Page 67 of Into the Mountains
“I’m still sorry.”
“I appreciate that, Charlie.” He waits a beat before taking in a deep breath, readying himself for whatever he’s going to say next. “The stuff Ash said on our last date, I never meant…none of it was—”
“I can’t believe you two of all people won this,” Hudson yells from his canoe as him and Sky start docking it. Jacob and Avery are already walking toward us. We were so wrapped up in our conversation, neither of us had noticed they had made it to the end of the course.
“You two just can’t work together ever.” Jacob says, pointing between Hudson and Sky. “You’re way too stubborn.”
“Am not,” she denies. “If I remember correctly, you were pretty stubborn when admitting you had feelings.”
“And if I remember correctly,” he says, pulling Sky by the waist until there is no space between them. “We werebothstubborn on that front.”
“Alright, I’m not going to sit here and watch you two make out,” Hudson protests. “I’m hungry. Let’s go find food.”
Elias stands first and offers his hand to help me up. For once, I take it without reluctance.
“So, what about our winnings?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ELIAS
Ihad finally felt ready enough to maybe bring up everything that had happened on our last date to Charlotte and talk to her about it. Finally get it all out in the open, but Hudson has the absolute worst timing.
“I still can’t believe out of all of us, you two are the team that won,” Sky says, even though part of me has a feeling she knew we would somehow win in the end. Considering she’s orchestrated this whole trip, this whole weekend just to get the two of us to get along. She may have said it was team bonding and all that, but I don’t buy it. Sure, that’s what part of this is, but I think it was mostly to get Charlotte and I to hash things out. I have no idea what Sky knows, if anything, but surely Charlotte told them our history.
“You’re actually surprised we won?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She hikes her leg up into her chair seated close to the fire and tucks her foot under it. Jacob is next to her with his hand resting on her leg and Avery is sitting across from them on Hudson’s lap.
“Why are you surprised?” Avery lifts her head from where it was resting on her husband’s shoulder and looks toward Sky.
“All they do is bicker. I figured they’d keep that up.”
Maybe she doesn’t know anything. I look over to my left at Charlotte curled up in her chair inches from mine, her body leaning toward me. Raising my eyebrows, I ask my silent question, hoping she understands. A small smile tugs at her lips as she shrugs, giving me the go ahead.
“Sky, you do know Charlotte and I used to know each other right?”
She narrows her eyes at us as if she’s a detective trying to solve the case and I’m the culprit she’s trying to catch in a lie.
“Bullshit.” But she doesn’t sound fully convinced.
“We’re from the same town,” Charlotte explains. “Went to high school together and everything.”
“So you were friends then?”
My laugh comes first and Charlotte’s is not far behind. “I wouldn’t say that. Rivals is more like it.” She goes into more detail explaining how much of a jock I was in high school, something most of the group already knows. She talks about my infiltration of her clubs and how we would challenge each other every moment we had the opportunity to do so.
“So nothing has changed then?” Jacob jokes.
“Hah hah,” I laugh sarcastically.
“Everything has changed,” Charlotte whispers. An eerie hush falls over the camp like one before a predator pounces on their prey. The quiet before disaster strikes.
“What happened then?” Sky’s eyes now shift between us waiting for one of us to explain. Avery and Hudson say nothing and a gut instinct tells me they aren’t asking questions because they already know.
“I screwed it all up by being a complete asshole basically.”
“It’s in the past,” Charlotte says at the same time. A statement we both know is far from the truth. I don’t think it will fully be in the past until we actually talk about it.
