Gifted Connections 3

I giggled. For real?

For real, and even without your gift of compulsion, I would follow you anywhere. Jaxson flashed his dimples at me. I knew he was trying to reassure me, too, and take the sting out of Adams’ words.

Cheesy. Noah groaned.

But I made her smile, Jaxson said smugly. So, no schedule? I want Fridays and Saturdays please.

I snorted. No schedules, I stated emphatically.

We decided to stop for lunch around noon. The energy bars Drake handed us on the walk hadn’t filled us up for long. I pulled out a MRE and munched on some smoked fish while I waited for the spicy penne to warm up.

Mm, this

is really good. I held up the piece of fish to Drake.

He flashed me a smile. Thanks. Remy made an excellent cold smoker, too. It would taste better on crackers.

Thanks, Remy, I added giving him a smile as well.

How long do you think our hike will be today? Will we have to seek shelter again? Noah asked Troy who poured over the maps.

I looked over at Noah, interested in the answer myself. I couldn’t help but notice how tired Noah looked. I wondered if I looked just as tired and I didn’t even have to carry my pack. The guys, except for Noah, had been carrying it. Noah was carrying his own despite the others offering to carry it for him.

Troy shook his head. Hopefully not. With a little bit of luck, we should see the facility within the next hour or two. Then it’s a matter of navigating around the mountain and up to the access road.

If we need to stop, we can, Jace added, looking at Noah and me.

No. I insisted. If we’re this close to home, I would like to be in our own beds tonight.

Me, too. Noah flashed me a roguish grin.

That sounds like a plan to me! Jaxson said excitedly.

Don’t push yourselves too much, Jace insisted.

Someone tell me a story. I quickly changed the subject. Tell me how you were as teens. Tell me something you guys did that Pops may not know about.

We don’t have any of those. Remy gave the other guys a pointed look.

I groaned. Come on… Six teenage boys with no stories? Bull!

Troy chuckled. There was this one time that we had this party planned. Will was supposed to go out of town for a conference, so we started planning it. Sue wasn’t going to be there that Saturday either. It should have been so easy, but Jemmy found out and told Pops. We thought we were home free. The party was raging, and here comes Pops. He groaned. We were grounded for a month. Jaxson and Drake decided to get in the alcohol, and they were blitzed out of their minds. And… He stopped as he shot Jace and Remy a look. And we found out Jemmy had told on us, so we stuck hair die in her hair. It backfired. He laughed. She’s colored her hair ever since then.

I shot Remy, Jace, and Troy suspicious looks. Where were Jace and Remy? I smirked at them. I bet it had to do with a girl or multiple girls. I let out a startled laugh when Remy looked the other way.

Well Jace was with his girlfriend, Jaxson crowed at their looks of discomfort and obvious evasion of my questions.

Big mouths! Remy shot Troy and Jaxson looks. Look, Baby, you know we had past. Sometimes we much rather not tell our girl about the hounds we once were.

Speak for yourself, Drake jested.

I could tell he had surprised them with his quip as we all laughed. It was rare that Drake ever involved himself in their teasing and arguments. He was generally Switzerland. Always neutral.

I huffed. I’m not saying I want the nitty gritty details, but I would like to hear stories from you guys every now and then. I want to know more about you.

And here I thought we lucked out. I thought we got one of the cool ones. She’s asking us to talk now. Next thing you know she’s going to be texting us and asking if we’re thinking about her. She’ll sigh and look at us and ask us what we’re thinking. She’ll expect us to give us the passwords to all our phones. Troy sighed dramatically. This, my friends, is just the beginning.

The guys began snickering and laughing.