Page 43 of Past Tents

I didn’t hear Ally come up behind me, but I felt her presence. It had been happening all day, this connection to her that came from sensing her presence, a general awareness of where she was at every moment. It was like my body had tuned in to her frequency and I was following it like a lost animal headed for home.

“Hey,” I said without turning around. I had to keep my attention focused on the flames roaring from the firepit. Another lie I told myself.

The truth was that it was getting harder and harder to look at her without allowing my eyes to devour her, and I could not do that in front of a group of students. I’d already given in and admitted to myself that I planned to do something about my consuming attraction just as soon as this trip was finished, but I needed to keep myself in check for the remainder of the weekend. I was a runner, for God’s sake—I had self-discipline, even if Ally was testing every last shred.

“Hey yourself.” Ally gave my back a poke with something sharp, forcing me to turn and identify it. A stick.

“Tents look pretty good,” I observed.

“They do. And you were right. I just directed traffic and the kids did all the work. They even pitched mine for me.” She pointed to a light green tent sitting on the outer edge of the others. About as far away as possible from the one I’d set up for myself. Good.The farther away she was when she slipped into her sleeping bag for the night, the less I’d think about her.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

ALLY

We taught the kids how to do a “bear hang,” in which we loaded our food into a duffel and hoisted it into a tree, out of the reach of bears. There were bear boxes at the campsite where we could put the food, but Clay was right—the kids loved the idea of hanging it, so we decided they could put some of the rations up in the trees for the night.

“You’re sure we’re good here too? No bears this weekend?” I asked quietly while tying a rope to a bag of food. We were perched facing each other on a fallen log, retying some of the knots the students had done their best to perfect. Unfortunately, a few of them were too loose, and a few students had packed way too much into their nylon duffels, making them unwieldy to hang.

We’d taught them the basics, but now we needed to get real.

A group of kids stood a few yards away, laughing and tossing their food bags back and forth like water balloons. We’d done pretty well keeping them on track all day and making them follow instructions, so giving them time now to get their excess energy out didn’t seem to hurt.

Clay laughed. “You know I can’t guarantee where bears are going to go.”

A loud collective groan sounded when one of the food bags hit the ground with a thud. “Dude, that bag had all the fruit,” a guy from the football team scolded.

“Bruh, you shouldn’t have thrown it so hard. It’s not fourth down.”

They opened the bag and inspected a few bruised apples before tying the bag up again and resuming their game.

“I do know that,” I said. “Which is why I don’t understand why you keep telling me we’ll be fine.”

“Because you keep asking. And we will be fine. Even if a bear comes through. As long as you’re not hiding cookies in your tent, a bear isn’t going to come looking for food.”

I stopped working on a particularly stubborn knot. “I would never.”

“Good girl.” His gruff voice sent a shiver down my spine as I imagined him saying that in all sorts of different circumstances, all of them sexual. My face heated at the thought, and I sincerely hoped Clay’s wilderness skills didn’t include mind reading.

“So, I should’ve asked...how was your date?” Clay’s smile was forced. The rest of his face showed signs of painful discomfort.

I stopped working on the knot and glanced behind me, thinking he must be talking to someone else. I saw only trees and rocks, so I turned back to ask Clay what he meant. Then I realized...

“Oh, Louie? The animal-hating architect? Yeah, I decided not to go.” The fact was that I’d never intended to go. It had only beenone more effort to draw a clear boundary between Clay and me, and I was wanting that boundary less and less.

Was it my imagination that Clay’s face calmed? Did he seem relieved?

“Huh. Why not?”

I shrugged. I didn’t feel like explaining my reasoning to the hot man who smelled like smoke and cedar bodywash and whose muscles flexed each time he wound up a coil of rope and tossed it over a branch. Mainly because he was the reason.

“He isn’t the one I want.”

His eyes settled on me with an intensity I hadn’t seen since the night we spent in his yard. As much as I’d spent the past week trying to avoid just that intensity, it startled me how much I wanted to see it now. How much I needed to see it.

“Okay, then.”

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