Lily woke with the warm memory of Chase’s hand lightly caressing her hip as they watched the spectacle, the William Henry rocking gently at anchor. Right now, the sky outside her room was tinged with gray, but at any moment dawn would break and color return to the world. The warmth of Chase’s hand on her hip was very much not a dream. For a little while longer, her touch was very real.

How had she missed the last month passing by since that holiday celebration on the lake? Or had she just been content to fill every day with camp activities, nature excursions, and even a weekend of wilderness survival training for the campers and staff alike? So busy she hadn’t had to think about the end.

Endings. The inevitable finale to every adventure, even life itself. For the lucky, the unhappy endings would be few and the ultimate one met with grace and peace. Lily hoped she could manage the one fast approaching with just a fraction of that.

She had loved every minute of the summer, discovering skills and interests she’d never even considered before, never tiring of the beauty wherever she looked, and taking unexpected pleasure in seeing some of the teens thrive with the physical challenges, and others—like Marty and Ford—discover something new in the course of becoming friends. She’d rediscovered something also, her fundamental joy in caring for others—even though the worst of her medical emergencies recently had been a fractured wrist she’d needed to splint until the teen could be seen at a local urgent care center, a host of mysterious rashes that still evaded a diagnosis but that thankfully responded to topical steroids, and the never-routine, ever-present challenges of managing nearly fifty teenagers through small illnesses and injuries.

And then there was Chase.

Sometimes Chase would be on-site to lead an excursion or supervise a technical exercise, but just as often she was out on a call, sometimes for several days at a time. Even though Lily’s days and nights were full, something was missing when Chase was absent. The expectation of that surge of pleasure when she first saw her, the banter that often turned to seduction, the quiet conversations that touched somewhere even deeper, and the moments when they joined—heart and body. When Lily awakened to the steady rumble of the Jeep cresting the road at dawn, she’d rise, her pulse racing, to wait for Chase at the lake. Chase would appear at the end of the dock, her blazing smile vanquishing the memory of missing her with the intensity of her presence. They’d swim, they’d kiss, they’d make love slowly before the day began and duty called them apart.