“Go help with dinner,” Dad snaps at me. He glares at Pete.
“Yes, sir,” I say. I take the sticks Pete has in his arms and smile at him. “See you later,” I whisper.
“Don’t go,” he whispers back. “Who’s going to protect my nuts?”
“Princesses don’t do that.” I grin at him and walk away. It’s hard to do, but I don’t even look back over my shoulder.
Pete
Shit. Now I’m in trouble.
“You had one rule,” Reagan’s dad snaps. He holds up a finger. “One rule!”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “I remember.”
I won’t be surprised at all if fire shoots from his mouth and his eyeballs pop out. “If you remember, then why were you alone in the woods with my daughter, Mr. Reed?” he asks. He’s really close to being in my face. But my brothers have done worse. This is nothing compared to when they try to throttle me.
“Pete,” I say.
“Beg your pardon?” He glares at me.
“My name is Pete,” I say. “We should probably be on a first name basis if you’re going to get intimate enough to chop my nuts off.” I motion to his hatchet.
He blows out a quick breath, grins, and shakes his head.
“We were just gathering sticks, sir,” I say.
He narrows his eyes and glares at me. “Can I trust you?” he asks.
“I want to go home when I’m done here, sir,” I say. I want this fucking bracelet off my leg.
“Nice manners,” he mutters. “Who raised you?” he asks. “The system?”
“No, sir,” I say. “I have four brothers.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Gone.”
“I know your story, but why’d you end up in jail?” He’s blunt. I kind of like that.
“Stupid choices I made.” I kick at a rock in my path to keep from having to look at him.
He nods. “At least you know they were stupid.”
I heave a sigh. “Sir, I’ve done my time. Don’t send me back. I promise I won’t bother your daughter, and I won’t let anyone else bother her, either.”
He looks into my eyes. “I believe you.” He starts to tug on a leaf hanging near his head. “My daughter…she’s special.”
I don’t respond because I don’t really think he wants me to. I agree with him, though. She’s too fucking special for someone like me.
He motions for me to follow him. He walks back toward the fire, where Reagan is sitting on a log beside Gonzo’s chair. He’s looking at her like she’s the first girl he ever laid eyes on and she’s looking back at him like he’s a real fifteen-year-old. I mean, he is a real fifteen-year-old, but I doubt he gets treated like one very often. She looks up at her dad and smiles. “Dad, this is Gonzo,” she says. She grins, but Karl doesn’t correct her. I think he likes the nickname.
Her dad extends his hand, and Gonzo reaches out to shake. I don’t think the kid gets this often, either. He looks almost honored, and I realize right then and there that I will do whatever it takes during camp to make sure he has a good time. He deserves it. Five days to be a normal boy.
“Reagan,” her dad says, cupping the back of her head in his big hand. She looks up him expectantly. “You met Pete?”
She nods and nibbles on her lower lip. “Briefly.”
“Don’t let me catch you in the woods with him again,” he says.
“Dad,” she complains.
“And don’t go into the woods with Gonzo, either. He looks even more dangerous than Pete.” Her dad scowls.
Gonzo grins.
Her dad points a finger at him. “Do you hear me, young man?” he asks. “Hands off my daughter.” He leans down and kisses her forehead. “I know she’s pretty, but she’s off-limits.” He points at me and back to Gonzo, going back and forth a few times. “I got my eyes on you two.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, trying to look serious.
Her dad walks away. I sit down on the log beside her and stare into the flames. The sun has completely set, and the golden purples have faded into a dark sky filled with stars. “You want a marshmallow?” Reagan asks.
“I’m a city boy. We don’t roast marshmallows.” I shake my head.
“Gonzo?” she asks. He nods and rubs his chest to say please in sign language.
“He said please,” I tell her. He grins.
She puts a marshmallow on a stick for him and holds it out so he can grip it. His chair keeps him from getting too close, and his stick isn’t long enough. He visibly deflates. So I take two sticks and bend them together, making one long one. I pass it back to him. “Do you want me to do it for you?” she asks.
He shakes his head. I can do it.
I lay my head back and look up at the stars. But then another group of kids arrives, and some of them are deaf. I’m busy for the next hour, just trying to translate for them all. The time flies, and it’s later than I thought it was. “Gonzo, you’re going to turn into a marshmallow if you eat one more,” I warn. Either that or he’s going to be sick.
One more? he asks, holding up one finger.
“If you get sick, I’m not cleaning it up,” I warn with a laugh. Reagan threads another marshmallow onto his stick. He refused to give it up, even when other kids were waiting to toast marshmallows. I didn’t have the heart to take it from him.
The rest of the kids have gone to bed. Gonzo is one of the oldest ones here. I see his mom walking up from the shadows. She came to check on him after the half hour was up, but he was having so much fun that I sent her away for a little longer. Her hair is now down, and her face is soft. She has her hands stuffed in her pockets. It’s getting chilly out. “You about ready for bed, Karl?” she asks.
G-O-N-Z-O, he signs. I laugh and shake my head.
“Oh, it’s Gonzo now, is it?” She punches her hands into her hips. “You have a perfectly good name. I don’t know why you would want to be called that.”
I punch him in the shoulder. “Dude, that was our secret.” I sign to him. You’re not supposed to tell your mother everything. I hold up my hands as though to say, what the heck. I know full well that his mother knows sign language.
He laughs. Thank you for tonight. He looks directly into my eyes. He’s kind of jumpy the rest of the time, but right now, he’s telling me something without even using words or sign language, and he’s so still and serious.
I look at Reagan. “He said thank you for tonight.”
She smiles and nods. “You’re welcome.”
He points at me. Don’t make out with my girl when I leave.
I hold my hands up. “I promise not to try to make out with Reagan after you leave. I’ll only put the moves on her when you’re here.”
Traitor, he signs.
“Dude, I warned you.” But I laugh. Reagan ducks her head and doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze.
“Good night, you two,” his mom says. Gonzo waves and speeds off behind her.
“You’re really good with him,” Reagan says quietly.
“He’s easy to like.”
She picks up the stick he left and feeds a marshmallow onto it. She holds it out to me. “Here you go, city boy. Your first marshmallow roasting.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I say, taking the stick from her. “You got one of my firsts.”
She freezes.
Shit. I made a mistake. “I was just kidding,” I rush to say. I’m watching her face, and she looks everywhere but at me in the firelight. “I shouldn’t have said that. Out loud.”
I haven’t stuck the marshmallow in the flames yet. She reaches out tentatively and wraps her hand around mine. She turns her wrist and moves my hand closer to the flames. “Like this,” she whispers. She’s trembling, but she doesn’t let go.
“Are you okay?” I ask softly.
She smiles at me in the darkness. “I’m fine.”
I draw in a breath. I don’t know how to ask. “No,” I say. She looks at me. “After that night. Are you okay after what happened
that night?”
She stiffens beside me. “You do remember me,” she whispers.
“I think about you all the time, wondering what happened that night after you left.”
She exhales slowly, like she’s fortifying herself. “Thank you for what you did.”
“You’re welcome.” I don’t need her thanks, but I feel like she’s been waiting to tell me this. I watch as the marshmallow roasts, its creamy skin turning brown. A purple flame engulfs it, and she jerks our hands back, raising the marshmallow toward her lips so she can blow out the fire.
Her lips purse and she blows, and I feel it deep in the center of me. I want to kiss her so bad that I can already taste her. “I know I don’t know you, but I feel like I do. After that night, I feel like you’re a part of me.” My words are so foolish that I bite back any further stupidity that might fall from my lips.
“I feel the same way,” she says. “I don’t know if that makes you feel any more normal.”
At least I’m not alone in my thoughts. “I would give just about anything to kiss you right now,” I say softly. Shit. Did I say that out loud, too?
She smiles, but she still doesn’t look at me. She seems almost…regretful? “I would give just about anything for you not to,” she says quietly. She leans the stick so that the marshmallow is closest to me.
She may as well have punched me in the gut. It’s been two and a half years. “You haven’t let him steal everything from you, have you?” I hope she hasn’t. If she has, he wins. He raped her, and he took even more than that.
“I looked for you after that night,” she says.
“I asked my brothers to check up on you, when I went to prison,” I admit. I look into her eyes when they shoot up to meet mine. “Not in like a creepy stalkery way.”
She laughs. “You going to eat that?” she asks, nodding toward the marshmallow.
“It’s burned.” She doesn’t want to talk about that night, and that’s all right with me.
“Some people like them like that.” I watched enough kids eat charred marshmallows to know she’s telling the truth. “If you’re not going to eat it, I am.” She raises an eyebrow at me.
“Go for it, princess,” I say. She pulls it from the stick, peels off half the outer coating, and passes the rest to me. She talks around the hot goo.
“Try it,” she says.
I’d do just about anything she asked me to do right now.
I eat the marshmallow. “I don’t understand why people like these things. That wasn’t that great.”
“Tomorrow night, we’ll make s’mores.” She rubs her hands together like she’s excited.
“What the fuck’s a s’more?” I ask.
She laughs, throwing her head back. Her hair falls down her back, and I want to gather it up and wrap it around my hand to see if it’s as soft as it looks. “A s’more is a cooked marshmallow, a square of chocolate, and a graham cracker, pressed together to make a sandwich.”
“Anything is better with chocolate,” I say. My mom used to say that. I don’t know why I felt the need to make that comment out loud.
“True.” She doesn’t speak.
We’re quiet, the crackling flames the only sound aside from crickets and the occasional kid crying out to ask caregivers questions. Before, when I was with girls, it was all about trying to get them out of their clothes. It’s been two years since a woman has taken me inside her, and right this second, I can’t imagine enjoying that any more than what I’m doing right now.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable asking for a kiss,” I finally say.
She snorts. “At least you asked.”
“Glad you like that because I might keep asking until I get one.” She laughs as she shakes her head.
“You promised Gonzo you’d only put the moves on me when he’s around.”
“Let’s go wake him up, then.” I make like I’m going to get up, and she reaches for my hand to stop me. I feel that tremble again. I sit down, but this time, I’m a little closer to her.
She’s quiet for a moment. “This is nice,” she says.
I reach up to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, and she flinches. “Do I scare you?” I ask. I did just get out of prison. But it’s more than that, I’m sure. With what happened to her, she probably has a lot of intense shit in her head.
She shakes her head. “No. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
She picks up a stick and starts to draw in the dirt, her arm clenched around her knees until she’s folded into a ball.
She looks up, her green eyes bright in the firelight. “I just don’t like to be touched.” She shrugs. “That’s all.”
“Can we work to get around that, princess?” It comes out more like a whisper.
Her eyes fill up with tears, and she blinks them back furiously. I want to touch her, but I have a feeling that would be the wrong thing to do.
“It’s me,” she says. “Not you.” She waits a beat. “I’m sure you’re a perfectly amazing kisser. And I’m missing out on one of the best experiences ever.” She lays a hand on her chest. She’s teasing me now. This is better than a moment before. It’s easier to deal with. But I almost long for the quiet, emotion-filled whispers. “You’ve kissed a lot of women?” she asks.
Ouch. I’m sure she doesn’t want the truth. “A few.”
“A few hundred? A few thousand?” She laughs. It’s a tinny, hollow sound.
“A few,” I repeat.
“Does it get more common feeling after a while? Like your heart stops feeling like it’s going to beat out of your chest after you’ve done it a few thousand times?”
I chuckle. “Not if you’re doing it right.” I adjust my body, hunching over my lap a little. Her whispered words and heat-filled glances are affecting me, and I’ll be damned if I want her to see it. “You feel like yours is going to beat out of our chest when you kiss a man?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Then why are you asking?” I ask.
“I feel like that now,” she says. She gets up, and I want to grab her and pull her to me. “I had better get to bed.” She stretches, and I can see the little strip of skin between the bottom of her shirt and her jeans. I reach up and tug her shirt down. She covers her belly with her hand, like she wants to block my touch.
She stares into my eyes. She doesn’t say a word. “Can I kiss you yet?” I blurt out. God, you’d think I’d never seen a girl before.
“No.” She laughs.
“Can I keep asking?”
She nods. It’s a quick jerk, almost imperceptible, but she’s biting her lower lip and smiling. “Good night,” she says.
“Good night,” I call to her retreating back. She walks into the darkness until it swallows her up.
Reagan
My knees are still wobbly when I get to the house. I go in the kitchen door and find my parents sitting at the table with cups of coffee. They’re talking quietly.
“Have fun?” my mom asks. She stares at me over the rim of her coffee cup. She looks a lot like me, with her dark-blond hair and her sun-kissed skin. My dad says she looked just like me when they met. Her hair is completely straight like mine, and she’s tall and willowy like me, even after all these years.
I nod in answer to her question. “We were roasting marshmallows.”
She quirks an eyebrow at me. “That’s what they’re calling that now? When I was young, it was just called flirting.”
Heat creeps up my face. “I wasn’t flirting.”
“Mmm hmm,” she hums. But she’s smiling.
“Let her be,” my dad growls playfully.
“What’s his name?” she asks.
I’m purposefully obtuse. “Gonzo.”
My dad snorts. “Gonzo is the fifteen-year-old who was hanging out with Pete, the mentor for the boys from the detention center.”
“Pete, huh?” Mom asks. Mom knows that Pete’s the one who found me. “What’s he like?”
I shrug.
/> Her eyebrows draw together. “You get any strange vibes from him?”
“Mom,” I warn. “Leave it alone.”
“Pete’s a mentor? Or is he an ex-con?” Mom looks curiously at Dad.
Dad nods. “He’s out of jail on parole.”
Mom inhales quickly. Dad shoots her a look. “He didn’t do anything violent, did he?” Mom asks. My heart stops. It trips over in my chest and then stops completely. I don’t dare to even breathe until I hear the answer.
“I wouldn’t have admitted him if he was violent,” Dad says. He points to a stack of folders by his elbow. “I just finished going through his file again, to see if there’s more I can do to help him.” He jerks his head toward it. “Want me to give you an overview?”
I shake my head. “I don’t need to.” I’d much rather hear it from Pete. “He seems nice.” I glare at Dad. “Even though Dad threatened to chop his nuts off.”
Mom snorts into her coffee.
“Hey, it works,” he says. But he’s grinning.
Mom bumps my elbow. “How are things going with Chase?”
I shake my head. “He’s not my type.”
My dad says in a singsong voice, “But Pete’s her type.”
I pick up the stir stick he discarded on the table and throw it at him, but a grin tugs at my lips. “He was very nice. And I promise not to get pregnant.” I get up quickly while he’s still rolling that around in his head. “Good night,” I chirp as I start up the stairs.
“It’d be hard for him to get you pregnant if I chop his nuts off!” Dad yells to me.
I laugh and shake my head.
I stop at the top of the stairs and listen. “They were awfully close there by the fire,” Mom says. “I was watching out the window.” There’s a quiet pause. “Did she let him touch her?”
“No, but she touched him.” He heaves a sigh. “She didn’t even try to punch him in the throat.”
Fine. I can be a little aggressive. It all started after my attack with some self-defense classes. Then I realized I’m really good at martial arts. I can’t help if it some people make me want to drop-kick them.