Chapter 0004

-Caleb-

“Fuck!” I said as I tried to right our course. But the canoe just kept snaking back and forth against the water, out of my control.

I could hear Hank shouting off in the distance, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roar of the water and the sputtering of the motor.

We were headed sideways, no matter what I did, straight for a rock.

Then Jocelyn knelt up at the front of the canoe and pushed off the rock with her paddle, hard.

She righted the canoe just enough for me to get things back under control. I powered the rest of the way through the rapids with Jocelyn on alert at the front for more rocks.

My pulse slowly stuttered back to normal. By the time we pulled up next to Hank and Mom, I was ready to murder the man.

“I told you to back out and try again,” Hank said, exasperated. “Jeez, couldn’t you hear me? You could have flipped the canoe!”

A dark spew of words, most of them colorful, bubbled up inside me to tell the bastard off once and for all, but I felt Jocelyn’s nails dig into my knee again.

“We got through okay, Dad,” she pointed out. “See? Everybody’s in one piece.”

Hank looked about ready to give me a telling off, but Mom grabbed his arm. Between the two women holding us back, we ended up having a glaring contest instead of spewing the vitriol that was boiling between us.

“Try to follow instructions next time,” was Hank’s final word on the subject before turning back to his motor and starting to navigate his boat ahead.

I growled in my throat, but Jocelyn’s nails dug in harder, and I forced myself to count backward from ten. Or rather, eighteen. Because this was Jocelyn’s eighteenth birthday celebration, and I shouldn’t be the one to ruin it by getting into a knock down, drag out with Hank.

“You should have been the one doing this,” I grumbled to Jocelyn as I turned the canoe in the direction Hank had gone.

Jocelyn ducked her head. “Sorry. Dad didn’t want me to, but I guess I messed up...”

I wanted to tip her chin up, touch that smooth skin with reassurance, but instead I just stared at her. “That wasn’t a critique, Jocelyn. That was the truth. Your father was wrong.”

“It’s a critique of him,” Jocelyn said, rubbing her thumb over her nails, a nervous habit she’d had ever since I’d met her.

“He deserves critiquing,” I assured her, but that only seemed to make her more agitated. I sighed and patted her knee. “Never mind. I’ll leave it, for now.”

Jocelyn nodded and crawled back to the front of the canoe.

I closed my eyes a moment, trying not to ogle my stepsister’s perfect ass as she moved. Once she was settled, I opened the motor up full throttle and tried to catch up with Hank, but he was miles ahead of us again.

The silence that lapsed between us brought me back to our moment in the woods. I’d been thinking about it, and kicking myself, since the very second she turned her back and fled from me. I’d been a thousand kinds of stupid, misreading the entire situation. Without the danger of this boat ride to distract us, things were going to be awkward.

Still, I couldn’t forget the way her heated eyes trailed up my body. The feel of her soft, thick hair between my fingers.

I still wondered what it would be like to kiss those plump, perfect, pink lips.

My jeans started to get very uncomfortable, and I grimaced. If it hadn’t been for the lifejacket she’d been wearing, I’d have probably openly appreciated her breasts as well. They were big, and bouncy, and every man’s wet dream.

Hank took a sharp left, and I shook myself. I really had to stop fantasizing about Jocelyn. Even away at college, I’d wake up with my dick in my hand, imagining her underneath me. Fuck, I knew she’d taste so good.

“Here we are, home sweet home!” Hank called as he cut his motor, tilted it up, and slid gracefully up to a narrow, sandy beach on one side of a peninsula.

I aimed the canoe at the beach and did the same, praying that, this time, I didn’t make a jackass of myself. We hit the sand smoothly, and Jocelyn jumped right out and pulled the canoe up further, then secured it to a low-hanging branch with the lead rope.

Mom giggled while Hank maneuvered around her again to get the boat pulled halfway up on shore, tying his off as well. Then he gallantly held out his hand and helped Mom get out of the boat.

If Jocelyn was going to be my partner for this trip, well, I was glad. She knew the score. Mom seemed happy to be utterly useless.

I froze and looked at Jocelyn, who was grabbing gear and marching up a small incline to offload it somewhere I couldn’t see through the trees. Were we supposed to be partners this trip? Was I going to be stuck in a boat with her for ten days?!

My balls were not going to be blue. They were going to turn black and fall off.

“Caleb, help your sister,” Hank chuckled as he kissed Mom on the shoreline.

A nasty retort about him not doing jack shit just about bubbled out of my mouth, but then Jocelyn grabbed two sleeping bags, and I got to watch her ass wiggle as she deftly dodged a tree root to go back up the path. It was enough of a distraction to calm me down.

I jumped out of the canoe and started grabbing cots and tents, the loosely tied stuff on top of our heavier gear. Once we’d cleared that, Jocelyn reached for one handle of a cooler, and I reached for the other.

“Jacey, why don’t you help your stepmother over here with the pillows and seat cushions? Caleb and I can get the coolers,” Hank said.

Jocelyn hunched a little, but nodded and went to help Mom. I balled both fists around the cooler handle to stop myself from decking Hank. It was clear father and daughter had developed a routine that he was breaking for some reason. Maybe to show off what a good father he was to Mom.

In any case, he was treating Jocelyn like an infant, and it was pissing me off.

“Lift with your knees,” Hank grunted as he heaved up his end of the cooler.

I lifted mine, and we walked the cooler up the incline and into the trees.

Our campsite, it turned out, was a real fishermen’s hideaway. There was a nice, big, flat area with a makeshift picnic table of sorts made of stumps, branches, and boards to one side. Other, smaller flat areas dotted a trail that disappeared further up the hill.

“We’ve even got a pot here,” Hank said proudly. When we set the cooler down, however, he frowned at a framework at one side of the picnic table. “Damn moose hunters been messing up my campsite again...”

“Moose hunters?” I echoed.

“Yeah. They hunt in the winter and mess up all the work I did maintaining the campsite over the summer so they can build crap like this to hang up the moose carcasses. I’ll fix it in a minute. Let’s get unpacked first.” Hank set his side of the cooler down and began trudging back down the hill. “You coming? Three more coolers to go!”

I scowled and followed him back to the boats.

Jocelyn, as it turned out, had removed her lifejacket. I didn’t know whether to thank or curse God that she’d sweated underneath it, plastering her light blue shirt against her chest.

“Mind the rope!” Hank barked, but it was too late. I tripped over the tie out and nearly landed flat on my face.

Hank sighed and clapped me on the shoulder as I got myself upright. “Son, I know the view’s spectacular, but you need to pay attention and be careful around here. It’s at least three hours to the nearest hospital.”

The view? He wasn’t—

No. Hank was pointing at an eagle’s nest just past Jocelyn’s shoulder. There was a bald eagle sitting in it and one perched further up the tree.

“Wow,” I whispered.

“Majestic creatures,” Hank agreed. “But they’ll be there all week. We want to get camp set up so we can have a little something to eat and then go fishing.”

I nodded and proceeded to help Hank with the last three coolers.

Before long, Hank and I had a large tarp up over the campsite, held up by strategically placed dead trees that Hank had hammered into the ground at some point like towering fence posts. There was also an A-line tarp over our gear.

While Hank encouraged the “womenfolk” to start putting up their tents, Hank and I erected the cook tent.

I could hear Mom giggling in the background, which told me she was being absolutely useless in getting the tent she would be sharing with Hank together. Once Hank and I finished with the cook tent, I saw it was just as I thought.

Mom was sitting between whippy tent poles, trying to bend them into place, but she’d fed them wrong in the first place, so nothing was happening. Hank just smiled indulgently and went to help her.

I went to find my own tent to put up a few feet away from theirs, only to see Jacey’s was already standing across from mine, and she was kneeling on the ground, assembling mine, now.

“Thanks, Jocelyn,” I said quietly, coming up behind her.

She jumped, then blushed. “Well, you know, you were getting all that other stuff done with Dad.”

I peeked through the screen of Jocelyn’s tent. “You’ve even got your cot up and your sleeping bag ready.”

Jocelyn nodded. “I even unpacked a little. But don’t unpack too much. I mean, we put tarps down inside the tents, but the floor can still get a little wet from ground water.”

“Good to know,” I said. I scrubbed my hand over the back of my neck. “Listen, Jocelyn, about what happened back at the landing...”

“What happened back at the landing?” Mom asked helpfully, popping her head over the brush between my tent and hers.

Shit.

“We had an argument,” Jocelyn replied quickly. “When I went to bring him his bag.”

Mom frowned. “Caleb. Jacey was doing something nice for you, and you got into an argument?”

“Are you trying to ruin this trip?” Hank pitched in, his head also coming into view.

I ground my teeth. I was pretty sure my dentist was going to need a microscope to find any enamel by the time we got home. “No. I didn’t realize the bags were switched, so I was yelling at her for—”

“—almost catching him naked,” Jocelyn finished quickly. “Luckily, he hadn’t started changing yet.”

“Oh. Well, you still shouldn’t have yelled,” Mom admonished me.

I looked at Jocelyn. “You’re right. I shouldn't have yelled.”

Jocelyn ducked her head and cleared her throat. “Anyway, do you still need help with your tent?”

Oh, I needed help with a tent alright, but not the one we were assembling. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, Jocelyn.”

“You’re welcome.” Jocelyn ducked into her tent and zipped the second flap closed, this one opaque so I couldn’t see in.

“I wish you two would just get along,” Mom sighed.

“You’re going to have to,” Hank said. “You’re sharing a boat for ten days.”

I knew it. That motherfucker.