by Nicole Fox
Overall, things are looking up in the Wilson household.
“We’ll have time to swing back by your house if our waitress ever comes to take our orders. Is it just me, or is the service here slow? Maybe they should get a fire pole around here to speed things up.”
Haley narrows her bright blue eyes at me, looking more sultry than scary, and I can’t help myself. I stand up and lean across the table to give her a quick kiss.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Brunch is my favorite activity. I love feeling like a guest at a little girl’s tea party.”
Haley shakes her head and laughs. “Caleb, you are—”
“Disgusting,” someone else chimes in.
We both stop and turn to the table to our right to see who spoke.
Just a few minutes ago, an elderly couple in matching red shirts had been sitting there sharing a giant croissant, but now the seats have been taken by Penelope LaFevre and her band of merry witches.
Penny pretends she is whispering to her friends, but she is talking loudly. She knows we can hear her.
“So disgusting. Apparently, being poor is contagious,” she hisses to her cackling friends. “Caleb caught it from her, so don’t get too close, girls.”
“Ignore her,” Haley says, laying her hand over mine.
“Does she still bother you?” I ask. “I thought that was over.”
Haley gives me a sad smile, and it makes me feel naïve. “Drama is never over with girls. She’ll hate me forever.”
“Girls are weird. If a guy is messing with me, I punch him in the face. That usually shuts down whatever shit he wanted to say.”
“I can’t just punch her in the face if she hasn’t attacked me,” Haley says.
“Uh, she has attacked you.” I tip my head towards her. “What do you call that?”
Haley opens her mouth to say something, but Penny speaks up before she can.
“Excuse me. Do you have something to say to me?” She is wearing a sneer like it’s designer, her relatively pretty face puckered into nastiness. “Is there some reason you and your freakshow girlfriend are pointing at me?”
I turn to her with a big fake smile painted on my face. “Yeah, actually, there is. We were both wondering where on earth you bought that stick that’s shoved up your ass.”
Penny’s lips press together into a flat line. Haley stifles a laugh across the table.
“Laugh it up,” Penny says, looking directly at Haley. “From what I hear, you’re the whore who likes it up the ass.”
I lean across the aisle between our tables, my voice low. “Listen here, you rat-faced bi—”
“I got this, Caleb.”
Haley lays a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back to the table. Her movements are delicate and graceful as she slides out of her chair and smooths down the front of her dress.
For a second, I think she is about to get up and leave. I think what Penny said must have upset her, and she is going to wait out front for me to come meet her and go somewhere else.
But just before panic can set in, Haley smiles at me and then turns and walks over to Penny’s table.
Without a second of hesitation, she wrenches her arm back and lets a punch fly.
Penny never sees it coming.
I know that because the smile is still on her face when she falls backwards out of her chair.
Haley shakes out her hand, wincing slightly, and then turns back to me with a smile…
Just as our waitress finally shows up.
The woman is middle-aged with dyed red hair and long green fake nails. “Fucking teenagers,” she groans. “All of you. Out.”
A blanket of paper napkins covers Haley’s dress as she bites into her breakfast burrito and moans. “This is so good.”
“Better than mixed berries and danishes?” I ask.
“God, yes. This is amazing. Plus, I’d eat soggy cereal if it meant getting to punch Penny in the face. She is the worst.”
“The actual worst,” I echo. “Ever since she and Noah stopped hanging out, she is a nightmare. Watching you punch her in the face was the highlight of … wow, it might have been the highlight of my life.”
Haley snorts. “Please tell me that isn’t true. I mean, we’ve had sex in every corner of Finn’s house. Please tell me one of those times was better than that moment. I got rug burn, Caleb.”
I bite my lip at the memory of that time, specifically. “Okay, you’re probably right, but damn, watching you fight has got to be one of the top five hottest things I’ve ever seen.”
She looks over at me out of the corner of her eye, dark eyebrow raised. “That got your engines revving?”
“If you must put it that way, then yes, it got my engines revving.”
Haley sets her burrito upright in the cupholder and leans across the console. “So will you be turned on or annoyed if I punch you in the face and steal the rest of your tater tots?”
A surprised laugh forces out of me. “Honestly? Probably both.”
She closes the distance between us, curling her finger under my chin as she kisses me. Her tongue swirls into my mouth, effectively scrambling my brains, and I don’t feel her reach between my legs and steal the cup of tater tots nestled there until it is too late.
Haley drops back into her seat and pops one in her mouth, a self-satisfied smirk on her face, and I’m not turned on or annoyed …
I’m in love.
Epilogue Part 2
Haley
Two Months Later
“I know it has been months, but it feels like just yesterday we were here.”
I tighten my legs around Caleb’s waist and arch my body closer from him, trying to get away from the tree branch poking my spine.
“Yeah, I think I still have bruises from the last time we did this.”
Caleb breaks our kiss and laughs, dropping his head on my shoulder. “This was supposed to be romantic—sneaking away from our friends, having sex in the place where we first had sex—but something tells me you aren’t into it.”
I shrug and put my feet on the ground. “Back then there was so much sexual tension and ‘will they/won’t they’ going around that I didn’t have enough mental energy left to pay attention to the nature attacking me.”
He frowns. “Are you trying to say that we have lost some of our thunder? That things between us are stale?”
“Of course not,” I purr, smoothing my hands down his chest. “I’m just saying that I’d like for you to be the only wild thing inside of me, and that branch was getting very close to scoring a home run.”
Caleb belly laughs and pulls me close, kissing my temple.
Quickly, however, his tender affection turns more exploratory, and once again, we are breathing heavily and being poked and prodded by all manner of sticks, shrubs, and trees.
Just as my need for him is beginning to override my hesitations about the locale, voices make their way to us through the trees.
Caleb curses.
“Are they coming this way?”
Before the question is even out of my mouth, our friends break out of the tree line and into the small meadow where we are both half-clothed.
J.C. and Viktor both shout like their lives are flashing before their eyes.
“I thought you said you were doing some training,” Finn says, using one hand to cover his eyes and the other to cover his girlfriend’s, Lily’s.
They came back from New York for Christmas and an impromptu winter camping trip. Weirdly, it’s the first time I’ve officially met Finn, despite having had sex on almost every surface of his very large house.
Now, he has seen me like this. Great.
“That’s their code,” Noah groans from the back of the pack.
“Code for sex,” J.C. explains needlessly. “They were having sex.”
“That is a lame code. Who ‘trains’ in the dark in the middle of the woods?” Viktor towers over the crowd, which means even though he is in the back of the pack, he has an unencumbere
d view of Caleb and me. Caleb sits up, and I hug myself closer to him, trying to find some modicum of modesty.
“We were about to,” Caleb groans, pulling my shirt down to cover me.
“It would have been better to find them after. He’d be in a better mood,” Noah says.
Caleb stands up and lends me a hand to help me to my feet. “If you all knew it was code, why did you still come back here?”
“I didn’t know it was code,” Viktor says, raising his hand.
“Because the food is done and we’re hungry, but Lily thought we should all wait on you to eat.” Finn pulls on Lily’s long blonde braid, and she smiles at me.
“If we didn’t wait, J.C. would have eaten half the hot dogs himself,” she says.
J.C. nods in agreement. “It’s true. I’m famished. Though, not as famished as Caleb would have been if we’d waited another fifteen minutes to come get you.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Finn asks, wrinkling his nose. “I think you’re aiming a little high.”
“Ten?” Noah suggests.
Four of the five Golden Boys look at one another, shrugging with indecision as they debate the stamina of their friend. I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of all of it.
“The point is, if you two would like to stay here and enjoy Caleb’s hot dog, go right ahead,” J.C. says to a chorus of disgusted groans and muffled laughs. “But don’t be mad when you come back and there’s nothing to eat.”
Caleb grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowd of onlookers, mumbling as he goes. “A bunch of assholes … nosy …no boundaries.”
“I can’t believe I wasn’t there to see Bumper get beaten up by his own ex-girlfriend.”
Finn shakes his head and takes a massive bite of his s’more. Strings of marshmallow fall over his lip and chin and Lily reaches over and wipes them away, sucking them into her own mouth.
“She has a name.”
“Right, of course,” Finn says, extending a hand to me. “Haley Cochran herself, in the flesh. We are honored.”
“It really wasn’t that big of a deal. He has no clue how to fight. Like, at all.”
“He doesn’t, but it was still epic,” J.C. says, winking at me.
Over the last few months, I’ve grown more comfortable around J.C. and Noah, but I was worried what the dynamic would be like once Finn and Viktor arrived.
Turns out, it’s exactly the same.
The Golden Boys are a strange kind of unit. They are all individuals, but if you’re “in” with one, you’re in with them all.
Caleb insists that Finn used to be much less personable before he got together with Lily, but they are so happy together that I can’t quite imagine it.
“He used to be more like Noah, actually,” Caleb said once. “Brooding, you know?”
I’ve never asked directly because I don’t know him well enough to be sure, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason for Noah’s perpetual attitude. It’s just who he is. And he’s nice to me, so I don’t really mind.
I’ll ask for his story only when the time is right.
But really, all of the Golden Boys are nice to me. Never in a million years did I think when I came to Ravenlake Prep that I’d find my way into the most popular group of kids in all of Ravenlake, Texas.
And yet here I am eating s’mores and drinking beer with them. I can’t imagine anything different.
“If you thought that was epic, you should have seen her knock Penelope out of her chair.” Caleb bumps my shoulder with his and laughs at the memory. “That bitch never saw it coming.”
I smile, but then I see Finn glance at Noah. Their eyes meet, and Noah shakes his head softly.
Caleb clearly doesn’t notice this exchange. He goes on for another minute about how shocked she was that someone finally gave her what she deserved.
“I thought Noah and Penny used to be friends,” Lily says. “That’s what Finn told me, anyway.”
Noah’s attention snaps back to Finn. I can’t read his expression very well in the flickering firelight, but he looks worried.
“They grew up together. That’s all I said,” Finn says as a way of explaining things to Noah.
Something is going on between them, but unlike Lily, I’m not nearly bold enough to ask outright. No one else seems to be bold enough, either.
“We were friends until … we weren’t,” Noah says with a casual shrug that doesn’t look very casual at all. “Now, she’s a bitch. That’s the whole story.”
The group falls into a tense silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound.
There’s more to that. To Penny and Noah. I can’t help but wonder what it might be.
Then, Caleb shrugs and pulls his perfectly roasted marshmallow out of the fire. “Either way, the bitch got a taste of my girl’s right hook and it was epic. Sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I roll my eyes and steal the stick from his hands, popping the marshmallow in my mouth before he can argue. “You are a brute.”
He wraps a hand around my hips and slides me towards him to kiss my sugary lips. “But I’m your brute.”
The warmth in his eyes is giving the fire some serious competition, and I’m immediately swept away. I don’t remember our friends sitting next to us or that there are other people in existence at all, really. There is just him. And me.
Us.
I lean towards him, my lower lip pinched between my teeth, the tips of our noses brushing.
I’m seconds away from kissing him when J.C. takes the stick out of my hand and breaks my trance.
When I turn around, he is waving us away, his face squished in disgust. “Thanks for joining us for dinner, but you heathens are dismissed now. We can’t stomach another second of your sexual tension. Please go. Relieve yourselves.”
“You make it sound like we’re going to the bathroom,” Caleb growls, even as he grabs my hand and pulls me towards our tent…
Which we pitched deliberately far away from all the others, on the outskirts of the site.
“That’s what we’re going to pretend you’re doing,” Viktor yells after us. “So take your time. No judgment.”
We laugh and stumble away, arms around each other.
The tent is the same one Caleb and I shared on the last camping trip, but now instead of two sleeping bags, the entire floor of the tent is made into one bed.
Caleb packed a full-sized mattress pad for cushioning and a set of white sheets complete with pillows and a matching comforter. Winter in South Texas isn’t frigid by any means, but we’ll be grateful for the blanket tonight.
There is also a small electric lantern hanging from a string in the corner of the tent, casting the entire space in a golden glow.
It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.
Much better than the meadow sex we attempted earlier.
“I didn’t see you set any of this up,” I breathe as Caleb zips the tent closed behind me.
“Because I didn’t want you to see,” he says, wrapping his arms around my midsection and resting his chin on my shoulder. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
The effort he went to takes my words away, so I spin in his arms, stretch up onto my tiptoes, and press my lips to his.
Caleb pulls me close, pressing his hands to my lower back and molding my lower body to his. I can feel his excitement through his pants, and I roll my hips against him, eliciting a groan.
“Turn off the lamp, you heathens!” a voice outside the tent shouts.
I start, springing away from Caleb, and he turns towards the voice as though he’ll be able to see through the tent material. Suddenly, I realize the lantern is positioned behind us, meaning our shadows are cast perfectly on the wall of the tent.
Like a sexy projection screen for our friends.
My entire body flames with embarrassment. Caleb grumbles some more about how tactless they all are as he flips the lantern off.
“I’m sorry about them,” he says, fumbling for me in the sudden d
arkness.
When he finds me, I’m shaking with laughter.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“I mean, kind of,” I admit.
“They’re ruining everything,” Caleb sighs.
I tug at Caleb’s waistband, pulling him close to me. “A few jokes aren’t going to stop me from tearing your clothes off if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Oh, definitely not,” Caleb agrees, sliding his hand around my hip, his fingers slipping underneath the hem of my thermal top to circle over my skin. “You are going to be ravished tonight even if they are standing right outside the door listening in.”
“Okay, then even though they are idiots, they haven’t ruined anything.” I reach up and stroke the dark stubble on his chin.
Caleb turns his face into my hand and kisses my palm.
“I just wanted tonight to be romantic. Perfect.”
“Nothing is ever perfect. You and I know that better than most people, I think.”
“Which is why I wanted tonight to be perfect,” Caleb says.
For the first time, I can sense nervousness in him.
I’ve never known Caleb to talk much about romance. He oozes it even when he isn’t trying, but he doesn’t make a lot of grand gestures. Our romance is unspoken, and I’ve never much minded, but I can tell Caleb had other plans for tonight, even if I don’t understand what they were.
We fall into a long silence where I stroke his cheek and his neck, and his hand inches higher and higher on my waist.
The feeling of him touching me is enough to make me not care much what he has to say, and I’m seconds away from stretching up on my toes and kissing him again when Caleb releases a shaky breath.
“I wanted to tell you that … I love you, Haley.” Caleb’s hand trembles on my hip before he steadies it by clutching my waist. “I wanted tonight to be perfect so it would be special. So you’d know how much I meant it. Because I do mean it. I love you so much.”
At the sight of the tent, I lost my words.
At the sound of those words coming from him, I lose my mind.
