by Erin Wright
Levi opened his mouth to automatically brush off that concern – it was obviously not true – when he stopped.
Actually, it really wasn’t true. After years and years of carrying a torch for Georgia, dating her, being in love with her, proposing to her for God’s sake…he really was fine with Moose and her dating.
He really wasn’t jealous or upset at all.
It was like walking on a newly healed foot – he expected the jab of pain to be there, and it just…wasn’t.
“I’m over her, honest,” he said, pulling his gaze back from the lake to stare Moose straight in the eye as he said it. Moose was one of the few guys who was just as tall as Levi, which meant that Levi really was staring him straight in the eye.
No guilt, no shame, no worry that he had to hide his true feelings…he really was over Georgia Rowland.
Huh.
That felt surprisingly good to figure out.
Moose nodded slowly, his shoulders relaxing. He believed Levi. “So why the attitude?” he asked softly. “You’ve been…difficult this whole time.”
Levi shrugged, his eyes flitting away to the gorgeous green forest surrounding the lake. “I’m not used to having girls on our camping trip,” he finally said tightly. The camping trip they’d taken together every single year since they’d turned 14 and could finally drive by themselves. The camping trip that’d been just them, or just them and a couple of other guys, that whole time. The camping trip where they’d made a million memories, and caught at least that many fish.
Of course it was hard for him to have Georgia and Tennessee tag along this time.
Of course.
“Hmmm…” Moose said noncommittally, and then headed back towards camp, leaving Levi on the shore to fish all by himself.
Levi reeled his line back in and then cast it out. Good. He liked being alone. This was just what he wanted. Just him, the mountain air, the impossibly blue water, and his fishing pole.
He didn’t need anything – or anyone – else.
Chapter 10
Tennessee
“Smoke follows beauty,” Moose said.
“What?” Tennessee asked, coughing as she waved her hand in front of her face in a desperate attempt to get a clean lungful of air. She and Georgia scooted their chairs to the right, and like magic, the smoke of the campfire followed their movements perfectly.
Mother, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’ll never question your judgment again. Except when it comes to caviar. You’re wrong about that. I don’t care how many times you make me eat it.
“Smoke follows beauty,” Moose repeated. “Everyone knows that. When you’re sitting around a campfire, the smoke always wants to drift towards a beautiful person. That’s why you’ll never see my ugly mug choking on the stuff.”
Tennessee sent him a dry look through the smoke. “Are you sure this isn’t just a way to make someone feel better who is currently contracting a case of lung cancer?” she asked sarcastically.
Moose let out a belly laugh. “You know, I like you so much better, now that I’m not dating you.”
“Funny – I feel the same way about you,” she retorted with a saucy grin.
“We should go for a walk,” Georgia said through a coughing fit, finally abandoning her chair and escaping to stand outside of the ring of smoke. “We could hike and take some pictures – see some scenery.”
“Sounds great! Let me go ask Levi if he wants to go with us,” Moose volunteered and without waiting for them to agree to his plan, he stood and headed down the trail towards the lake.
Tennessee also stood up and moved out of the line of fire…errr…smoke. She wasn’t entirely sure why Moose had been so insistent on building one as soon as he followed her and Georgia back to camp; she guessed it was so he had something to do to keep himself out of the way while her and Georgia had some “girl time” together. Either way, the campfire was functioning better as a campsmoker and if they’d needed to send a smoke signal to someone, well, they would’ve been set.
Too bad smoke signals had stopped being a thing like 150 years ago.
“Are you okay with Levi coming with us on the hike?” Georgia asked, her finely arched eyebrows creased with concern. For the hundredth time, Tenny sighed inwardly as she looked at her cousin. She really was pretty and would be upgraded to knockout status if she took more than five minutes on her appearance every morning. Her naturally thin eyebrows, her beautiful clear eyes, cheekbones Tennessee would kill for…some people just wasted their potential.
“It’ll be fine,” she told her pretty-but-not-as-pretty-as-she-could-be cousin. “He was just being a…a guy,” she said, waving her hand around dismissively. “And he’s right. I should stop caring so much about what other people think. I just…it’s easier said than done. Also, he can certainly say things like that in a less dickish tone of voice.”
Before they could rehash his comments in great detail, dissecting every one of them down to the nth degree, Moose and Levi showed up on the edge of camp, slightly sweaty from their hike from the lake.
Tenny’s eyes were automatically drawn towards Levi, the dappled sunlight hiding and then highlighting his cheekbones and heavy eyebrows. For the thousandth time, she wondered how on earth her cousin could’ve possibly picked Moose over Levi. Not that she was complaining – Georgia had saved her from a lifetime of unhappiness – but seriously! Looking at the two guys side by side…once you got past the fact that they looked enough like each other that they could’ve been brothers, it wasn’t hard to see who was the real heart stopper of the bunch.
Moose was handsome, sure, but Levi…Levi was at a whole other level. He had the kind of good looks that deserved a warning sign to be attached to his chest at all times. May cause heart palpitations. Proceed with caution.
“You guys ready?” Moose asked as Levi poured water over the campfire, finally putting it out of its misery. Georgia grabbed four backpacks from the bed of the truck with water hoses and snacks already packed inside of them – she was entirely too organized some days – and handed them out, while Levi and Tenny studiously avoided each other’s eyes. Tenny busied herself with the straps on the backpack, trying to pretend that getting them just right was a terribly difficult ordeal.
Finally, Moose and Georgia took off down a side trail that Tenny hadn’t noticed before, so slowly, dutifully, she followed along behind them. They never let go of each other’s hands, and even kept sneaking kisses from each other. Blech. Did they have to be so lovey-dovey all the time? It was like hanging out with 14-year-olds who’d just learned how much fun it was to kiss.
As they hiked higher and higher up into the hills, she began to work up a sweat, even in the cooler mountain air. She took a drink off the hose attached to her Camelbak with a happy sigh. All right, maybe her cousin’s need to be prepared down to the nth degree was useful after all. Tenny knew she certainly couldn’t have gone on this trip by herself. She’d packed her favorite pillow, 20 changes of clothing, her hair dryer, curling iron, straightener, makeup, and the only pair of tennis shoes she owned as her sole provisions for this trip.
And, let’s be real, the only reason she owned a pair of tennis shoes was because she’d bought them a couple of years ago when Georgia had pestered her into running with her, telling her that she’d grow to love the sport.
Tenny looked down at her virtually brand-new shoes with a small chuckle to herself. She’d gone running with Georgia once. After that, she pretended she’d sprained her ankle for weeks on end, until Georgia finally gave up pestering her.
Running had involved sweating and exertion, two of Tennessee’s least favorite things. She had not, in fact, grown to love the sport.
It was one of the few times when Georgia Rowland had been dead wrong about something. This trip being the second time that happened. Come along and have fun with us! she’d said. Levi will love it! she’d said.
Tenny laughed to herself without humor. No, this was one time when Georgia was dead wrong.
“What’re ya laughing about?” Levi asked, his deep voice rumbling through her like a freight train aimed straight at her. It was the first words he’d spoken since they’d taken off walking, and they startled her. She’d almost managed to forget he was walking there alongside her.
Almost.
“Nothing. Inside joke.” She waved her hand dismissively. She really didn’t want to have to explain to Levi about Georgia’s obsession with running, and Tennessee’s obsession with not running, and how she’d come prepared for this camping trip like a toddler could be relied upon to prepare themselves for a trip to the North Pole. Left to her own devices, she would’ve starved to death, possibly before or maybe after she froze to death.
And anyway, he didn’t really care about any of that, she was sure. Who’d care about something like that about her? Don’t bore your boyfriend, she could hear her mother say. Always focus on him. People like to talk about themselves. No one wants to hear about you.
“Do you mind?” Levi asked abruptly, apropos of absolutely nothing. She glanced over at him, confused. “About Moose and Georgia dating, I mean?” he clarified.
The question was so startlingly ridiculous, it made her laugh. “Absolutely not,” she declared firmly. Without saying a word to each other, they instinctively slowed their pace, letting the lovebirds get far ahead of them. It just didn’t seem right to talk about them within hearing range. “I’ve been trying for years to figure out how to get out of that whole disaster,” she said, once she was sure they couldn’t hear what was being said. “I’d never been so happy as I was the night that Moose told me he wanted to break things off. I thought he’d come over to propose to me, and if he had, I probably would’ve thrown up all over his shoes, right before saying yes. It was…awful. The whole thing.”
“Why would you say yes if you didn’t want to marry him?” Levi asked, looking at her aghast. No, not aghast – he looked positively horrified, like she’d just started detailing her plans for human sacrifices under the next full moon. “I mean, isn’t that a slogan – ‘Just say no’?”
She jerked to a halt, the anger building up inside of her.
She wanted to knee him in the nuts.
She wanted to storm away like she had before but she was supposed to be participating in this damn hike.
So instead, she looked him straight in the eye and said icily, “It sure would be nice to live in a world where everything is so damn black and white. Never having anyone have any control over me; never doing anything I didn’t want to do. Just live footloose and fancy free. Yeah, it sure would be nice to be you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest defensively and brushed past him, following her cousin and her former boyfriend, tears of frustration building up in the corners of her eyes.
She hated crying when she was angry. She wasn’t sad – she was pissed. There was a difference, dammit. Too bad her eyeballs didn’t know it.
Right then, she thought about the one thing she had left behind at her house – her knife. She’d left it behind intentionally, but the urge in that moment…she wanted her knife in her hand.
Levi grabbed her arm, jerking her to a stop and spinning her in a half circle to stare up at him. He could obviously overpower her so she decided that rather than fight him, she’d just glare at him like death couldn’t come fast enough. The jackass deserved it.
Her mother’s training – years of being taught to “act like a lady” and not let someone get under her skin…it was falling to pieces around him.
It wasn’t a development that Tenny exactly saw as progress.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “I’m not used to people caring about what I do. My dad…he couldn’t give a shit about me. If I’m not bringing him Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, then I’m worthless to him. I quickly figured out as a kid that the less I was underfoot, the better. My old man…he wasn’t exactly the doting type.”
She nodded, wiping discretely at the corner of her eyes, wanting to get rid of the telltale wetness that’d pooled there. “We’re like the three bears,” she said bitterly. “My parents care too much—” if you can count smothering and controlling to be caring, “your parents cared too little, but Georgia’s parents are just right. Do you know how many times I wished I’d been born to Shirley and Carl Rowland? To have them as parents…”
She shook her head ruefully and began wandering back down the trail again, this time her steps a little slower. A little less pissed. She was still uptight inside, wound up like an eight-day clock, but she tried to let the anger and resentment go.
People didn’t understand what it was like to be the oldest daughter of Robert and Roberta Rowland. She needed to cut them some slack. She needed—
“You’d want to be the child of Carl Rowland, the younger brother?” Levi asked incredulously, breaking into her thoughts as his long strides caught him up to her and then he began matching her, step for step. “But…but they live in that 1970s shoebox of a house,” he protested, “and they both work at the school district. I mean, just think about everything you’d give up—”
Which was when she spun in a half circle and stormed back down the path towards camp yet again.
Forget it. He was a blithering idiot and there was no hope for him and she was sick to death of trying to get it through his thick skull that living in a mansion didn’t automatically solve all her problems.
No, not even anywhere close to it.
Chapter 11
Levi
Levi stuttered to a stop. What the hell…?
He spun around to face back down the trail, where Tennessee’s swinging blonde braid marked her progress back towards camp. One minute he’d been asking her perfectly logical questions, and the next minute, he was talking to no one at all and she was storming off again.
Did she pull this stunt all the time, or was he the only “lucky” one in her orbit? He didn’t remember her being this prickly before. Had she changed and he just hadn’t noticed?
He chased her back down the path, letting Moose and Georgia continue on without him. They probably wouldn’t even notice for another half hour that half their group had disappeared.
He grabbed Tenny’s arm and jerked her to a stop. “What the hell is your problem?” he demanded. Her blue-green eyes were glowering up at him, dark and stormy and angry as a wet cat. “Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”
“Hey, you’re the one who told me to stop caring about what other people think. Well, I’m starting with you.” She shrugged off his hand and kept on going down the path.
He hurried after her, his long legs eating up ground, and this time, he got a better grip on her, spinning her in a circle to look him in the eye again. Except, this time she was refusing to; instead she was staring at the ground, her cheeks flushed a brilliant pink.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.
She snorted her disbelief.
He took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” he said again, softer this time. How many times had he already apologized to her? It seemed like half the words he’d said on this camping trip were, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t something he liked doing, that was for damn sure, but there was something about Tenny that meant he was constantly shoving his foot into his mouth. He never knew what was going to set her off, and even if he didn’t understand some of her frustration, a part of him felt bad for causing it anyway.
But despite his 1938th apology this trip, she still just stood there, the seconds ticking by until he began to wonder if she was simply going to pretend he didn’t exist until he finally left her alone, and maybe he deserved that but it didn’t mean he had to like—
“You’re not the first person to think that being rich solves every problem,” she finally said, speaking so softly that he found himself stooping to hear her better. “It doesn’t. I’ve been rich all my life and I have more problems than ten other people put together. So yeah, I’d much rather be the daughter of Carl and Shirley Rowland than Robert and Robe
rta Rowland. Maybe Carl didn’t inherit all the money, but he also didn’t inherit all of the assholishness either, so…” She trailed off, shrugging.
She still wasn’t meeting his eye, but he hardly noticed that as he stared off over her shoulder. What she was saying just didn’t make sense to him. The only people who said that money didn’t matter were the people who had loads of it. When he’d grown up having to earn every dime he could to keep himself clothed and fed, when he’d had to do work far beyond his years just to keep from starving to death because the only thing that mattered to his father was where could he get his next case of Pabst beer?
Yeah, money meant a hell of a lot.
“You only say that because you’ve never been without money,” he said softly, trying to point out the obvious without pissing her off again. “If you don’t think that money matters, try going two weeks without using any money from your parents. Then we can talk again about what matters and what doesn’t.”
“I can’t do that!” she protested, her eyes finally snapping back up to his. “I don’t have a job! How am I supposed to—”
“Exactly my point,” he broke in. “How many other 26 year olds do you know who don’t work at all, and just live at home, mooching off their parents?”
At the word “mooching,” her spine stiffened so fast, she resembled nothing so much as a human porcupine in that moment. She was pissed again. It was contagious, and Levi instantly found himself pissed, too.
The tentative truce had lasted just moments, and then it was gone.
“Is there anything I can do to prove to you that I’m not a spoiled rotten child?” she ground out.
“Nope,” he said, his mouth popping the p in exaggeration. “Not a damn thing.”
Crack.
Her open palm smacked against his cheek so hard, his ears were ringing from it. This time, when she stormed back down the path towards camp, he didn’t follow her. Instead, he cut off through the woods and took a shortcut over to the lake. He didn’t have his fishing pole on him, but at least down at the lake he could be by himself. He needed some space from Tennessee – the most annoyingly beautiful, spoiled rotten human being he’d ever met.
