Page 49 of The Kiss Keeper
It had been years since she’d seen it, but it remained as it had in her memory, a simple circular structure made of stone with a weathered wooden roof. It seemed crazy that something so innocuous could have impacted her life so profoundly. But then again, it wasn’t just the well. It was the legend, built on kiss after kiss after kiss, year after year after year.
Jake came to her side then froze. “The well.”
She nodded. “It may not look like much, but here at Camp Woolwich, there’s an old camp legend that a Kiss Keeper haunts it and demands kisses be offered up here at the well.”
She looked at Jake, expecting him to laugh or tell her she was insane to believe in childhood campfire stories. But he didn’t do or say anything. He just stared at the well.
She continued. “The way it works is a boy and a girl are chosen to sneak out of their cabins late after lights out to go meet their kiss keeper. But you see, you go blindfolded, so you never see who your kiss keeper is. You’re supposed to kiss, here, at the old well. If you don’t, legend says you’ll be cursed.”
“How’d you get cursed?” Jake asked, still staring at the gray stones.
“I met my kiss keeper at the well, but before he could kiss me, night patrol stopped us.”
“They caught you?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No, we hid from them, and then my kiss keeper took off his blindfold and guided me back to my cabin.”
“You never kissed?” he asked, his voice barely a rasp.
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “No, he kissed me but not at the well. He kissed me outside of my cabin.” She walked up to the well and ran her fingertips over the smooth stone then glanced over her shoulder at her fake boyfriend. “Do you want to know if I ever figured out the identity of my kiss keeper?”
7
Jake
Nothing moved. No breeze. Not a peep from the kids. It was as if nature itself sat stupefied along with him.
Natalie looked down the path that he knew led to the teen girls’ cabin, then brushed her fingers across her lips. A quick, unintentional movement, or perhaps it was muscle memory. But her pink cheeks and the girlish curve to her lips all but confirmed that she’d thought about that kiss just as much as he had.
Not that kiss.
Their kiss.
Sweet Christ! Natalie Callahan was his kiss keeper. Of all the women in all the trench coats in all the airport screening lines, what were the odds of not only meeting her but going along with her con that was really his con to get her family’s land?
Ping! Ping! Ping!
The smile faded from her face. “Do you need to get that?”
He frowned. “Get what?”
“Your phone.”
Dammit!
He pulled it out to find a text from Charlie, then shoved the phone back into his pocket. “It’s not important.”
“Well, do you want to know if I ever found my kiss keeper?” she asked again.
He swallowed hard. She never saw him. He’d made sure of it because of all those damn kiss keeper rules. No looking at each other. No disclosing your name. But she was right. They hadn’t kissed at the well. He’d never contemplated that their kiss at the cabin didn’t count.
“Jake, are you okay?”
He shook his head to get his mind back on track. “I’m fine.”
A lie.
He was the furthest thing from fine. No more than three feet away stood the girl, now the woman, who he’d thought about night after night. He’d held onto the memory of her through his darkest days.
