AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well . . .” He pressed a kiss to Hazel’s temple. “I’d say it was a side benefit.”
“Ew.” Gemma wrinkled her nose. “We don’t need to know everything.”
“Says the girl who spent half the afternoon flirting with a man twice her age.”
Nathan trudged up onto the deck. He pinned a hard look on Gemma. “You did what?”
Gemma shrugged. “It was harmless.”
He shook his head. “Don’t act like Mom.”
Yikes.
“Don’t act like . . .” Gemma looked him up and down. “Yourself. Maybe find a better version of you while we’re here, hmm?”
At her back, Hazel felt Bennett’s deep sigh. She found his hand and slipped her fingers between his. “My brother and I always bickered,” she whispered.
“That’s not surprising.”
“But we’re okay now.”
“Prayers and miracles.” He kissed the top of her head, his tone serious. And grateful.
Hazel wasn’t sure what to do with that. On one hand, she felt somehow valued knowing that Bennett had prayed for her and Hunter to reconcile. On the other, what did God have to do with it anyway? She was a fix-your-own-problems sort of girl. She didn’t like the thought that she’d needed divine intervention for anything. Even if it was obvious that she had.
Besides, if God did have something to do with Hunter and her reconciling, why had He let them fall apart in the first place? Or for that matter, any of the bad stuff that had happened in their young lives?
Leaning away from the man at her back, Hazel opted not to dwell on those complicated questions, denying even that they truly bothered her—though she didn’t know why she felt it necessary to deny that. Bennett let his arms fall away, and she turned to enter the cabin. “It feels like a night for cider.”
“And s’mores,” Bennett added.
“Sweet!” Gemma employed that everything-is-great high-level energy. “It’s like going to camp all over again.”
It was a cover-up. Hazel was certain of it now—and if it was anything like what she’d witnessed in Janie after Hunter joined the navy, Gemma was going to crash hard when this over-the-top positivity stopped smothering her pain.
Glancing at Bennett, Hazel wondered if he knew his little sister well enough to detect the mask. Were men intuitive like that? Bennett seemed to be.
And look at her, being intuitive about people again! It was a bit like reading her dogs or her horses.
Maybe. Maybe she’d had the ability all along but people wore her out too much to discover it before now.
“You went to camp?” Hazel asked.
“Of course! Every year.”
“This is nothing like camp, Gemma.” Nathan rolled his eyes. “Starting with the fact that we don’t get to go home.”
“You’re always such a downer.”
“You’re always so delusional.” Nathan took his earbuds out and tucked them into his hoodie pocket, then looked at Hazel. “Ourcampis five weeks long, in Maine, and features personal trainers who specialize in health and personal training for tennis, competitive swimming, and golf. We are served brunch on Sundays, and every Friday night is a required dinner-attire evening.” He waved his hand around the small front room of Hazel’s cabin. “Thisis nothing like that.”
“But we have a bonfire every evening. And on Saturday we haves’mores.” Gemma stuck her tongue out, as if she’d made her point.
“Is that where you were before I came to Chicago?”
“Yes.” Nathan spat the word like it was wormwood on his tongue.
They’d been five weeks in Maine, and Bennett’s dad couldn’t find enough time to go to marriage counseling/retreat or whatever it was they were doing during that time span? Hazel glanced at Bennett, finding his brows knit together sternly. She’d wager he was thinking similar thoughts.
