Jaxson
The group chat had been going off while Grace and I were on our hike.
We had driven toward Nashville once we’d loaded up again, stopping at an REI at her request. She’d made me promise to stay in the car, and so here I was, sitting in the parking lot still damp from our swim in the creek, as well as the rain we’d been caught in on our hike back.
I thumbed through my phone with my breaths coming a bit easier than before.
Truth be told, I needed a break from her. Not that I wanted one. But I’d come far too close to doing things I knew I shouldn’t when we were down by that creek, and I had the amount of time she would be in that store to get my shit together.
I’d wanted to kiss her so fucking badly I still felt the desire churning in my gut like a spell I’d never be free of.
And when she’d touched me, when she’d looked up at me with those wide eyes and waited for me to make the next move…
Fuck. I’d been rock hard and ready to risk it all.
That storm rolling in was all that saved me.
I shook off the thought of what would have happened had I said fuck it and given in, pulling up the group chat that had dozens of unread messages, instead.
Fabio: Squad?
Fabio was Carter Fabbri’s nickname. We let him think it was because of his flow, but the truth was it was a play off his last name and an inside joke about how his game with the ladies was absolute trash.
Poor kid. I was pretty sure he’d still be a virgin if we hadn’t put that to rest thanks to an eager puck bunny his rookie season.
No, if anyone was going to get the title of Best Flow, that honor would go to Daddy P. Bastard had longer hair than the rest of us put together.
Tanny Boy: I’m down.
Daddy P: Can’t. Currently interviewing another fucking nanny.
Fabio: Either you have shit luck with babysitters, or you’re completely unaware of how terrifying you are when you’re grumpy.
Tanny Boy: My money is on that option. I’ve witnessed more than two poor girls shit themselves when he yells at them.
Daddy P: I do not yell. And I wouldn’t have to correct them if they weren’t so fucking clueless.
Tanny Boy: Are they clueless, or are you just the most impossible person to please who’s ever lived?
Fabio: I’ll tack on that you’re also an overprotective dad.
Daddy P: *middle finger emoji*
Fabio: What about you, Brittzy?
Fabio: Brittzyyyyy
Tanny Boy: He’s probably practicing for the tournament. He needs all the swings he can get.
Fabio: Like that will help. I’ve seen basketball players with a better golf game than Brittz.
Tanny Boy: Yo, Brittz. Get off the shitter and come play COD.
Fabio: He’d have his phone if he was on the shitter.
Tanny Boy: Let’s just keep texting until we annoy him so much he stops fucking whatever puck bunny he pulled in last night.
Daddy P: Did the part where I said I’m holding a goddamn interview go right over your thick skulls? Fuck off.
Fabio: Can’t be going that well if you’re able to text us.
I chuckled the more I read, and then skipped to the bottom and thumbed out a reply.
Me: Sorry — was driving. Decided to travel a bit before the tournament.
Fabio: Sure. It’s okay if you were taking golf lessons, Brittzy. We won’t shame you for it.
Tanny Boy: Nah, we’ll just wipe the floor with you and Daddy P in a couple days — all in the name of charity.
Fabio: How’d the interview go, Daddy P? Got a new nanny secured?
Daddy P: For now.
Tanny Boy: We should start a prayer circle for the girl.
Carter sent a gif of a man making the sign of the cross, and I chuckled, even as my stomach sank with how I’d lied to them. Well — technically, I hadn’t lied, but I’d carefully omitted the fact that my teammate’s little sister was traveling with me.
I could still see how Vince had glared at me the first time I’d laid eyes on Grace, telling me without a word to not even think about it. Then, he’d told her to sit with me on the party bus that night in Austin.
“You’re the only one I can trust.”
My chest sparked with guilt, and then my heart sank when I opened a side text I had from Will.
Daddy P: We need to talk at the tournament.
Will Perry wasn’t exactly one for sharing feelings, so if he needed to talk to me — it couldn’t be a good thing.
I stared at that text for a long second before I nearly threw my phone, my heart leaping into my throat as someone beat on the passenger side window.
It was Grace.
With two arms full of camping and hiking gear.
• • •
“Only you would prefer sleeping in the dirt over a plush bed at a Five-Star hotel in Nashville,” I said, eyeballing Grace as she put the finishing touches on the inside of our tent.
Tent — singular.
It was a good-size tent, at least, with room for two sleeping bags that Grace had elevated with inflatable pads beneath them. But that didn’t change the fact that I’d be sleeping less than a foot away from her.
I swallowed down the risk that came with that, trying to focus instead on how happy Grace looked.
“Come on! This is what real road tripping is like,” she said, sprawling out on top of her sleeping bag. She’d also secured two inflatable pillows, and she tested hers by lying on her left side and then her right, ending up on her back with a satisfied grin. “Perfect.”
“You’re a nut.”
“It’ll be the best sleep of your life. Trust me.”
“On the ground with no sense of security in the Tennessee heat?” I flattened my lips. “Not sure I’m buying that pitch.”
Grace groaned, flopping onto her stomach before she hopped up to her feet. She could stand fully in the tent, while I had to bend down — which was why I stayed at the opening of it, sweating even as the sun set.
“Those Five-Star penthouse suites have totally ruined your sense of adventure.”
I stifled a laugh at the jest. She wasn’t wrong. It’d been a long time since I’d slept in a tent — mostly because when you had access to the finest hotels, it wasn’t usually an option you considered.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to build a fire before we don’t have any light left.”
“Because it’s so cold,” I deadpanned as she swept out of the tent and past me.
“Because we need a fire to tell scary ghost stories and make s’mores,” she said, as if that was the most obvious choice of activities for the night, and I was a dumb prick for not realizing it.
When I didn’t budge, she grabbed me by the wrist and tugged with all her might — which wouldn’t have moved me even an inch if I hadn’t let her.
“Come on,” she grunted, tugging me toward the wooded area that surrounded our campsite. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
We separated then — me in search of larger logs of wood while Grace focused on gathering smaller brush we could use for kindling. She promptly elbowed me out of the way when I tried to take over starting the fire, pointing the lighter at me and warning that she was an independent woman who could do it herself.
And she did.
I helped with setting up our campsite and gathering that firewood, but I had zero doubts that she could have done it all on her own if I wasn’t there. Still, I didn’t like the thought of it — her being alone in this situation. A tent was about the least secure shelter in the fucking world, and I didn’t care if there was a camper’s code and everyone looked out for one another.
All it took was one selfish, sick bastard to put her life at risk.
I laughed at myself, shaking my head and that thought from it. I was not her fucking father. She was about to travel the world like this, and I was the last person who was going to be able to stop her.
But fuck if I couldn’t halt the burning need to protect her while she did it.
“What are you laughing at?” Grace asked, watching where I was carefully rotating a marshmallow on one of the sticks she’d bought from REI. We’d eaten hot dogs for dinner — which I couldn’t recall having since I was a kid.
I looked around us in lieu of answering, taking in the canopy of trees above us and the faint stars I could make out through the leaves. It wasn’t quiet, but it was an interesting change from what I was used to. Instead of traffic and laughter and music as the soundtrack like it was in Tampa, it was the crackling of the fire, the occasional hoot from an owl, the wind rustling the leaves.
“Fine, keep your funny jokes to yourself,” Grace said, and then she pierced a marshmallow of her own and plopped it right into the middle of the fire. It caught in a second, burning like mad as she pulled it out and watched it. She waited until the whole marshmallow was a black, crispy thing before blowing out the flame.
I blinked at it, then at her. “You’re a monster.”
“No, I’m a genius,” she argued. “This is the only way to roast a mallow.”
“Hard disagree. Look at mine,” I said, nodding to where I was slowly rotating it just above the tips of the fire like it was a rotisserie chicken. “This thing is going to be perfectly browned.”
Grace made a face that said that didn’t impress her, and then she sandwiched her marshmallow and a piece of dark chocolate between two graham crackers and took the biggest bite known to man, making the marshmallow ooze out over her hands and stick to her lips.
She licked those lips in an attempt to get them clean, but all it did was draw my gaze to them, and I felt that spark of possession light between my ribs again.
I tore my eyes away and focused on the fire.
“I take it you never went camping as a kid?” Grace asked.
“What makes you think that?”
“Call it a hunch,” she said on a laugh.
I shifted, not chancing looking at her again with that sticky white sweetness just begging to be licked off her.
“I did a few times in high school,” I said. “Some friends and I would head out to Banff, spend the weekend there. Of course, we usually slept in our cars and drank beer more than we ate anything. But as a kid?” I sniffed. “No.”
“Surprising, given where you lived.”
“Camping isn’t really easy for someone in a wheelchair,” I said. “And the last thing Mom or I wanted was a situation that irritated Dad. I’m sure we went when I was younger, before the accident… I just don’t really remember.”
Grace nodded, and then yawned, the motion stretching her little mouth wide. She covered it with a sleepy smile. “Sorry.”
“For yawning?”
She frowned, then chuckled. “For not being my usual peppy self, I guess.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for being tired.”
That seemed to stun her — which was ludicrous.
“Here, finish that,” I said, nodding to where she had stacked another burnt as shit marshmallow on a graham cracker with chocolate. “And let’s get you to bed.”
My marshmallow was finally perfectly cooked — lightly brown with an ooey-gooey center. I ate it without anything else, licking my fingers clean before I popped up from my seat.
When Grace finished, I walked with her to the bathrooms, brushing my teeth quickly before I stood watch outside the women’s restroom like a fucking security guard. I felt my own eyelids growing heavy the longer I stood there, until Grace swung out of the bathroom in another pair of those damned sleep shorts.
Those things were going to be the absolute death of me — especially since it seemed like she had them in every fucking color.
They were so flimsy and thin, and paired with the little spaghetti strap shirt she wore — braless, of course — I could chart every curve and slope of her body. It was enough to drive me out of my goddamn mind, watching her walk toward me with those tan, lean legs and just a sliver of her midriff peeking out to tease me.
There were three freckles in a zig-zag line on the part of her stomach I could see, like the handle of the Big Dipper constellation.
God, how I wanted to lift that top a bit higher, to connect the dots with my tongue.
She walked up to where I was standing with the corners of her lips lifted.
“Who’s the bulldog now?” she teased.
We were both quiet on the walk back to our site — Grace because she was tired, me because I was hammering my new mantra into my stupid head.
Teammate’s little sister. Teammate’s little sister.
Once we’d locked the car and all our belongings in it, I put out our fire and we climbed into the tent.
Grace acted like it was no big deal. She dove into her sleeping bag, letting out a groan of joy as she settled in and zipped herself up. “I’m going to sleep like a baby after that hike,” she said.
That would make one of us.
I tried to smile, but I was too focused on making sure I didn’t touch her as I laid down on my side of the tent. It was too damn hot to get into the sleeping bag, so I laid on top of it. And once I felt like we both were in place, I clicked off the flashlight on my phone, tossing it beside me. It was a good thing it had been on the charger most of the day in the car.
I stretched one arm up under my head, staring up at the ceiling of the tent. There were two vents letting in what little breeze there was, and I watched the trees playing with the moonlight above us as Grace worked to get comfortable.
I actually was pretty tired, but every noise around us had me on high alert. I didn’t tell Grace, but I had a knife hidden under my sleeping bag.
Now, had I ever used a knife? Hell no. But I was prepared to learn real fast tonight if I had to.
It was a gift from my father, one that had stayed stashed in my bedside table ever since. He’d told me a man always had to protect himself and his family.
I’d snorted when he’d said it, and he’d backhanded me so quick I was tasting blood before I realized I’d been hit.
I hated that most of my memories of him were like that. It didn’t matter how many good days I’d had with him, how many times he’d taught me how to play better and then celebrated my wins. He’d grown so resentful over the years that all that was covered by the rubble of the man he was now, the good buried under years of bad.
Still, there would always be a huge part of me that wanted his approval, that wanted to be like he was when he was my hero. Why, I would never fucking understand, but it was the truth. So, that knife — one of the only gifts I had from him — had been by my bed since the day he gave it to me.
Even when I traveled.
Tonight, it was a few inches under my head, sheathed and ready should I need it.
“What are you thinking about?”
I jolted a bit at the sound of her voice. “I thought you were tired.”
“You aren’t?”
“I’m getting there.”
“So then what are you thinking about?”
I let out a sigh, wetting my lips. I’d talked about my family enough in one day that I never wanted to discuss it again. So, I lied. “Just thinking about our route for tomorrow.”
In the darkness of the tent, all my other senses took over. I could hear the rustle of the sleeping bag as Grace shifted, could smell her hair as she moved closer — citrus and sea salt.
She smelled like the ocean, even in the forest.
More than anything, I felt the way my heart knocked against my rib cage when her body nestled against mine.
I waited for her to laugh when she realized turning had brought her flush against me, but she didn’t. She stayed just like that — the front of her fitting to the side of me like a puzzle piece.
It didn’t matter that her sleeping bag separated us. I felt her skin burning through it.
“Everything’s okay,” she promised on a whisper. “I know you think you have to be everything to everyone, but tonight — you can just rest.”
All the air left me like a deflating balloon, my lungs emptying themselves completely. Those words comforted me as much as they made all my hair stand on edge.
I’d never been pinned down in one sentence like that, and this woman did it with ease — like she was telling me summer was hot and winter was cold.
I heard the rustle of the sleeping bag again, and then warm lips pressed to my jaw.
“Goodnight, Jaxson Brittain,” she breathed against where her kiss had seared. Then, she rolled away, taking all her body heat with her.
Against all logic, a chill swept over me when she did — like it was twenty degrees instead of eighty.
“Goodnight, Nova,” I echoed, throat tight.
She fell asleep almost instantly, her breathing growing deep and long.
To my surprise, I knocked out not long after.
And in the morning, I had to swallow my pride, admitting it out loud as we rolled up our sleeping bags and got ready to hit the road again.
Because she was right.
It was the best night’s sleep of my life.
