Slow Burn (11 page)

“Oh, whatever,” said Stacey. “I’m just trying to help you plan something fun. That’s all. You can read into it whatever you want, but there’s nothing else to it.”

“We don’t need to make plans,” said Griffin. He finished up the cheesecake. “This was delicious, by the way.”

I tried to catch Stacey’s eye, to tell her to let it go, but she wasn’t looking at me.

“You’re a city boy, right? Leigh says you’re from New Jersey. I bet you’ve never been camping.”

Griffin actually grinned. “Camping? Actually, I haven’t. Not exactly.”

Stacey rubbed her hands together. “Great. Then you and Leigh should go to Blackwater Falls. It’s right down the road. And we have everything you might need. Tents, sleeping bags, coolers.”

“Camping?” I said. “Like outside? With animals and bugs?”

Griffin turned his grin on me. “I take it you’ve never been camping either.”

I made a face. “I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to.”

“It’s so much fun,” said Stacey. “You guys are going to have a blast.”

I wasn’t so sure. And it didn’t sound particularly romantic to me.

I sat on the ground, sorting through the various things that were in the bag that Stacey and Jack had given us. “I don’t understand how this is going to be a tent.”

Griffin was still pulling things out of the back of my car. “How much crap did you bring, Leigh? We’re here for two nights, not a month.”

“Sorry,” I said. I had never been camping before, so I didn’t know what to expect and what to bring. When I felt like that, I usually overcompensated. We probably wouldn’t be able to use half of the stuff I’d brought and wouldn’t need it. But you never knew. It made me feel better to have it. I eyed several foot-long metal poles. “I don’t see how those are going to be big enough to hold up the tent.”

Griffin dropped one of my duffel bags on the ground. “I think those are stakes.”

“What?” I said.

“You pound them into the ground to keep the tent from blowing away,” he said.

“Oh.” That made sense. I set them down. “How do you know that? You’ve never been camping either.”

“I’m a guy,” he said. “I pay attention to things like tents.”

“What does being a guy have to do with it?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just think that guys are more process-oriented than women. When I was a kid, I was interested in how to steer a car and in the gearshift. My sister was only interested in what color it was.”

I glared at him. “That is so sexist.” Then, “You have a sister?”

He knelt down next to the tent, facing away from me. “Not anymore. Not really.” He handed me several pieces of metal that were connected to each other by a stretching string. “You can put these together.”

I looked at them in confusion. “Did something happen to your sister?”

“No,” he said.

I waited for him to say something else. He didn’t. I guessed he didn’t want to talk about it. But this was the kind of thing I was telling Stacey about. I wanted to know about his life and his family. If he wouldn’t tell me anything, how was I supposed to get close to him? “So then, why isn’t she—”

“You want me to demonstrate?” He took the metal pieces from me and showed me how to put them together.

I took them back and did what he’d showed me. I didn’t finish my question. He didn’t want to talk about it. Fine.

There were two of them like that. They made two long flexible poles. When I was finished, I looked over at Griffin, who’d unfolded the fabric that would make up the tent. “Now what?” I asked.

He stared down at the tent. “I’m not exactly sure. Those poles are going to hold it up somehow, but I don’t know where they go.”

I crawled over to inspect the tent. It was bright orange. There were zippers all over the place and little loops. It was the most confusing thing ever.

“I wish we had a picture,” said Griffin. “I don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like.”

“It’s one of those dome-type things, right?”

“You think so?” he said. “Well, then maybe the poles...” He shook his head. “No. That won’t work.”

“Do they go in the little loops?” I asked.

He looked up at me. “Maybe. Bring one over here.”

I did. Griffin threaded it through the loops on top of the tent. “Yeah, this is right,” he said. “The other one crisscrosses it.”

I couldn’t picture it until he did it, and the tent suddenly stood up. Then it all made sense. I helped Griffin stake it into the ground. We secured the rain fly. (But if it rained, I was seriously going to get in the car and drive home. That tent didn’t look like much protection from the rain.) Then we stood back and surveyed our handiwork.

“It’s really kind of a small tent,” said Griffin, sighing. “Trust Stacey to try to push us close together.”

I was thinking the same thing but with excitement. I scuffed my toe on the ground sourly. Trust Griffin to rain on my parade.

Maybe he really
didn’t
like me. Maybe I had some kind of pathetic crush, and I should just get over it.

“At least we’ve got separate sleeping bags,” he said. He picked them both up. They belonged to Stacey and Jack, and they were KISS sleeping bags. “You want Paul or Gene?”

“Gene, obviously,” I said.

“Obviously?”

“Because of his tongue,” I replied primly.

Griffin face was frozen for a second, and then he busted out laughing. “I swear to God, doll, sometimes you surprise me.” He gestured at the tent. “Would you unzip that for me?”

I did. Then I crawled into the tent. Griffin tossed the sleeping bags in and came in behind me.

Inside, it didn’t seem that small, but we hadn’t set up the sleeping bags yet. There seemed to be lots of room for both of us to stretch out without touching each other.

“Why does that surprise you?” I asked.

Griffin untied his sleeping bag. “It’s not something I’d expect you to say.”

“Why not, though?”

“Because you usually don’t say things like that,” he said.

Didn’t I?

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It was funny.” He flashed me a dazzling grin.

“Griffin...” How to put this? “You don’t think that I’m... innocent and pure or anything, do you?”

He rolled his sleeping bag out. “What kind of question is that?”

“That isn’t the reason you don’t want anything to happen between us, is it? You aren’t afraid of corrupting me, are you?”

He paused midroll. “You saying that you’re pretty corrupted already, is that it?”

I cringed. Crap. That was a turn-off, wasn’t it? Now he
really
didn’t want me.

“Doll, I told you why. It’s... not appropriate. It would distract me.” He finished rolling out the sleeping bag and crawled out of the tent, leaving me alone.

I rolled Gene Simmons out, staring at the cartoon representation of his very long tongue. I felt like an idiot.

Griffin got the fire going outside our tent. I had no idea that starting a fire was such an ordeal. With matches, even. I figured matches made the whole thing a piece of cake. You held the match up to the piece of wood, and it just burst into flame. Like a candle wick or something.

It didn’t work that way.

Griffin showed me how to stack the wood properly, starting with paper and tiny twigs, which were easy to get going. Then, once we had a nice blaze, we added bigger pieces of wood.

Which put the fire out pretty much completely.

Then we had to start all over again.

It took three tries to get the fire to be an actual burning, raging fire. Not raging, really. It was contained to our little campsite. But, like a fire with flames, not just red coals at the bottom.

And the fire didn’t stay burning unless we tended it constantly. We had to add more wood and move wood around and everything else.

It was tons of work. It made me so glad not to be a caveman. I mean, no wonder it took them so long to invent the wheel. They must have spent all their time tending fires and trying to keep them from going out.

Once the fire was doing relatively well, I dug in the cooler for the sausages I’d brought. Stacey had given us metal skewers, and we used those to hold them over the fire. There were marshmallows here too, somewhere, but they were for later.

Eventually, it got to be a big pain to hold the sausage over the fire.

Because the thing about cooking over a fire? It’s a lot slower than using the microwave. Or even the stove. After I complained about it, Griffin rigged up something with sticks, so that we could set out skewers up over the fire and not have to hold them anymore.

“You’re awesome,” I told him.

“Why?” he said. He was on the opposite side of the fire. The light reflected on his face, illuminating his gray eyes. The firelight made everything seem different somehow, a little unreal. I liked it. I was exhausted. Camping was
work
. But now that we were settled around the fire, I had to admit that it felt good to be relaxing after all our effort. We’d earned it.

“Because you made these things and now we don’t have to hold up our sausages. I’m impressed.”

He laughed. “What was I saying about guys and processes?”

“Stop being sexist,” I said, sticking out my tongue. “Just because I wouldn’t have thought of it doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of girls who wouldn’t.”

“I agree,” he said. “There are girls who could make much better sausage stands than me.”

I smiled, leaning back and resting on my hands to hold me up. I stared into the fire. It was beautiful, bright, and warm. I gazed deep into its glowing heart. This was nice.

Griffin turned his sausage over. “My sister is fine, you know. It’s one of the perks of Operation Wraith.”

I sat up. He was going to tell me something about himself? “Perks?”

“Yeah. When they took me out of jail and healed me, they offered me a choice. They could kill me, or I could work for them. If I worked for them, they’d make sure my family was taken care of. They fixed it so that my mom ‘inherited’ money from a relative she never knew she had. My family has a great life now. But as far as they’re concerned, I’m dead. And if I ever let them know otherwise, I’d put them in danger.”

I hugged my knees to my chest. “Every time you tell me something about yourself, Griffin, it’s so sad. When I think about what you’ve been through, it breaks my heart.”

He was quiet for a minute. Then he shrugged. “It’s not that sad, doll. My mom’s a millionaire. And I got away from Op Wraith.”

That was true. And then I had a horrible thought. “But what if Op Wraith goes after your family? You know, to get to you.”

“That won’t happen.”

“You trust them?”

“No, it’s only that I have no idea where my family is, and if I tried to find them, Op Wraith would know. As long as I stay clear, they’re safe.”

“So they hid them from you, and if they hurt them, you wouldn’t even know?”

“Yeah. It would be a useless move on their parts to try to hurt them.”

“Still,” I said. “You must worry.”

He sighed. “Sometimes, I guess. I mean, they know I’m protecting you. But they want me dead. They don’t want to torture me.”

“They might want to draw you out,” I said.

“They’re so close now,” he said. “They know you’re somewhere in West Virginia. I doubt that’s the route they’d go.”

I felt cold, suddenly. I scooted closer to the fire. “They’re going to find me at some point, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know, doll,” he said. “Maybe they’ll just give up eventually.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

He didn’t answer.

We sat in silence for a bit. I turned my sausage. Griffin turned his. I dug out the rest of our meal. Hot dog buns for the sausages and a cold potato salad from the store. I set out paper plates. I spooned out the potato salad.

“You think the sausages are done?” I asked him.

Griffin used a piece of foil to squeeze his. “Pretty much.”

We assembled our sausages, putting mustard and pickle relish all over them. And then we sat next to the fire we’d built and ate. The food tasted really good.

“I like camping,” said Griffin.

“I do too,” I said. At that moment, I did, even though everything had been kind of a pain in the ass up to that point.

I shivered in my KISS sleeping bag. Griffin and I had thought it might be dangerous to leave the fire going, so we’d put it out after roasting marshmallows and deciding to go to bed. Now it was cold. I had on a sweatshirt and jogging pants, plus thick socks, but it wasn’t enough. I remembered that I’d brought more blankets, but I wasn’t sure what bag I’d put them in out of all the stuff we’d brought. I was going to have to get up and find them soon, though, because I was freezing.

I sat up and started to unzip the door to the tent.

“What are you doing, doll?”

“Going to look for more blankets.” My voice shook from my shivers.

“You cold?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

“Not really.” There was the sound of the sleeping bag crinkling, and I realized he’d sat up. Then I heard a zipper.

“What are you doing?”

“Unzipping my sleeping bag,” he said. “You unzip yours too. We’ll use one as a blanket and lie on the other one. All you need is body heat to warm up.”

Body heat? Like from Griffin’s body? “Won’t that be inappropriate?” My teeth were chattering.

He chuckled. “Get over here.”

I did. It took a few minutes to get everything settled, but then we both lay back down again. We weren’t touching, but just being under the same blanket with him did make everything a little warmer.

Another rack of shivers went through me.

“Jesus,” said Griffin, his voice deep and rumbly. “Are you really that cold?”

“I don’t feel so cold anymore,” I said. “I’m just shivering still.” As I said it, I started shaking again. It was involuntary and violent. I felt like I was having a seizure.

Without warning, I felt Griffin’s arm slung over my torso. He slid close. “You do feel cold,” he murmured.

His body pressed up against me. He was a solid block of heat, a furnace of a man. I turned and snuggled close.

“Better?”