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AVERY
It’s just before dinner time and I haven’t even had a chance to put on a shirt after changing from our hike—let alone take stock of the injuries on my feet—when the door to my cabin bursts open and Kaleb comes barrelling in.
My brows furrow as I snap the button of my shorts closed. “Ever heard of knocking? I could’ve been indecent.”
“Yeah, well, then we’d be even,” he says absently while glancing around the cabin in an almost frantic sort of search. In fact, his eyes haven’t so much as landed on me once.
“You lose something?”
The question causes his gaze to collide with mine, worry and fear running rampant in those forest depths as he says a single word.
“Elijah.”
My brows shoot up. “You lost a kid?”
A grimace appears on his face. “Can we go with misplaced?”
“How do you misplace an entire human being? A shoe or a key or something, sure. But a person would—”
“Yeah, I got it,” he snaps, still panicked and on edge. Probably more so thanks to my jeering.
“And you’ve checked the cafeteria? They were supposed to go there right from the hike for dinner.”
Kaleb shakes his head. “He’s not there.”
Shit.
“What about the bathhouse? Colin’s office? His cabin? You checked there too?”
“Yes, obviously.” He starts raking his fingers through the thicker brown hair on the top, creating a haphazard mess. “No one’s seen him since the hike, so I have no idea where he is. I figured with how you two were talking earlier, he might be here or have said something to you.”
“Not at all.” A tiny amount of worry hits my gut as I grab a clean camp tee and slide it over my head. “But we can go look for him.”
“And what about the other kids?”
“They’re eleven, Kaleb. We can leave them to eat dinner unsupervised while we look for him.”
“Goddamnit,” he mutters, glancing at me again. “Fine, but we should split up and cover more ground.”
“Fine by me.” I toe into my sneakers and follow him down the steps, falling into step with him as we rush down the path toward the lodge. “How do you wanna do this?”
“I’ll keep looking around the center of the complex. Maybe he’s just moving while I am, so I’m always missing him. You check the paths to the other cabins. And maybe some other areas of the grounds. The lake, the field. I doubt he’d wander off that far, but at least we’re covering all our bases.”
He stops once we reach the outside of the lodge and hands me one of the walkie-talkies we’ve been using on hikes and other excursions. “Radio in if you find him. If you don’t, meet me back here in an hour and we can…”
The way he trails off tells me he’s clearly thinking the worst. Hell, I wouldn’t be lying if I wasn’t too. This is probably every camp counselor’s nightmare, especially deep into the wilderness like this, the nearest town twenty-something miles away. The only way to make it worse would be if it was dark.
Without thinking, I place my hand on his arm and give a comforting squeeze, not taking into account the way it would amplify the electricity crackling in the air between us. It’s something that’s almost constant now when we’re around each other.
“We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows harshly, and he nods. “We’ll find him.”
After a couple seconds, the burn of his skin beneath my palm becomes impossible to ignore—as does the swirling feeling in my stomach—and I pull my hand away. Yet our gazes stay locked together, harnessed by gravity or whatever else is responsible for the way we keep being pulled together like this.
“Please try not to alert anyone that we’ve lost a kid,” he says softly, and I see the same bit of fear from when he burst into my cabin swimming in his eyes again. “Especially Colin. You know, until we’re certain.”
A smirk I don’t entirely feel lifts the corner of my mouth. “We? Last I checked, he was lost on your watch and not mine.”
