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And I couldn’t fucking believe it.
That wink.
That goddamned heart-stopping, soul-sucking, perfect wink that I’d been waiting a lifetime to see again.
Bennett turned his focus back to the boys, completely unaware of what he’d just done to me. “You guys ready to get your route assignments from Xander? Who’s ready to move on from here?”
His enthusiasm was contagious. I was engulfed by a pack of excited kids ready to begin the day’s adventure, so I didn’t get a chance to mull over everything that had just happened or what any of it meant. Once the kids were all on their way, I let my thoughts drift to the question Bennett had asked them just before we’d sent them on their way.
Who’s ready to move on from here?
When he’d said it, I’d known he was referring to leaving the Gin Lake campsite, but I couldn’t help but think about it in larger terms. After what I’d said to Lucky about allowing people to change, I thought back over all of my feelings for Bennett and wondered if I would ever take my own fucking advice and move past the bullshit with him. I hated the weird middle ground we seemed to have found with each other. We seemed to be old friends who’d been reunited as cordial acquaintances. And it didn’t fucking fit.
I didn’t want to be just old friends. I certainly didn’t want to be a cordial acquaintance. And with only a few days left before he flew back to a world I never wanted to be a part of again, we couldn’t be anything more than that. So, there we were— in this awkward no-man’s land of people who had a shared past but no shared future. And it fucking burned me up inside.
As I staggered each boy’s departure from Gin Lake, I thought about trying to relax and just enjoy the company of my old friend for the time we had left together. It wouldn’t fix anything and it wouldn’t let me have all of Bennett like I really wanted, but it would have to do.
Because I knew that if I didn’t use the next three days to soak up as much of Bennett Crawford as I could before I lost him again, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
Chapter 22
Bennett
It should have been you.
Part of me was actually pissed at Xander for what he’d said, but the rest of me was reeling with the implications. And it was bringing me to my fucking knees— to think of what we could have had together if we’d just been given the chance.
If his father hadn’t died.
If mine hadn’t been such a selfish son of a bitch who’d cared more about appearances than he had about his own kid.
If I’d cast open that door to Xander instead of shutting it that fateful night.
I would have held on and never let go. He would have been my first everything and I, his.
Xander and I both spent the first part of the hike lost in thought, but as the day went on, I forced myself to focus on drawing us both out of our funk. With so little time left with him, the last thing I wanted to do was wallow in regret and lost chances. There’d be plenty of time for that once I got home. Not to mention the near-constant worry I had for Lucky. I’d barely managed to avoid grabbing him last night and again this morning to demand he tell me what his foster parents had been doing to him. But Xander had been right. Lucky deserved these last days to enjoy what remained of the trip. Reality would return soon enough.
It didn’t take much more than a few stupid knock-knock jokes to get Xander talking, and within an hour we were dueling to see who could make the other laugh harder.
Aiden had left the campsite first thing that morning to get a head start so he could arrive at Caldera Lake before the first boy, so it was just Xander and me hiking together to bring up the rear in case of stragglers.
Once the joke-off came to an end, we spent several hours talking about lots of different things. The more he began to relax and open up, the more he started telling me about his time leading wilderness trips and some of his craziest adventures. He wound up talking a lot about his Aunt Lolly who, despite being a little bit nutty, sounded like a loving woman who’d provided him with a much-needed soft place to land after Mr. Reed’s death.
When it was my turn to talk, I told him more about the foundation at work and how I’d managed to grow it through fundraising events and word of mouth. I explained some of the pilot programs we’d introduced with high-risk youth in fine arts programs after school.
