Page 22 of Honeysuckle
“Oh, buck up, big boy. We’ll get through this and you’ll be leading the way.” Cael’s hand slapped against my shoulder and gave me a tight squeeze. “We’ve gotten through a lot worse.” He leaned over and tapped his fingers against my chest. “Two steps at a time,” he said.
“Preferably forward,” I grumbled, but nodded in agreement.
After dinner was cleaned up, the guys settled around the fire for a while before bed but, one by one, they disappeared into their shared tents. Everyone slept with someone; it was still too cold outside at night, and we never had enough tents anyways. Logically, if we had asked, Silas would have forked over the money for more, but there was something about doing things the hard way that made the canoe trip feel more like summer camp.
Pairing up in tents was just another buddy exercise in team bonding. I curled up in my empty tent, shivering beneath my sweater. The temperature had dropped more than I’d expected, and even with two blankets I was freezing. I tried again to tuck down into my hoodie and blankets but something other than the cold was eating away at my peaceful sleep.
Josh.
I pushed from my bed onto my knees, shivering as the frigid air slinked its way under my clothes.Fuck it was cold.I just needed some water and a snack; my appetite had been bleak since the news broke about our newest member, but after barely touching dinner my stomach was rumbling and the coolers were across camp.
I pulled on my shoes and unzipped the tent into the pitch-black wild. The stars twinkled brightly in the harsh spring cold and, without clouds in the sky, the moon was uncontested in lighting up camp a hazy blue.
The fire flickered with nothing but dampened sparks that snapped as the wood quietly broke down from the remaining heat. I started to carefully move around the main area, avoiding the rogue baseballs that the guys had dropped and forgot about toward the coolers, but stopped when I saw a body curled up tightly, directly next to the fire.
“Hey.” I wandered over to him, knowing that it was Josh from the strands of wavy dark hair that flipped out from under his beanie against his pillow. “Josh.” I kicked his restless form gently. “Get up.”
It took a little more convincing before he finally opened his eyes and looked up at me.
“You’ve got to be the worst fake sleeper I’ve ever seen.” I shook my head.
“What do you want, Tuck. It’s, like, two am,” Josh grumbled.
“Why are you out here? Where’s your tent?” I asked, and was met with a scoff.
“Seems your team is a little more unfriendly than you thought,” he said, his jaw tight and his words sluggish in the cold.
I looked around at the tents, sighing and giving him a slow nod as I bounced up and down on my toes to keep warm.
“Okay, get up,” I grunted.
Josh stared back at me, unmoving, those dark eyes unreadable.
“You can share my tent,” I said with chattering teeth. “I can’t let you freeze to death out here.”
“I’m not even cold,” he grumbled, but his frozen red nose and wind burned cheeks suggested otherwise.
“This isn’t an argument, it’s an order from your captain. Get in the tent, Logan.” I dropped my tone so he knew I was serious, but in reality just doing the best I could to keep my teeth from chattering.
I thought he might argue more but he rolled to his knees in a stiff motion before grabbing his blankets and pillow.
“Over there.” I pointed.
“Yeah I know, Tuck.” I expected to have to fight him on it but he started walking. I jogged over and grabbed a couple of bottles of water and a leftover bun from the coolers, before moving my ass back to the tent to get warm.
Josh had laid out his bed roll, but the tent was so small that our belongings overlapped and tangled together, despite his obvious want for space. He cursed a few choice words before he curled into the blankets and pressed his face into the pillow. I set the bottles down for him and crawled into my own blankets. All the warmth had been sucked from them in my absence and I shivered from the feeling as I wrapped them up to my jaw and curled into a ball. When I opened my eyes he was staring at me with furrowed brows, his lips pressed into a tight line.
He was close enough that I could trace the scattered freckles that stained his permanently sun-soaked skin. I hated that underneath all the hatred I had for him, there was a spark ofwant.
“Can you back up or something?” Josh complained.
“There’s no room to move,” I snapped back.
“Just like, roll over?” He asked.
“You roll over,” I fought back. “This is my tent.”
“You made me come in here,” Josh argued.
