Page 132 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

“I was just holding the instructions!”

“Exactly.”

The fire crackles softly as Jace starts poking it with a stick, and Aimee leans her head on my shoulder, quietly chewing her possibly-anxious protein bar. Her scent—still sweet, still justhers—wraps around us, mingling with smoke and pine and the faintest edge of heat that’s been ebbing and flowing for days now.

None of us say it, but we feel it: the quiet click of everything slotting back into place.

Like maybe, just maybe, we’re okay.

Even if the tent isn’t. Even if Wes still looks like he wants to fight it in a parking lot, and even if Aimee’s now holding a second stick and calling it “the emotional support branch.”

We’re here,together.

And that’s what matters.

*

There’s hardly a huge variety of things to do, and so we sit around the fire that night, talking and laughing and sharing stories.

Jace has started poking at the logs with the world’s longest stick again, although this time, he’s wearing a headlamp he definitely doesn’t need, claiming it’s foremergency visibility. Aimee is curled between us, tucked into the cocoon of my arm and his; her hair a mess, her hoodie half-unzipped, and her legs draped across Wes’s lap.

“I’m just saying,” Aimee says, mouth full, “if the Girl Scouts had let me start a fire with a lighter and a tiny bit of lighter fluid, maybe we wouldn’t have had to sleep in a moldy canoe that night.”

Jace chokes on his beer. “You slept in acanoe?”

“It was that or the mud,” she says proudly. “And I’m sorry, but ten-year-old me wasn’t about to let raccoons claw my face off for a soggy s’more.”

Wesfinallybreaks. “Did you at least win a badge for that?”

“I think they gave me a ‘Most Unsupervisable Camper’ sticker and sent me home early.”

“That tracks,” Jace mutters, grinning as he leans in and presses a kiss to her temple. “You’d bite a troop leader and then demand a leadership position.”

She shrugs. “I have initiative.”

“Yeah, well, you also have a marshmallow in your hair,” I say, leaning over to pluck it out.

“Great,” she sighs. “I’m a walking snack.”

“You’reourwalking snack,” Jace murmurs, fussing with the blanket around her shoulders.

“Oh my god,stop fussing, I’m not a burrito.”

“You’remyburrito.”

Wes makes a quiet, disgusted noise and goes back to methodically toasting his marshmallow.

I raise a brow at him. “You okay there, soldier?”

“This marshmallow’s my redemption arc,” he mutters.

“You’re terrifying,” Aimee tells him sweetly. “In like… a crunchy suburban dad way.”

Jace snorts. “You’ve weaponized domesticity.”

“Ididbring the good chocolate,” Wes points out.

“I brought vibes,” Aimee counters.

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