Fucking fantastic. I’m attracted to frigging Brawn. As if I needed another dick to lust after.

I was never into guys until the pen. I’m still not. Or at least I didn’t think I was. I thought it was just Rev I was into, because he’s so fucking hot and he’s into me. My attraction to him started as, like, me being flattered by his attention. And let me tell you, when Rev flirts with you, I don’t care how straight you are, you get a hardon for him. So, yeah. We fooled around in secret, and it was—Dios—it was awesome. With Rev, I felt things I’ve never felt before. He brings me so frigging hard I see stars. I didn’t even know orgasms like that were possible. And naturally, I enjoy returning the favor.

But it was just him. Just Rev. I wasn’t gay or bi or anything. I figured it was just a “gay-for-him” situation.

But now, I’m fantasizing about Brawn’s thick salami. I want to put it in my mouth while it’s soft and feel it grow to its full length and thickness. I want to choke on it. I want to lick into the hole at the tip and taste his pre-come and make him growl and jerk his hips off the bed. I want that meaty dick to stretch my ass. I want to frigging cuddle with him.

Like a fucking fairy.My asshole stepfather’s voice kills my erection. Just as well. It won’t do me any good dwelling on something that’ll never happen. Because Brawn’s not into men. He’s into Cora, like everyone else.

But you’re into Cora, dickhead. And you’re into Rev, too…and now Brawn. Attraction doesn’t have to be limited.

Unless you have an asshole’s voice in your head making you feel like shit all the time.

Fuck you, Rev. This is all your fault.

With effort, I focus on the battery I’ve exposed by opening the door on the trail cam. When I touch a meter to it, the needle jumps to sixty percent. Not immediately in need of a charge. Still. I’m curious. And I’m looking for a distraction from the unsettling revelation that I am maybe, probably bisexual.

I unclip the battery from its housing and lay it flat on my hand. It’s a rechargeable packet of four double-A’sall wrapped together, and I focus on its shiny, black surface.

“Charge, you motherfucker.”

I stare at the center of the battery pack and imagine my Gift as, like, crackling energy coming out of me. I do that pushing-out thing Cora encouraged me to do last night, imagining the energy moving from me to the battery like a pressure wave exploding off a bomb.

The packet gets warm in my hand. Like really warm. Then it’s hot as a lit coal.

“Aye, caramba!”

I drop it, shaking my burned hand.

The pack hits the ground, a dark trail of smoke curling from it. The shiny black surface is crinkled and scorched in the center, right where I focused my Gift.

“Okay. Little too much, I guess.”

Before I left the lodge, I grabbed a handful of charged battery packs from Jud’s office. I replace the destroyed pack with a fresh one and move on to the next camera. This one’s deep in a shady hollow, so its solar charger doesn’t do shit. My meter shows the battery’s dead.

Before I try the charging thing again—my hand still smarts from the last time—I transmit to Brawn. It turns out, he reads me just fine, even though we should be pushing the range between our units. With a shrug, I take out the trail cam battery pack and hold it on my reddened palm. This time, instead of pinning the thing with a laser focus, I try just pushing out my Gift a little bit. Like a fragile bubble blown on a plastic wand.

The battery warms in my hand but doesn’t get hot.

I test it again, and eureka! It’s at 99%, which is as high as these rechargables ever get. Immediately I want to share the news with Brawn. I touch the button to tell him about my success, but then I stop myself. I don’t need to crow about every success to my new crush.

“You trying to reach me?” Brawn comes back. It’s way too nice having his voice in my ear, having him be attentive enough to check on me after what must’ve sounded to him like an insignificant radio blip.

“Nah. Sorry. Moving on to the next, though.”

We go on like that, me charging batteries with my Gift and Brawn answering my transmissions, regardless of our distance from each other. I only have a few trail cams left to check when Brawn comes over the comm. “My patrol is up, pipsqueak. Cora’s got lunch on, and after that I’m gonna head out with Rev to scout the crash site. Can you handle the rest without me?”

It occurs to me he’s never called me pipsqueak before. When the others do it, it pisses me off, but for some reason, hearing Brawn say it makes me smile.

“Yeah. No problem, man. Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime. Over.”

Might hold you to that, big guy.

With difficulty, I return my attention to the task at hand. I’m at least a mile from camp, which means the radios we’re using are working at ten times their max range. What’s most interesting about that is I haven’t been intentionally using my Gift. Maybe simple things just work for me, like the radio range being so far and how I’m preternaturally good at fixing shit and building shit with thrown-together components. Maybe stuff like that just works as part of my Gift. But more complicated stuff, like charging batteries and manipulating computer software, has be more of an intentional effort.

With Brawn gone, I pluck my earphone out by the wire and store my transmitter in the pack on the ATV. Facing off with the next-to-last camera, whose battery I’ve just tested as dead, I decide to try something new, push my Gift even harder. I pull out the battery. Then I square off with the trail cam and tell it, “Record.”