That Second Chance (Getting Lucky #1)(64)

“Seems nice.”

“It was. So nice, and we returned many times after.”

“So whatever happened couldn’t have been that bad.”

“It took me a year before I went back,” she confesses. “A year before I felt like I could revisit those bathrooms.”

The way she says bathrooms with such menace in her voice—I can’t help but chuckle.

“I was young, naive, and ignorant about my actual shower time. I thought I was a two-minute-shower kind of girl, when in reality, I was a ten-minute-shower kind of girl.”

“Oh shit,” I mumble, unable to hide the smile pulling at my lips.

“Midshampoo, the shower cut out, and I didn’t have any more quarters. Head soaped up and body drenched, I reached for my towel . . .”

“Fuck, did you forget your towel?”

She slowly nods, eyes closed, lips pressed together. “Yup,” she answers with a resounding pop. “Forgot a towel, forgot extra quarters. All I had were my T-shirt and shorts, which horribly clung to my soaking-wet body. I made the walk of shame out the bathrooms and past the campsite of high school boys who were on some Eagle Scout field trip—mind you, I had no bra on—and made it to my parents’ campsite, where I grabbed a towel and more quarters. I wanted to pretty much die on the walk back when every single guy at the Eagle Scout campground watched me head into the bathroom. It was mortifying.”

“Hell, that is mortifying. Did you hide behind trees for the rest of your camping experience?”

“Pretty much. I didn’t want to go anywhere near the Eagle Scouts. And I faked sick to get out of the pancake breakfast that Sunday.” Sincerity laces her voice. “And do you know how painful that was? I love a good campground pancake social. All-you-can-eat fluffy magic, ugh.” She slaps the armrest on her chair. “What a world.”

I chuckle, loving how animated she is.

“Okay, your turn. What’s your story? And make it good, Knightly.”

The way she calls me by my last name sometimes, especially when she’s joking—I fucking love it. She’s got me hook, line, and sinker.

“Sudsy teenager doing the walk of shame is pretty hard to beat, but I think I have the story to destroy yours.”

“We’ll see about that.” She folds her arms across her chest.

I so have her freaking beat, and if I really wanted to preserve the image she has of me in her head, I would not tell her this story, but I’m going for broke here.

“I was with my brothers and my dad; it was a man’s weekend,” I say with a gruff voice to really exaggerate how manly of a weekend it was. “Which meant we were going natural.”

“Like no clothes?” Her eyes widen.

“No.” I chuckle. “Not that natural, but Dad wanted us to learn to live off the land in case we were ever, in his words, ‘abducted and dropped off in the middle of nowhere.’”

“Well, that makes sense. Smart parenting.”

“Agreed, but there were some things my dad failed to mention.” I grab the back of my neck, the story so vivid in my mind. “That weekend my brothers and I were pulling pranks on each other every chance we could get. Just stupid shit, like scaring each other in the woods and stealing each other’s underwear. Really mature stuff that I won’t go into.”

“Thank you for sparing me.” She chuckles, her smile beautiful, her lips distracting me for a brief second.

I clear my throat and continue, “We were all making dinner, and I had to go to the bathroom, so I went off into the woods, near the designated bathroom area my dad marked off, and started taking a leak, only to have Reid come up behind me and screech like a giant owl, which scared the living piss out of me.” Ren covers her mouth and giggles. “Naturally, I got pee all over myself, and since we were using the land as our only resource, I grabbed a leaf from the ground and started wiping up.”

“Ohhh noooo.” Her chuckling turns into a fit of laughter.

“It was almost instant. Poison ivy spread all over me, everywhere I touched, including . . .” I lift a brow at her.

A burst of laughter pops out of her. “You poison ivy-ed your penis.”

“And it wasn’t pretty. Red-and-white blisters for weeks. All I wanted to do was dip my dick into a cup of calamine lotion, but that was just asking for a UTI, so I had to resort to stroking my damn dick with anti-itch.” She’s laughing so hard tears are coming from her eyes. “I couldn’t look at calamine lotion the same for a very long time; the mauve bottle brought back odd sensations. Talk about confusing.”

“Oh shit.” She’s wiping her eyes, her laughter musical. Hell, it might be embarrassing, but it’s worth it to see her so happy, to see joy take over her entire body.

It’s sexy.

It makes me want to take her into my arms tonight, in our tent, the stars twinkling right above us.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN





REN


All throughout my shower and while brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, I kept chuckling at the thought of poor Griffin and his poison ivy penis.

I couldn’t imagine that kind of pain, but hell, it’s comedy gold.

But now that I’m making the walk back to the campsite—dry and sans soap in my hair—I can’t help but sober up.