Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)(20)
Over the past two weeks at camp, his skin color had deepened to a golden bronze. His dark blond hair was attractively mussed and there was a burnished scruff on his jaw. He looked good to Alice, and not just because Thad was good-looking. There was something normal and reassuring about his appearance at that moment.
He came to a halt on the path just feet away from her.
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing her with a bemused smile.
“Fine.”
“You’re sure beating the path to get somewhere in a hurry. I called out to you a half-dozen times before you stopped.”
“Oh . . . sorry,” Alice mumbled, thinking about how she’d been stomping through the woods. “I was just thinking about things.”
Thad’s eyebrows rose expectantly. He exhaled when she didn’t elaborate, but didn’t seem surprised by her refusal to do so. He really was getting to know her well.
“Your kids already off to lunch?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dave took them with his team,” she said, referring to Dave Epstein, their friend and Thad’s roommate.
“He took mine, too.” After a tense pause when his green-eyed gaze roamed over her face, he waved his hand toward the woods. “This must be our spot.”
“Huh?” She glanced around, only then recognizing their location. Just to the left of them was the hidden, sun-dappled glade where Thad had comforted her just over a week ago.
“Oh yeah,” she mumbled. “I hadn’t really noticed where I was.”
Thad eyed her suspiciously. “You look a little pale. You’re not going to”—he waved in the vicinity of his taut abdomen—“be sick again, are you?”
Her cheeks burned at the memory of him watching her vomit. “Do you think I’m going to hurl every time I walk by this place in the woods?” she asked with amused exasperation.
He shrugged dubiously. “Just checking.”
Alice shook her head and laughed. Her mirth faded when she noticed the somber way Thad was watching her. He gestured toward the glade where he’d held her. “Do you mind? If we go back? Just for a minute,” he added, probably noticing her trepidation. “There’s something I want to talk about with you. It’s important.”
It all came back to her in a flash of memory why she’d been avoiding Thad: Thad and Brooke’s secretive meeting in the forest. Thad’s softly uttered question to Brooke, “Then why are you here with me?” Thad leaning down to cover Brooke’s mouth with his in a kiss that looked very much to Alice like one between familiar lovers.
“Oh, I guess maybe . . .” She trailed off uncomfortably, glancing around the woods. She stood very still for a moment, holding her breath. The woods were quiet. Had Sal Rigo listened to her demand in that clearing and not followed her, for once? Not likely, with Dylan there. It’d been Sebastian Kehoe who had unintentionally assisted her cause when he insisted Rigo stay put for a dressing down while Alice made her escape. It wasn’t the first time Kehoe had grown impatient with Rigo for abandoning his assigned post. Rigo took orders from another man besides Kehoe, though.
Dylan.
It annoyed her that she even had to consider her God-given right to privacy at that moment.
Screw Rigo, and Dylan, too.
Alice straightened at the volatile thought. “Yeah. There’s something I want to talk to you about, too.”
She noticed his green eyes narrow, and realized she’d unintentionally sounded a little condemning. She put out her hand in a “lead the way” gesture, a wry apology in her glance. What right did she have to judge Thad, when she herself was involved in a secret affair with Dylan? True, Brooke was one of her least favorite people, but maybe Thad saw something in her Alice didn’t.
Despite all her rationalizations, Alice admitted the truth to herself as she followed Thad on the almost invisible, weed-choked path that led to the glade. She was disappointed in Thad because he’d been lying to her. She’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in a relationship with him, but maybe her pride had been pricked by the fact that he’d publicly demonstrated a preference for her—Alice—while he’d secretly been fooling around with Brooke.
Alice had held Thad up in her mind as an example of a sincere, normal friendship. Ever since coming to Camp Durand, she’d been swimming in a choppy sea of confused emotion. She was the outsider in a group of born insiders, a girl who had grown up in a shabby trailer park, the daughter of a sick, trembling drug addict who was the object of pity, fear, and disgust to many.
But of course, there had been more to her disorientation at Camp Durand. Much more. Now she was starting to get a glimmer as to just why the Durand Estate was so unsettling to her. Ever since she’d arrived in this overwhelming setting, however, Thad had been a sure, reliable thing.
She was mad at him for not being what she needed him to be.
And that’s just plain not fair to him, is it?
She came to a halt several feet away from him when he stopped and turned toward her in the center of the glade. For a few seconds, they just looked at each other.
“Your hair—it’s getting longer.”
She raked her bangs out of her eyes self-consciously. “Yeah. It’s a wreck.”
“It looks good. It’s getting lighter in the sun, too. I like it.”
Alice shrugged uneasily, studying the long grass swaying around their feet. She needed to color her hair again, but hadn’t had the opportunity here at camp. Not only were the telltale red-gold roots starting to show, the sun was bringing out highlights even through the dark brown color she usually used. It made her feel naked somehow—vulnerable—knowing Thad noticed her emerging true color.