Chapter 56

CHANGING IS A CHORE.

Changing clothes in a tent is hard enough as it is. Changing clothes in a sleeping bag is worse. Changing clothes in a sleeping bag when you’re shoulder to shoulder with a guy you kind of like?

Impossible.

“I won’t look,” Warden tells her. “I promise.”

Somehow, Dawn pulls it off. She shimmies out of her wet clothes while somehow still remaining covered by the sleeping bag, and she pulls on dry undies and pants and a fresh T-shirt and socks, and she zips up her yellow Bear Cub fleece. She wads up her wet pants and her stinky socks and pushes them down to the very bottom of her pack, and then she pushes her pack down to the far end of the tent by her feet, and she lies back down again and pulls the sleeping bag over her shoulders and up to her neck and she’s still cold and still kind of shivering, but at last she’s starting to get warm, and starting to get comfortable, and maybe in a while, maybe, she’ll actually be able to relax.

It’s cozy in Warden’s tent, that’s for sure.

It’s a double tent, but just barely; Warden’s so tall that he kind of sleeps at an angle, and the tent isn’t even that wide. As soon as Dawn slides into her sleeping bag she can feel him beside her, pressed close, even through two layers of sleeping bag material, and it’s nice to be warm and it’s nice to be dry, and it’s nice to be this close to somebody.

(Sorry, Lucas.)

Chapter 57

THEY LIE THERE IN SILENCE.

Dawn and Warden.

Warden and Dawn.

At some point, Warden turns off his flashlight, and the tent is pitch dark, and all of a sudden Dawn is hyperaware of the sound of the wind gusting against the tent, and the sound of the rain falling against the tent.

And the sound of Warden’s breathing.

And the sound of her own.

She can’t see Warden, and she doesn’t know what he’s doing; she can feel him next to her, some warm amorphous blob, but she doesn’t know where he’s facing or whether his eyes are open, and she sure as hell doesn’t know what he’s thinking.

But then he shifts in his sleeping bag and she can feel his breath, warm, and she knows he’s sitting up, slightly, and looking her way.

“So,” he says, and she can hear the mischief, hear the smile in his voice. “Are you sure you want to be good?”

She’s felt this way before.

That hollow oh shit feeling, like you’re suddenly falling.

Like the ground you’ve been standing on has suddenly dropped away.