“It was last year.”
“Damn, suddenly my issues don’t seem so wild.”
Colt shoves my knee playfully. “Fuck you.” He laughs. “The guy’s really fucking hot.”
“How long have you known him? How old is he?”
“He’s been friends with my dad since I was a kid. He’s in his early forties, I think.”
“Does he live in Copper Lake?” I ask, the questions piling up in my mind.
“Nah, he used to, but he lives on the West Coast now.”
“Do I know him?”
Colt’s face scrunches up and it makes me laugh. “Maybe, but his dad is Roger Andino.”
I nearly choke on my own spit. “As inDr. Andino,the owner of Andino Family Medicine?”
“That’s the one.”
Throwing my head back onto my shoulders, I laugh, feeling lighter than I have all week. “Fuck, that’s good,” I mutter in between laughter.
“When did this turn intoyoupoking fun atme? You’re the one wanting to fuck your ex-brother-in-law. Let’s get back to that.”
Wiping the moisture from my eyes, I shake my head, meeting his gaze. “Let’s not. And I don’t want to fuck him.”
“Yes, you do,” he states plainly. “Deny it all you want, but you do. And if I had to guess, I’d say it’s going to happen.”
“No, it’s not. It can’t.” I do my best to shove away the visual of me doing just that, but I can’t deny how intrigued the idea has me.
“Yes, it can, if you want it to. You guys are staying in the same camper for the whole season, and we all know how he feels about you, and now that I know you’re feeling it too, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Don’t tell me you’re on the same bullshit Shooter is?” I grumble.
“While he’s being a dick about it all to mess with you, he’s spot on. There’s no way Grady hasn’t had a crush on you since he was a teenager. We all see it. I don’t understand how you don’t.”
“I guess I’m just fucking stupid.”
“Blind, maybe. But stupid, no. And like I said before, you’ve been so lost trying to please everybody else in your life, it makes sense you wouldn’t see what’s right in front of your face.”
Fuck…Is Colt right? Have I lost myself trying to be everything to everyone? Is that what’s happening? As we stand up and head back to the campsite, I feel no less confused than I was before.
24
Grady Wilde
Ican’t do this anymore.
I can’t sleep so close to Boone for another night. Can’t go to sleep hard, imagining what it would feel like to have his body heat warming me as we slept. Can’t wake up just as hard, and have to go to the damn bathrooms or the shower stalls to relieve the tension ever-present in my body because of his proximity.
I. Can’t. Do. It.
Which is how I find myself in the camping section at the Walmart in the town we’re staying in this week. I’m buying a fucking tent and an air mattress, and I’m sleeping in that from now on.
“This one looks good, right?” I ask Xander, who I forced to come with me, as I reach for the tent that’s on sale.
“Uh…” His gaze alternates between me and the box housing the tent. “I mean, it looks like a tent? Aren’t they all the same?”
