’d had no contact in almost a year. Maybe she was trying to explain herself beyondI was drunk.But why now?
Maybe she’d learned Nat was here and wanted to see her? Then they could fuck each other in my cabin and really put the nail in the coffin.
Okay, that was a stretch. Sometimes I hated my brain.
I stared at the text for too long before I noticed the time. I had to get my ass in gear. I started into a light jog, grateful to see my cabin in the clearing, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to walk in on.
