Slow Burn(38)

    “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.”