Page 12 of My Star-Crossed Summer

But here she is, standing right in front of me, leaning against our rental car in a way that draws my eye directly to her delightfully round hip where her hand is firmly planted. Her lean legs still go on for miles, and I definitely don’t need to be staring at them like this. I can’t help myself, though, because Victoria looks like a goddess. She’s curvier now, with a softness to her that’s like stones polished smooth by a river. Her blonde hair’s brighter, the chic shoulder-length cut drawing my eye straight to her collarbones. When she crosses her arms over her chest, I drag my gaze back up to her face, where her lips are pursed just enough to remind me of how they felt against mine.

When her stormy eyes drift over me, I feel like I’ve been knocked over by a rogue wave.

This camp is a sanctuary for me. It’s a place where I can be myself, do the job I love, and be surrounded by cool kids that leave me feeling inspired. I don’t have to think too hard aboutwhat I do here because this is the one place where all the pieces just come together naturally. There aren’t many places where I feel like I belong. Here, I’m an integral part of the system.

But Victoria makes all of that more complicated. I know her—or rather, I used to—but how she’ll affect this program is a mystery. How can she be both a known and unknown variable at the same time? She’s Schrödinger’s cat at summer camp, and my brain doesn’t like this puzzle one bit.

My body, though. That’s another story. It remembers her softness, her warmth, and I’ve already caught myself leaning closer to her twice, like a tide pulled by the moon.

I need to tear my gaze away from those pouty lips and focus on something neutral, like the grass between our feet. I don’t need another thought experiment right now—I need to pull myself together and be a professional.

“Please tell me those aren’t the only shoes you brought,” I say, pointing to her hot pink sneakers. With hardly a scuff on them, they look like they can’t handle terrain more rugged than a sidewalk.

Victoria narrows her eyes at me and says, “Of course not. I also have hiking sandals.”

I groan because she’s way out of her element here and still has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She’s traded the skirt she was wearing earlier for jeans that might as well be painted on her body and a fleece that looks fresh off the rack. It’ll be warm enough to get her through most nights here, but I’d be willing to bet my summer salary that she hasn’t thought to bring a heavy-duty rain jacket or waterproof shoes. These mountains see mild temperatures in June, but at this altitude, the nights can dip into the forties and the rain can be torrential. I know you can’t always judge a book by its cover, but Victoria looks about as at home in the outdoors as a deer would at your dinner party.

We climb into the SUV, and once she fastens her seat belt, I pull out of the parking lot and onto the narrow road that leads down the mountain into Laurel Creek—it’s the nearest town, a twenty-minute drive if you’re not stuck behind awestruck tourists. It’s only quarter past six, but the sun’s already dropped behind the ridge, turning the sky dark and the air chilly.

“You don’t have a good pair of hiking boots?” I ask her, knowing what the answer will be.

“These will be fine,” she says. “They’re like walking on a cloud.”

I grit my teeth. Those shoes don’t have one bit of traction or ankle support. One wrong step on a slippery rock, and she’ll land flat on her perfectly round backside and have a sprained ankle or worse. Most of the trails around here aren’t difficult, but we like to challenge the kids enough so they leave here realizing they’re a lot stronger than they thought they were. But even on the easy trails, this footwear won’t do.

“What are we picking up in town?” she says, staring out the window. It’s like she’s determined to avoid talking to me about anything but the camp—understandable, since things ended so awkwardly for us before. But every time her big blue eyes lock on mine, I want to ask her a hundred questions that don’t have anything to do with the kids or the summer session. Like,why did we never talk after? How could we have given up so quickly? Why did you push me away?

But I don’t ask because her answers might make the next three weeks even more difficult. Some truths are better left buried.

So I focus on driving down the dark, winding road, trying to ignore how I can feel the warmth of her body all the way over here. How each time the breeze blows in through her open window, I can smell that sweet vanilla-citrusy smell that I’dthink was a nice perfume if I didn’t know it was one hundred percent Victoria.

The last time I smelled that scent, her hair was falling in my face, and her lips were moving against mine in a way that had nearly stopped my heart. A dozen thoughts were racing through my brain, but the only one that mattered washell yes, finally, because I’d at last let myself have the one thing I’d been denying that I wanted for so long.

Victoria Griffin.

Holding her had felt amazing, electric, and terrifying. It was like trying to hold on to sunlight, and I’d been a complete idiot to let her go. I’ve thought about that night ten thousand times, and I can still close my eyes and feel the gentle pull of her lips and the warmth of her hands raking through my hair. Her soft curves had pressed into all of my hard edges, and it was no surprise that being with her felt so perfect—because with Vic, I always felt like I belonged.

The tires rumble in the loose gravel, yanking me back to the present. She squeaks with surprise, and I gently pull us off the shoulder and back onto the road.

I swallow hard, pushing that memory of kissing her aside because that’s the last thought I need to have about Victoria right now.

But of course, that one is the most persistent.

“You okay over there?” she says, her hand gripping the dash.

“Thought I saw a deer,” I mutter. “Sorry.” My face is burning up, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurts. Thank goodness it’s already dark outside, so she can’t see the effect she still has on me.

Her side-eye says that she knows full well there was no deer, but she just makes a littleHmmsound as she looks out the window, and that says everything.

“We mostly need some things for the afternoon sports,” I tell her, steering my thoughts back to our errand. “Some frisbees and soccer balls, a few more first-aid kits, some extra toothbrushes and such, because somebody always forgets their toothbrush.”

She snorts. “When I was a kid, I forgot my toothbrush every time I left home. Literally every time.”

My brain oh-so-helpfully reminds me that she forgot it when we took that road trip in college, too. I ended up buying her a goofy kid’s brush with a dinosaur on it as a joke, and a year later, I spotted it perched on the desk in her dorm room. She liked reminders of travel, she’d said, but even then, part of me hoped she was really keeping reminders of us.

“Laurel Creek’s a tiny place,” I tell her. “But there’s a decent pizza restaurant, a grocery, and a general store with the basics. And a roller skating rink that’s a straight-up time capsule from the 70s. You’ve never seen so much neon in one place, I guarantee it.”

Her lip ticks up in a smile, making me wonder if she remembers that time we went skating in college. One of our friends rented the place out for a party, and I only went because Victoria was going. I could barely skate and kept crashing into her, but she always managed to keep me on my feet.

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