Page 28 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ELIAS

“ Y ou know, when we said we’d join you for s’mores, we had a different idea in mind,” Cordie jokes.

“Yeah, well genius over here decided to dunk us into the water–” Charlotte says, nodding her head towards me.

“And then she decided to make it a race.”

“Do you two ever quit?” Fran asks.

We look at each other and smile, knowing the answer. “Never,” we say in unison.

“I know. It was my fault. I wasn’t thinking. Just wanted to get Charlie back.” I nudge her shoulder gently. “Do you two happen to have a first aid kit we can use before we hike back to camp?”

“Of course we do.”

“Prepared as always.”

“We’ve just lived long enough to know what can and does happen.”

We follow them on the short walk to their camp where they dig out the largest first aid kit I’ve ever seen.

It’s packed away in an old fishing box and the amount of supplies packed into this thing is incredible and I might ask if I can pay them to put one together for me.

Charlotte takes the kit from her and lugs it over to the wooden picnic table a few feet away.

While she rustles through the kit, grabbing supplies, I settle myself on one of the wooden benches next to the table. Fran and Cordie stay by their tents to gather whatever they plan to bring back to our camp, leaving us alone on the bench.

A sting enters my skin as she sprays what looks to be peroxide on my cut, bringing my attention to her.

There’s a few things now outside the box in various places around it.

Cloth, gauze, bandages, and now the bottle of peroxide she used.

Gently, she uses the cloth to clean around the cut before grabbing a clean one to clean the cut itself.

Her hands are warm against my skin and I don’t ever want them to leave.

All I can do is sit and watch as Charlotte focuses on her task.

She used to get a small crinkle right above her eyebrow when she concentrated too hard on her work.

I search for it now and sure enough, it’s just above her right eyebrow, slightly at the edge.

Her features have grown and shifted over the years, but they still seem so familiar to me.

“I can feel you staring,” she says softly.

“There’s nowhere else for me to look,” I lie.

“Look at a tree or something. Let me focus.”

I could listen to her. But what would be the fun in that?

She’s wrapping my arm in gauze now, her hands a bit shakier than before.

A strand of hair falls into her face and it’s like my arm has an automatic reaction, something so ingrained into it, I have no chance of stopping it.

Not that I would if I wanted to. I tuck her hair behind her ear and let my fingers linger there, then slowly trail them down her jaw to her chin.

I flick my eyes over to Fran and Cordie to make sure their backs are turned.

They are. Either because they are too focused on what they are doing or are purposefully avoiding looking this way—doubt that—I don’t care.

I just want Charlotte’s lips on mine again.

I want the warmth in my chest to grow until it consumes me whole. Until she consumes me.

She cuts the gauze and makes sure it’s fastened before finally meeting my eyes. “All done.” Her voice is barely a whisper now, the air immediately more intense between us.

“I’m not,” I whisper back as I tug her chin toward me and kiss her.

This one isn’t like the one a few feet away.

It’s delicate. A vase balancing over the edge, waiting to fall or settle back in its place.

I want to shatter it, but I can’t yet, so instead, I rest my forehead against hers and breathe her in. “Thank you for fixing me.”

“Thank you for…um…kissing me,” she responds, hesitantly and then starts to giggle at herself as if she can’t help it. I join in until we are both settled and content in our laughter. Once we catch our breaths, we start packing up the kit and return it to its place.

“Alright, I’m hungry, let’s head over to your group,” Cordie calls to us from the trail I’m assuming leads to the other campsites.

We reach their side and she gives me a sly glance like she didn’t keep her back turned and saw everything.

I just shrug my shoulders, because I’m not going to deny what just happened.

A ten minute walk down the path is all it takes before we hear familiar voices travel to us.

“I don’t care what they’re doing, they’ve been gone far too long and it’s already dark. They can’t sleep in the woods.” Avery’s voice is filled with worry and I feel a pang of guilt in my stomach from worrying her.

“They can sleep in the woods, sunshine,” Hudson says.

The shuffling of leaves from our footsteps must be loud enough for them to hear now because they all turn their heads in our direction.

“We were just going to send out a search party to look for you two.” Sky’s sarcasm ebbs as she sees the state of us and who we are walking with. The others realize it at the same time, their faces changing from exasperation to concern.

Avery is the first to move toward us and she goes to Charlotte first, eyes studying her and our wet clothes. Then to the two additions to our group, one holding a bottle of top shelf whiskey and the other holding ingredients for s’mores.

“Hey there, gang,” Cordie says, lifting up her bottle to them. “Brought some goodies.”

“And saved your friends over here,” Fran nods our way as she walks over to the fire and hands Jacob the bag she was carrying.

“Saved them?”

“Helped us, really. She’s being dramatic,” I try to correct, but Fran turns around and gives me a look that says without them, we would have been stranded in the woods forever with no chance in hell of surviving.

“But we wouldn’t have made it back without Fran and Cordie, of course,” I add on with too much emphasis that the ladies roll their eyes at me.

Avery loops her arm through Charlotte’s and tugs her to one of the chairs next to her.

There’s a part of me that wants her to look back, acknowledge what happened between us, but she just squares her shoulders and straightens her spine, leaning into her friend.

The shiver that runs through my bones reminds me of my soaked through clothes and how uncomfortable I actually am.

I find my bag I threw haphazardly in my tent earlier and dig out a pair of black sweatpants and an old gray hoodie from high school.

I'm surprised it still fits me. Then again, it’s oversized and I have been trying to work with Hudson and Jacob at the local gym when I can.

The front desk employee, Jackie, keeps trying to hit on me every time we go.

I just chalk it up to the fact that I’m the only single one in our group and if I wasn’t, she’d be trying to flirt with the other two first. Once I’m in dry clothes again and my wet ones are hung up on a nearby branch I make my way back to the fire.

Charlotte’s laugh pierces the air at something Avery said and suddenly, the place by my side feels cold and empty. I ignore the pull I feel to go to the chair next to her to feel warm again and instead sit on the open spot on the ground next to Sky.

Fran starts passing around plastic cups with Cordie trailing behind her, pouring shots of whiskey. They weren’t kidding.

“What are you two doing here anyway?”

When Fran hands me a cup, she’s close enough for me to see that her eyes are glossy with tears. “Well,” she starts as Cordie pours my drink.

“We take this same trip every year.”

“Neither one of us ever had kids. Henry and I never could as you know.”

“And Chester and I knew early on in our relationship that kids were never in our future,” Cordie explains.

“The four of us would come out here every year on a friend’s trip. Our other friends would join us some years, but once they all started having kids, it was harder for them to keep coming,” Fran continues as she sits in the empty chair next to Charlotte.

“So, after our husbands passed, we decided to keep the tradition alive. A trip to honor our guys. Just us girls. Just because we’re old doesn’t mean we can’t adventure like we used to,” Cordie chuckles.

“That’s really great you still do this,” Avery says, her own tears shining in her eyes now.

Cordie and Fran raise the cups and the rest of the group follows suit. “To Henry and Chester.”

“The best husbands,” says Cordie.

“To Henry and Chester,” we echo.

“And the best lovers,” says Fran. Half of us choke on our drinks, while Charlotte is the one who takes Fran’s comment in stride.

“I’ll drink to that,” she says as she tips her head back and swallows the liquid in one go.

Throat suddenly dry, I take a sip of mine and let the warmth settle into my chest.

“So, how exactly did you run into Charlotte and Elias?” Hudson asks and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s digging for something more than the answer to his question.

“We saw these two…talking as we were canoeing and then they washed up by our camp.” Cordie ignores the shocked looks on everyone’s faces and pours herself another shot, passing the bottle to Fran’s open hand.

“You were in the river?”

“Not on purpose,” I answer Sky. “Well, a little on purpose. It was her fault,” I nod toward Charlie.

Her jaw drops immediately. “You started it!”

“You’re the one who decided we were racing.” I can’t help but chuckle. Even when we are getting along, we can’t resist bickering.

“You what?” Sky asks in a deadpanned voice and I can’t tell if she’s annoyed or unsurprised.

“I had to prove that I was faster than him,” Charlotte answers. “And better. And I did.”

I don’t bother correcting her, because no matter what she thinks, I feel like I definitely won in the end.

“Idiots,” Sky says loud enough for everyone to hear. She may think we are idiots, but I think she’s orchestrated this whole trip to force us together in some way. Whether it’s really to be just friends or something more, she’s meddling an awful lot.