Page 70 of Never Will I Ever

Of fucking course.

“And at some point while you were creating this tenth circle of Hell, did you somehow forget we live in the era of cell phones coming with GPS?”

Amusement has his green eyes gleaming like the forest in sunlight. “And if your phone died or you didn’t have service? What would you do then?”

“Probably die,” I deadpan.

“Exactly,” he says, pointing at me with the hand holding the compass. “Call it an insurance policy.”

And with that, he flips to the next set of instructions and sets out down the trail toward the location listed.

We continue hiding the containers, and I’ll admit, the navigation part gets slightly easier for me after a while. Granted, Kaleb still has to help half the time, but at least I’m not completely incompetent by the time we’re halfway done.

“How the hell did you get so good at all this?” I ask as we trek toward another set of hiding places along the eastern edge of Glass Lake. “I mean, besides spending your childhood summers living in the wilderness.”

“My dad was the one who got me into the outdoors, if that’s what you mean. It was something we did together when I was a kid, before I was old enough to come to camp.”

“Maybe it’s a genetics thing, then,” I mutter.

Lord knows that would make sense, seeing as my father wouldn’t be caught dead in the mountains unless he was in a ski chalet drinking some stupidly expensive bourbon with a business associate.

“Not quite possible, since he isn’t my biological dad. Goodtheory, though.”

He says it so casually, I almost miss the bomb he dropped.

Almost.

I blink at him a few times, the question coming out before I can stop it. “Are you adopted?”

He shakes his head before pausing, contemplating his words. “I mean, yes and no. My mom is my mother, he’s my stepdad. Technically, he adopted me after they got married when I was five. But he’s still the only father I’ve ever known, and he’s never treated me like anything less than his own son, so I don’t really think of it any differently.”

“And he knows you’re gay?”

He’d told me previously that his entire family knew about his sexual orientation, but I can’t stop the question from coming anyway.

“He was the first person I told.”

I blink, processing the information and wondering why he never told me these things before. More importantly, I wanna know why he feels comfortable enough to share them now.

As we continue hiking through the forest, hiding items for the hunt along the way, my mind continues reeling with these revelations.

His family is still blended, in a way, but from the outside, no one would ever know it. It’s obvious from the way he and his brothers interact they were raised with laughter, love, and acceptance.

It fills me with a sense of longing.

I didn’t want for much when it came to material things, but it’s obvious that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme. I’d give up all the years of sailing or baseball camps or anything else to have a father who could accept me as I am. Who didn’t ingrain hatred into the very marrow of my bones.

Hell, Kaleb’s dad was able to accept that Kaleb is gay, and heisn’t even related by blood. Why can’t the one person biologically programmed to love me unconditionally do the same?

That one goddamn question swirls in my mind for far longer than I should allow it while Kaleb and I hide the remaining containers. It’s still playing on a loop when we start heading back to the lodge, with twenty minutes to spare, and it’s Kaleb’s voice that finally pulls my thoughts free.

“Oh, by the way. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

I glance over to where Kaleb is trekking down the path beside me, only to find him grinning at me deviously.

Arching a brow, I ask, “Is it a good one or a bad one?”

“Since when are surprises bad?”

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