“Hey, Gabi. How are you doing?” Piper banged through the back door of the dining hall early the next morning carrying three shopping bags stuffed with food, and Gabi immediately felt guilty, because they wouldn’t be here to eat it.
“Jury’s out, I think.” Gabi tried to smile as she helped lift the bags to the counter, but after spending the night flipping and flopping on her cot, her exhaustion was getting the better of her.
Piper peered over the service counter. “Where are the girls?”
“Up in the garden, believe it or not.”
“At seven in the morning? They doing penance for yesterday’s epic getaway-gone-wrong?”
“No. Not really. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s going to be hellishly hot, and weeding’s apparently on the agenda, so they wanted to get done before the sun gets any higher.”
“Wow.” Piper nodded as she started emptying the grocery bags. “That’s kind of … initiative-ish.”
Gabi wrinkled her nose, smiling. “I know.” Then she felt her face grow serious as Piper took three giant trays of eggs out of one bag. “I wish I’d known you were going shopping this morning.”
“Why? Did you need something?”
“No.” She blew out a breath. “I would have told you maybe not to worry about it. I had a long talk with Luke last night, after everything settled back down, and … it looks like I’m going to head back to Briarwood with the girls this afternoon.”
“What?” Piper’s eyebrows flew upward, and Gabi knew she’d better come up with an explanation that made sense before she faced Luke. The truth was, she didn’t know if she had one. As he’d told her about his foster sister last night, she’d been struck not only by the story, but by the purity of purpose that drove him here at Camp Echo.
She didn’t have that.
Well, she’d thought she’d had it—thought she’d been doing her best to change lives, but the events of the past twenty-four hours had her questioning everything.
Everything except one thing.
Being here at camp for any longer was a recipe for disaster. If it wasn’t her girls getting into trouble, it was her heart, and that had left her so distracted that she hadn’t even noticed Sam taking off last night.
She needed to go back to Briarwood and get her head on straight, get the girls back to an environment she understood, even if she didn’t like or respect it all that much at this point.
And maybe, with time—and distance—she’d be able to figure out what to do about Luke.
She took a deep breath. “It seems like the best option right now.”
“Does Luke think it’s the best option?”
Gabi suddenly found a crack in the countertop that needed her attention. “Um, he doesn’t actually … know.”
Piper stopped unpacking bags, instead leaning against the counter and appraising Gabi. “Are you scared they’ll run again? Or someone else, I guess? Guess Sam’s not going too far at this point.”
“Yes and no. I don’t know.” Gabi blew out a breath. “That’s what’s killing me.”
“What’s killing you?” Luke’s voice preceded him into the kitchen. Looking wary, he matched Piper’s pose against the long counter.
Piper raised her eyebrows at Gabi. Are you going to tell him?
“Not sure I know where to start,” Gabi finally replied, feeling like the ultimate coward.
“She was just telling me that they’re leaving today.” Piper turned to open the fridge. “She was wishing I hadn’t gone grocery shopping, because apparently they won’t be eating all of this food.”
Luke was silent for a long moment, appraising Gabi with his arms crossed. Then, “Leaving.” He let the word drop between them, and guilt clawed at her throat.
“I think I forgot something in the car.” Piper grabbed her keys. “Be back in a bit.”
They both watched her go, then Luke turned to Gabi. “What the hell?”
“I … I talked to one of the deans yesterday. Our dorm is done. We can go back. So … I feel like, given everything, that’s what we need to do.”
“Because?”
“Because everything!” She put up her hands. “I mean, seriously! We had to call out mountain rescue on one of my girls, Luke.”
“So you’re going to give up and go back?”
She sighed. “My girls are a walking disaster, and we have turned your lives upside down for three weeks already. I thought we were making progress … was starting to think maybe this hadn’t been such a horrible idea after all … and then Sam. I mean, seriously. I can’t risk them making another plan.”
“So you’ll bring them back to the hallowed halls of Briarwood, where you can keep them safe?”
“Yes.”
“Because there, things like hotwired vans and unlicensed trips to neighboring states never happen?”
“Put your eyebrows back down, all right? I’m well aware of what got us here, but being here didn’t … solve anything. If anything, it just made it all worse.”
“How?”
Gabi felt her eyes go wide. “Have you seen Sam this morning? Air cast? Crutches?”
“That didn’t happen because she was here, Gabi.”
“What can that possibly mean? Of course it happened because she’s here.”
“Why did she take off?”
“Because she hates Briarwood so much that she was willing to risk life, limb, and bears to get expelled, that’s why.”
“So why would you bring her back there?”
“Because I need to figure out what to do—with her, with Eve, with … me. And I can’t do that here.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. Because, idiot. You’re the reason I wasn’t there for her when she got desperate enough to take off. You’re the reason I feel like complete shit about my own skills after watching you make such huge strides with my girls in such a short time. You’re the reason I can’t walk in a straight line, because all I do is look for you.
“We just … can’t be here.”
He nodded slowly. “So let me see if I understand. For the past, what—three years?—you worked your ass off to get a scholarship program approved, despite every board member but one being against it. And although you’d rather have fifty—a hundred—girls there with help, you know you can at least do well by these two.” He paused. “How’m I doing?”
She rolled her eyes.
“So then they come, and you firmly believe they’ll embrace the opportunity, realize what they’ve missed, realize what you’ve given them, and be happy. Grateful, even.”
“I’m not looking for gratitude, Luke.”
He put up a hand. “Not what I meant. You envisioned pulling these two girls out of their hellish situations, setting them up for a better life, and having it work out, right?”
“Well, yes. That was the whole point of the program. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You would. And that’s why, when it doesn’t seem to be working out, you’re sitting here, blaming yourself, wondering what the hell you could have done differently to make it work out.”
“Yes.”
“I hate to tell you, but you can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Make it work out. You’re not that good.”
She swallowed. “Thanks. Really.”
“Nobody’s that good, Gabi.” He shook his head. “I’m not that good, Oliver’s not that good. Nobody. This isn’t something you can engineer with a handpicked roommate list, or three weeks at a summer camp.”
“Clearly.”
“But four weeks could make all the difference.”
Gabi sighed, shaking her head. “Because that extra week has some sort of special power?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “You never know when the magic will happen, and here’s the thing. We tapped that magic yesterday.”
“We were on a search-and-rescue mission yesterday.” She ground the words out.
“Exactly. And those three girls doing the searching? They weren’t doing it because we assigned them to it. They were doing it because they gave a shit about Sam. They carried her out of the woods on a litter they made themselves because they gave a shit about her. They maneuvered her up the hill to the garden an hour ago because they gave a shit. And they will bring her back down. Because they give. A. Shit.”
Gabi felt her eyebrows furrow as she heard the invisible periods punctuating his sentence. “It was an emergency. They didn’t have a choice. It doesn’t mean any of that will translate once we leave Echo Lake.”
“Wrong.” He shook his head firmly. “It’s exactly the kind of thing that will translate. These four have survived a really unique experience here. It will bond them, whether they like it or not. This summer will be etched into their memory banks forever, and the fact that some really shitty stuff happened isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Trauma bonding is some of the strongest stuff out there.”
“Great.” She laughed bitterly. “I’ve trauma-bonded my crew. The board will be thrilled.”
“They were scared out of their minds, Gabi. But they weren’t scared of you. They weren’t scared of me. They weren’t scared of the elements. They were scared for someone, and I have a feeling that’s not something that happens lightly. Not for any of them.”
“I … I don’t know.” Her voice was almost a whisper, and her head was swirling.
“I do know.” He stepped toward her, putting a gentle finger under her chin. “Gabriela, don’t make a decision today. Don’t leave.”
His touch on her skin, the intensity of his eyes on hers, the heat of his body so close to hers made Gabi want to melt into him, feel his arms close around her, lay her cheek against his soft T-shirt. And that scared her just as much as anything else right now, because she could easily lose herself in this. In him. And whether it happened today, or it happened one week from now, she would leave, and the shattered little pieces of her heart would leave a trail behind her as she fled.
It would be easier to do it before she had a chance to fall for him any harder than she already had.
He pulled away as if he could read her thoughts clearly, and she shivered as a tiny chill crept up her spine.
“You’re going, aren’t you?”
She took a deep, shaky breath, knowing she hated the answer more than he could possibly believe.
“It’s the only choice, Luke.”
“What about us, Gabriela? Are you leaving us, too? Before we even have a chance to figure out what—us—even could be?”
She closed her eyes, searching for the words that would hurt the least to hear … and deliver.
“I’m not making this decision lightly, Luke.”
“If you say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ right now, I’m throwing you in the lake. Fair warning.” She could feel the effort he was exerting, trying to keep his voice light, but tension crept into his jaw, his shoulders … the hands tightening on his own arms as he kept them crossed.
“But it is me. Luke, be serious. I’m Briarwood born and bred, and I don’t know how to do anything different. Pretty sure the last twenty-four hours makes that really, really clear.”
He shrugged. “So learn. You’ve been doing that all summer.”
“I just—I don’t know if I want to do anything different.” Her voice faded. “I’m sorry.”
“Well.” He nodded slowly, stepping backward. “I guess that’s a different problem, then.”