First, Second, Forever: The Campfire Cwtches Collection by Jacqueline Ramsden

Author:Jacqueline Ramsden [Ramsden, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2023-01-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

I watched Anwen through the fire, hoping the flames and the dark would mask my gaze enough that she couldn’t tell I’d barely taken my eyes off her since we got back. Well, except for when we’d all returned to our cabins to clean up and I’d stood under the hot water and tried not to imagine Anwen in her own shower.

I told myself I had no right to think of her like that anymore, that she probably wasn’t even in the shower, and, if she was, it was none of my business. It hadn’t worked very well as a strategy, especially when we all arrived at Fioled’s fire pit and her hair was damp and tied back, her clothes changed, and she’d definitely been in the shower.

Ten years since I’d had her in the shower, or walked around a place we both lived while she looked like that, but one tiny glimpse of it and I wanted it back.

“So,” Rhea said across the circle, “living this close, you must climb Pen y Fan all the time? Don’t think I’d ever leave if I lived here.”

Seemingly without her conscious control, Anwen’s gaze flickered to me, causing me to sit up straighter from where I’d slumped in my chair. Her attention was like a bolt of electricity through my body and every time I got it, I wanted more, wanted it flowing through me forever.

“I haven’t actually been up there in a while. I’ve done some of the others in the area more recently, but not that one,” she said, staring into the fire.

“Oh? How long had it been?” Rhea asked. “You seem like a natural hiker.”

Anwen hesitated, chewing her bottom lip. That was new.

She waited so long to answer that, by the time she did, most of the group was looking at her, eagerly awaiting her reply. I had a pit in my stomach that told me I might not want to know the answer.

“About ten years,” she said eventually.

I sucked in a sharp breath as the rest of the group fell into an awkward silence, glancing from Anwen to me, and away again, as if we were too horrific to look at, too mortifying not to.

Was the last time Anwen had been up Pen y Fan been the last time I had? And if so, what did that mean?

I felt my face heating up but I knew it wasn’t the relatively cool evening or the fire before me. It was Anwen and Pen y Fan and the spectacularly terrible idea that had been this weekend.

The silence was becoming oppressive. Anwen shifted in her seat and I just knew she was berating herself for telling the truth. She was like that. Incredibly friendly and sweet, but kind of shy underneath. If anything went wrong or became awkward, she would think through all the ways she could have made it better, less awkward.

I wanted to tell her that there was no way to coordinate a hen party that your ex-girlfriend was attending and not have it be weird.

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