8. Avery

She took the long way to her cabin, winding around the band rooms and back onto the field to holler at the counselors and older campers beneath the bleachers. Couples scampered away, giggling hand in hand, and Avery found it hard not to smile. There was something special about summer camp. Something magical about being out under the stars, far from the home you knew. It allowed an escape of self, a chance to explore and determine the sort of person you wanted to be.

At least, that was how Avery felt, and with each passing day at Elkwater, she felt herself becoming … not a different person, but more. A truer version of herself than she could ever be at home. She only hoped she could hold onto this New Avery when she was.

Humming quietly, she walked the track around the field to check the second set of bleachers backing up to the woods. Intended for family members when the marching band students performed at the end of each session, it was smaller than the main bleachers, and its compact build allowed for more shadows. Few couples wandered across the field to use the shadows, less now considering half of the stand had collapsed in the storm, but it was still a good idea to check, especially after an incident ten years prior with a human oboist and her wolven lover.

She ducked under a bent metal support, squinting in the dark before knocking on the joist. “Hey, anyone still out here?”

Silence met her question, and Avery waited, listening for any held breath or whisper. Hearing nothing, she nodded and hoisted her skirt, stepping over a fallen beam and onto the track ringing the field. The silence was thicker out from under the bleachers. Avery shivered, berating herself for not bringing a flashlight as she quickened her pace. It would be quicker to cross the grass, but the field was pockmarked from practice and ground squirrels, and she had no desire to join Cricket on crutches with a sprained ankle.

Cricket.

The thought of the faun sent another shiver down Avery’s spine. A shiver that churned into a flurry in her belly. She’d looked so peaceful, so soft, with her eyes closed and lips parted as Avery plucked spiderwebs from her hair. And those ears. Even now, she could feel the tempting, velvet-soft down against her fingertips.

I wonder if the rest of her is as soft.

Avery stutter-stepped to a stop, startled by the thought. It wasn’t the first time her mind had wandered and wondered about other girls, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but ever since she’d decided to pursue music over softball, it was the kind of thought she kept tucked away and locked in a box in the back of her mind. Out of sight and never addressed.

To have a thought like that about an inhuman, about Cricket … she held it there, cupped in her mind like a treasure in the palm of her hands. Examining the thought with a new curiosity.

“Hey!”

Avery tensed, breath caught in her throat. She craned her neck toward the sound of the call, wondering if she’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard a camper approach. Silence and shadows clung to the woods, the field and track empty.

“Hey!”

The call came again, and every hair on her neck and arms stood straight. She squinted, making out the narrow trunks of the trees, the hollow where a deer trail wound into the woods, and a bulky, shifting shadow.

Stories from childhood crept to the forefront of her mind. Legends and “Jack Tales” her grandmother used to tell Avery and her siblings. An Appalachian woman, born and raised a coal miner’s daughter in Fairmont, West Virginia, she wove them stories of moon-eyed people and caverns running the length of the mountains. She taught them to hang a broom over their doors and never to do their laundry on a Sunday. But at this moment, one of her grandmother’s most frequent lessons screamed across her mind:

If you see something in the woods, no, you didn’t.

The shadow Avery absolutely did not see shifted again, and she hitched her skirt and ran.

Moonlight crept across the floor of her cabin, falling in cracks between beams and casting long, unwanted shadows. Avery pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, wanting to roll over but too afraid to take her eyes off the door. Something had been in those woods; she was sure of it. Something big, watching her.

She shivered, creeped out anew, and rolled onto her back, eyes tracing the ceiling. Sleep had been impossible. By the time she reached her cabin, Avery was wide awake and jumping at every little sound. It would have helped if her roommate were there, but Sanoya had spent a grand total of zero nights in the cabin with her since the start of camp. They’d met, shaking hands and making small talk at move-in, but the pale-haired, willowy Life Sciences Instructor preferred to keep to herself and slept … somewhere in the camp.

Or maybe she was nocturnal. Though human-appearing, the long-limbed woman with her wide, dark eyes was otherworldly—so much so that Avery scrunched her face and groaned.

Of course,Sanoya was inhuman. Why the heck had she been so quick to assume otherwise? Avery’s assumption was probably the reason Sanoya wanted to keep space between them, just like Cricket, with her terse words and eagerness to get away.

And what had that been about? During dinner and the walk to Director Murray’s cabin, it felt like they had found an easy middle ground—not a friendship, but something warmer than strangers. Cricket had seen Avery in a way the other inhumans at camp hadn’t been able to, and Avery, in turn, had seen her.

But then she’d darted away so quickly as if Avery had spooked her.

She played through the moment again, trying to pinpoint her misstep. They’d entered the yard, Avery had walked up the stairs, and in the porchlight, she saw the spiderweb on Cricket’s shoulder and tangled in her hair, and yes, maybe she’d been looking for an excuse to touch the faun again, so she had. Simple as that. She plucked the spider web away, content with one last brush of her fingers against the soft down on her arms. In that low light, she’d noticed tiny white flecks on Cricket’s shoulders, like little inverse freckles, and the desire to count them all had been overwhelming. She’d pulled her hand away, showing the faun the spiderweb, and then spotted more in her hair.

Had that been it? Her ears had shot straight up. Delicate, conical ears that had been hidden beneath the short mass of curls. Dusty brown at the base, they lightened to an enticing snowy white at the tips, softer even than the velvet-down on Cricket’s wrists.

The image of the faun frozen in front of her, large, liquid eyes intent on Avery, made her belly swoop. She lightly curled her fingers, nails tickling the skin above the waistband of her shorts.

At that first touch, Cricket had bit her lower lip between her teeth, trying in vain to stop the tiniest, sweetest whimper from escaping. But escape it had, and that sound now rang in Avery’s ears. That, and each tight, almost panting breath that followed. She couldn’t have imagined that, just like she couldn’t have imagined how the peaks of Cricket’s nipples had hardened beneath the thin cotton of her shirt.

Avery was no fool. You didn’t spend the entirety of junior high and high school playing on a championship softball team without learning a thing or two about girls, their bodies, and how they responded to certain … stimuli, and Avery had learned that lesson well, time and time again exercising that knowledge.

Her dad always joked she only played softball because it was the only time she was allowed to wear shorts or pants. Avery had bitten her tongue, refusing to correct him. What was the point? To admit what she got up to on travel weekends or when one of her teammates came to spend the night would be to ensure she never got to enjoy the escape of a tournament and sharing a hotel room with Stacy. Or Erica.

Instead, she smiled and feigned laughter, and when Erica came over for a sleepover, she thanked God for her Mom, who only ever said, “I love you, make good choices.”

Her thumb brushed over her nipple, and she gasped at the surprising sizzle of pleasure, sweeping the hard peak again as she kept Cricket’s face clear in her mind. Thick, short lashes dusting her cheek, those wild curls springing every which way. How her plump lower lip looked juicy enough to bite. To tug.

“Oh.” Her hand slipped beneath the waistband of her shorts, driving between her legs, while the other cupped her breast, pinching and teasing her nipple.

Would Cricket make those sweet little pants if she touched her like this? Would she call out Avery’s name in that raspy, throaty voice? Or would she curse?

Her fingers trailed through her curls, nowhere near as soft as Cricket’s hair—oh, wow, was she that soft all over?

She circled her clit, hips twitching. The tiny flurry that had begun at that first accidental brush of her nipple blazed into an outright fire. She dragged a finger through her folds, teasing the slick flesh and circling her clit again, drawing closer and closer until the image of Cricket in her mind morphed and shifted. It became Cricket’s teeth pinching her nipples. Cricket’s long, soft fingers teasing Avery until she felt she would combust.

She drove two fingers deep, eyes flying wide as they crooked against a spot that made her see stars. Abandoning her breast, she pressed down on her hand, applying pressure to her clit until her toes curled and the sensation became too intense, too delectable to restrain any longer. She came with a silent scream, whipping her head to the side and burying her face in the pillow until each lapping wave of pleasure receded into her core.

Panting and, finally, exhausted, Avery lay on her back with her hand cradled on her chest, waiting for the guilt that usually followed. She wasn’t supposed to think about girls. She wasn’t supposed to want them, but she had, and she did, and even more surprising and no longer deniable, was that she wanted Cricket.