Page 55 of My Star-Crossed Summer

“Sure,” she says. “I think the firewood’s in your car, too.”

“Right you are.” I check my jacket pockets when we’re a few steps farther from my tent, hoping my keys are still there. Mercifully, they are.

Sophie starts talking about breakfast, and I hear giggling and chatter coming from inside a few tents. We’re almost to the parking lot, but Vic needs to get out fast—before any kids are up and about.

“You’re in big trouble,” Sophie says.

“What?” I blurt. We’re at the cars now, and I’m fumbling with the key fob to get the doors unlocked. I glance back at my tent, half-expecting to see Victoria frozen like a deer.

“You forgot to put the s’mores stuff away last night,” Sophie says. “When I woke up this morning, two crows were helping themselves to the marshmallows. When I went after them, one flew off with the whole bag.”

“Ha!” I snort out a laugh that sounds completely alien to my ears. Sophie must think I’m even more of a doofus than usual. Or else she knows something’s up. I open the back gate of the car. “Sorry about that,” I tell her. “You want to start the fire and let Vic and me unload the coolers?”

“Sure,” she says with a shrug. “You feeling okay?” Her brown eyes narrow as she studies my face. I think of ice-cold whitewater, mischievous crows, anything but Victoria—because suddenly I’m convinced she’s right and Sophie can read my mind.

“Yeah, fine,” I tell her. “I’m just useless before coffee. You know that.”

Behind her, Victoria slips out of my tent like a ghost. She looks around quickly, then straightens and strides off toward the bathhouse like nothing is out of the ordinary.

Sophie nods. “Tell me about it. I brought some cold coffee just because I can’t wait for boiling water over a fire. I’ve got one in the cooler if you’re desperate.”

“I’d owe you big time,” I say, and that seems to satisfy her. The furrow in her brow disappears as I hand her a bundle of firewood.

When I glance over Sophie’s shoulder, Victoria is gone.

After breakfast,we pack up the campsites in record time. We’ll have to lay everything out to dry once we get back to the institute, but that’s better than having the kids pack up at a snail’s pace after a full day of canoeing. A busy morning of breaking camp and loading cars should be plenty to keep my mind off Victoria.

But it’s not.

All morning, I’ve been trying to forget how perfect she felt curled against me. So far, I’m failing at that task. As a result, I double-salted my oatmeal so it was barely edible, tripped getting out of my tent and nearly brought the whole thing down on top of me, and then tried to start the car with my house key.

Victoria’s short-circuited my brain without even trying.

Sophie’s going on and on about ideas for the dance that we’re throwing for the kids in a few days, and all I can think about is the way Victoria tugged at my hair and pulled me against her, crushing her lips against mine. It left me completely unraveled and dying for more. Each time I look at her, she makes this startled face like she can’t forget it, either.

She was right, though. We can’t do that here. Roxy would have my hide if she found out, and the College of Charlestonwould fire me in a heartbeat. I just need to hold myself together until camp is over. And I can do that because I know Vic feels the same. When I whisperedone week,she smiled, blue eyes glowing with promise. When I saiddate,she saidyes.

Once the cars are full of kids and camping gear, we caravan over to the spot where we’ll pick up our canoes and launch them into a lazy branch of the French Broad River. With no whitewater, this stretch is wide and calm—an ideal spot to take the kids for an easy paddle. And that’s exactly what today should be: easy.

Near the water, two twenty-something guys are waiting by a van with a trailer. They’ve already unloaded our canoes and piled a bunch of life jackets nearby. The put-in is in a finger lake—we’ll paddle around here for a few minutes and get everyone comfortable, and then we’ll head downstream for a few miles to our pick-up point at another finger lake. The young guys introduce themselves as Jerome and Skyler and look like they’ve already spent every day this summer on the river. Jerome’s a tall Black guy with big brown eyes and a wiry frame that you get from swimming and paddling. Skyler’s a shorter white guy with shaggy blond hair, already sporting a tan line from a tee shirt.

While Jerome and Skyler give the kids a safety talk and paddling lesson, I see the first problem: There are seven canoes, but we reserved nine. They’ve subbed in one single-person kayak that looks just slightly bigger than a pool noodle. That means three kids per canoe, just as we planned. But now, instead of Sophie, Vic, and me each having our own canoe, two of us will have to share.

Victoria’s watching the paddling demo with an intense focus. I can’t decide if she’s never picked up a paddle or if she’s determined not to look me in the eye until camp is officially over.

I bite back a smile, relishing the idea that she can’t stop thinking about us, either.

“I should probably take the kayak,” Sophie says, mostly to me. “You’d have to fold yourself up like a pretzel to fit in that, and I’m guessing Victoria might not want to pilot her own boat.”

“In the interest of not drowning,” Vic says, strapping on her life jacket, “I would agree.” She smiles wryly.

“Not that I don’t think you could do it,” Sophie tells her, raising her hands in that way that means surrender. “It’s just tricky to handle that kind of kayak if you’re not used to it, and then there’s the whole rollover factor?—”

“Yeah, I’m good with having a boat buddy,” Victoria says, pursing her lips. “I know my limitations.”

My heart twists as she says that because this woman should never impose limitations on herself. And as soon as we’re alone for real, away from these kids who are slinging paddles around like hockey sticks, I’m going to tell her that until she admits that it’s true.

Sophie claps her on the shoulder and says, “You got this, lady. I bet if you ask nicely, you can sit in the front and let Noah here do all the work.” Sophie shoots me a wink, and the paranoid part of me thinks that somehow, she knows.

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