Page 9

TUCKER

T here was a fire going when we wandered back into camp. Josh trailed behind me, silent after our argument. I know I handled it badly, the anger that had sparked up had been vicious and unpredictable but…

Ella had saved Cael in so many ways the rest of us couldn’t have. If she hadn’t shown up at Harbor, Cael wouldn’t be here today. It was dramatic, a stretch, but deep down we all knew that Cael had been on a path that would have ended with a funeral none of us ever wanted to have.

Ella was our sister and she didn’t deserve a lick of the venom that had dripped from Josh. That was a breaking point, but it had also shown something about Josh that I hadn’t expected. He had cracked today on the hike, his disdain for families ran deep, almost like he believed his life was worse than anyone else. And maybe it was, but I needed to find out why.

It wasn’t Arlo that had triggered him, which is what I would have assumed.

No… It was Silas .

I watched as he wandered over to the fire, grabbed food, and secluded himself on his bed roll, away from the rest of the team. Today had gone terribly, what started as an exercise to help him understand that the guys were people and not just players had completely backfired.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

I grabbed a bowl of stew, staring down at the unevenly cut vegetables and sighed, they had left Todd in charge again . I settled down between Van and Cael on a log away from the rest of the team.

“I’m glad it went terribly. That’ll teach you to make us hike,” Cael was quick to joke but quicker to silence when he saw my jaw tighten. “That bad?”

“He insulted Ella and I shoved him against a tree…” I exhaled a shaky, frustrated breath.

Van giggled, which sounded odd from a man his size, but it was definitely a giggle because Cael leaned forward around me to stare at him in bewilderment.

“What? Sounds like he deserved it. He’s not even bruised…” Van extended his bowl in Josh’s direction and grumbled.

“The problem is, I’m the captain. I shouldn’t have snapped like that but—” I shoved food in my mouth and scowled. “This tastes like lake water.”

Both Van and Cael looked at each other before choosing not to tell me the truth about where the water came from.

“Josh can handle it, being roughed up a bit.” Cael set his bowl down between his feet and chose the bun in his lap to fill his stomach. “And if he went after Ella he earned it, but that’s not you. Try leading him to the carrot without hitting him with the stick?”

“What…” I turned to Cael, feeling like an idiot.

“He means try a softer approach,” Van said.

“I am trying, but he has all these preconceived ideas about us as people and it’s frustrating to think he believes them. The rumors, the gossip... We aren’t the stories the news outlets run.” I set my bowl next to my feet.

“If telling him isn’t working, figure out how to show him we aren’t,” Van suggested in a surprising turn of events.

“Show him?” I asked.

“Yeah, actions speak louder than words, right? So show him who we are,” Van said with a shrug, tipping the rest of the stew into his mouth. I grimaced at the dribbled liquid on his chin. “You gonna finish that?” He asked, pointing to mine. I shook my head.

“How do I show him when any time I try to include him in crap, the rest of the team cracks jokes and starts fights?” I said, knowing how defeated and pathetically whiny I sounded.

“You’re the captain, man.” Van shrugged as he finished his second bowl.

“And you’re a garbage disposal,” Cael teased. “Neither are helpful additives to this conversation. Let’s just get through this canoe trip without any war games?” He suggested.

“I don’t know. At this point I’m thinking about chucking the captain title at anyone who’ll take it and drowning myself in the lake,” I said.

“Oh, dramatic. You could come back as a serial killer and haunt the Hornets for all of eternity. This canoe trip will be legendary.” Cael grinned.

“Ha, ha.”

“Oh, buck up, big boy. We’ll get through this and you’ll be leading the way.” Cael’s hand slapped against my shoulder and gave me a tight squeeze. “We’ve gotten through a lot worse.” He leaned over and tapped his fingers against my chest. “Two steps at a time,” he said.

“Preferably forward,” I grumbled, but nodded in agreement.

After dinner was cleaned up, the guys settled around the fire for a while before bed but, one by one, they disappeared into their shared tents. Everyone slept with someone; it was still too cold outside at night, and we never had enough tents anyways. Logically, if we had asked, Silas would have forked over the money for more, but there was something about doing things the hard way that made the canoe trip feel more like summer camp.

Pairing up in tents was just another buddy exercise in team bonding. I curled up in my empty tent, shivering beneath my sweater. The temperature had dropped more than I’d expected, and even with two blankets I was freezing. I tried again to tuck down into my hoodie and blankets but something other than the cold was eating away at my peaceful sleep.

Josh.

I pushed from my bed onto my knees, shivering as the frigid air slinked its way under my clothes. Fuck it was cold. I just needed some water and a snack; my appetite had been bleak since the news broke about our newest member, but after barely touching dinner my stomach was rumbling and the coolers were across camp.

I pulled on my shoes and unzipped the tent into the pitch-black wild. The stars twinkled brightly in the harsh spring cold and, without clouds in the sky, the moon was uncontested in lighting up camp a hazy blue.

The fire flickered with nothing but dampened sparks that snapped as the wood quietly broke down from the remaining heat. I started to carefully move around the main area, avoiding the rogue baseballs that the guys had dropped and forgot about toward the coolers, but stopped when I saw a body curled up tightly, directly next to the fire.

“Hey.” I wandered over to him, knowing that it was Josh from the strands of wavy dark hair that flipped out from under his beanie against his pillow. “Josh.” I kicked his restless form gently. “Get up.”

It took a little more convincing before he finally opened his eyes and looked up at me.

“You’ve got to be the worst fake sleeper I’ve ever seen.” I shook my head.

“What do you want, Tuck. It’s, like, two am,” Josh grumbled.

“Why are you out here? Where’s your tent?” I asked, and was met with a scoff.

“Seems your team is a little more unfriendly than you thought,” he said, his jaw tight and his words sluggish in the cold.

I looked around at the tents, sighing and giving him a slow nod as I bounced up and down on my toes to keep warm.

“Okay, get up,” I grunted.

Josh stared back at me, unmoving, those dark eyes unreadable.

“You can share my tent,” I said with chattering teeth. “I can’t let you freeze to death out here.”

“I’m not even cold,” he grumbled, but his frozen red nose and wind burned cheeks suggested otherwise.

“This isn’t an argument, it’s an order from your captain. Get in the tent, Logan.” I dropped my tone so he knew I was serious, but in reality just doing the best I could to keep my teeth from chattering.

I thought he might argue more but he rolled to his knees in a stiff motion before grabbing his blankets and pillow.

“Over there.” I pointed.

“Yeah I know, Tuck.” I expected to have to fight him on it but he started walking. I jogged over and grabbed a couple of bottles of water and a leftover bun from the coolers, before moving my ass back to the tent to get warm.

Josh had laid out his bed roll, but the tent was so small that our belongings overlapped and tangled together, despite his obvious want for space. He cursed a few choice words before he curled into the blankets and pressed his face into the pillow. I set the bottles down for him and crawled into my own blankets. All the warmth had been sucked from them in my absence and I shivered from the feeling as I wrapped them up to my jaw and curled into a ball. When I opened my eyes he was staring at me with furrowed brows, his lips pressed into a tight line.

He was close enough that I could trace the scattered freckles that stained his permanently sun-soaked skin. I hated that underneath all the hatred I had for him, there was a spark of want.

“Can you back up or something?” Josh complained.

“There’s no room to move,” I snapped back.

“Just like, roll over?” He asked.

“You roll over,” I fought back. “This is my tent.”

“You made me come in here,” Josh argued.

“I’m your captain, I’m not going to let you freeze to death.” I closed my eyes, just trying to block out his dumb face.

“So be my captain and give me some space,” he mumbled, forcing me to open my eyes again.

“There’s no space to give, Logan. Shut up.” I pulled the blankets tighter. “Besides, it’s a body heat thing, the proximity will keep us warmer…” I tried to explain.

“You wanna snuggle?” He snarled.

“No,” I blurted quickly. “We’re close enough. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’d gnaw my arm off if I touched you again.”

“I will.” His tone went frigid.

“It was a joke,” I said, and sighed. “You’re a jumpy guy,” I added.

“I am not,” Josh said, following my actions by pulling his blankets tighter around his jaw.

“You are,” I argued with my eyes closed.

“How the hell are you so cold? Aren’t grizzly bears supposed to be furnaces?” Josh asked in a whisper, avoiding my prodding about his aversion to touch.

“Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want to make fun of me?” I asked.

“Can it be both?” He asked, after a moment of silence.

“I’ve always run cold and the guys have always made fun of me for it. I—” I stopped.

“Run cold? Like a lizard?” Josh laughed. It was the most genuine thing I’d heard from him all day.

“Yeah, like a lizard,” I scoffed. “I was born early and it messed up my body or something. I don’t know the science… or whatever.”

Josh smiled at me, the sharp points of his teeth showing as his lips parted.

“What?” I snapped.

“Nothing. You just have a really easy time talking about everybody's lives and when you talk about your own you get tongue tied and shut down,” he said, curling around himself a little more to pack the heat in.

“Coming from the guy who refuses to get to know any of his teammates, that really isn’t an insult.” I rolled my eyes.

“It wasn’t meant to be one,” Josh said.

“Oh?” I said, opening my eyes to look at him. He was staring at me in the darkness and I could feel the tension in the air. “Are you warmer now?” I asked him.

“Nope, still cold, just more annoyed,” Josh grumbled, and I sighed.

He was infuriating, exhausting, impossible to pin down.

But he had laughed, and that was something.