Cuck your camping group? (900 follower special)

The morning sun had barely crested the eastern ridge when you pulled into the visitor center parking lot, your modified truck rumbling to a stop across two spaces near the far edge of the gravel lot. The vehicle was a workhorse—a heavy-duty pickup with a custom flatbed conversion featuring welded bench seats along both sides, canvas roll-up panels, and enough dust caked into the crevices to tell a hundred trail stories. You'd driven it through every mountain pass worth mentioning in the Sierra Nevada, and today it would carry your latest group deep into the backcountry for a week-long expedition.

You killed the engine and stepped out, boots crunching on loose gravel as you surveyed the lot. They were already here—all six couples, milling around a cluster of SUVs and sedans with the particular energy of people who had packed too much, argued about packing, and were now pretending they hadn't.

Adrienne Yazzie was the first to notice you. She straightened from where she'd been leaning against a silver Subaru, her gray-green eyes catching the light with quiet alertness. Her short black hair was tucked behind one ear, and she wore a fitted flannel over a tank top, hiking boots already broken in. Adam stood beside her, fumbling with a strap on his pack, but Adrienne's attention had already shifted—subtle, controlled, but unmistakable.

"Morning," she said, her voice calm and warm, the kind of greeting that felt like she'd been waiting for you specifically. "Beautiful spot for a staging area."

Nearby, Jayda Chikafa was adjusting her long platinum braid over one shoulder, her freckled face turned toward the distant tree line with a practiced, scanning gaze. Wendell stood a few paces behind her, checking his phone for signal. Jayda's heavy-lidded eyes slid to you, studied you for a beat longer than casual, and then she gave a small nod—private, almost secretive.

"Trail looks promising from here," she murmured, more to you than to anyone.

Ruth Sapon was sitting on a tailgate, her pastel pink hair catching the breeze in soft, fluffy layers. Joaquin was somewhere near the restrooms. Ruth's warm brown eyes found you and her lips curved into a shy, genuine smile—the kind that made her look like she was blushing even when she wasn't.

"Hi! I'm—yeah, you probably already know who I am from the emails," she laughed softly, tucking a strand of pink behind her ear. "I'm really excited. I brought snacks. Like, a lot of snacks."

Kelly Rourke was leaning against her own car with the languid grace of someone who had never once rushed for anything in her life. Her vivid red hair was swept back in a messy ponytail, her pale green eyes half-lidded and amused. Sajad stood beside her, chatting with someone else, but Kelly's gaze was fixed on you with a dreamy, appraising warmth.

"Well," she said, her Scottish lilt curling around the word like smoke, "you're the famous guide, then. I was picturing someone older. This is better."

Winona Ket lingered near the edge of the group, her dark brown hair falling in loose waves around her soft, doll-like face. Ethan had his arm loosely around her waist. Winona's large dark eyes met yours and then quickly looked down, a faint pink rising in her cheeks. She gave a small wave, barely more than a flutter of her fingers.

"Um, hi," she said softly. "Thank you for organizing all of this."

Sally Kimball bounced up last—or rather, she walked up with the particular energy of someone whose body never quite settled into stillness. Her short blonde hair swept dramatically to one side, her pale green eyes bright and sharp. Owen trailed behind her, already winded from hauling gear.

"Hey! You're the guide?" Sally grinned, extending a hand with farm-girl firmness. "Sally Kimball. Like the Encyclopedia Brown character. My parents knew what they were doing. This truck is incredible, by the way—is that a custom bed?"

You walked them through the basics—gear check, safety overview, the route you'd be taking up toward the trailhead. The truck would carry the group partway in, saving them a grueling six-mile road approach before the real hiking began. You opened the rear panel and showed them the bench seating: two long benches running the length of the bed, facing each other, with tie-downs and padding. It would fit everyone. Mostly.

"Here's the thing," you said, gesturing at the benches. "Back seats fit twelve. We've got thirteen total, counting me. So one person rides up front in the cab."

There was a beat of silence.

Then Adrienne spoke first, her voice easy and natural, as if she'd already calculated this. "I'll ride up front. I'm good with maps—I can help navigate if you need a second pair of eyes."

Jayda stepped forward almost simultaneously, her braid swaying against her back. "I'll sit up front. I've got long legs—those benches get cramped on rough roads. I won't complain about the bumps."

Ruth's hand went up quickly, her cheeks flushing. "Oh—I mean, I could! I'm pretty small, I won't take up much space, and I don't want to be in the way back there with everyone's packs..."

Kelly pushed off her car with a lazy stretch, her red hair catching the light. "I think I should be up front, actually. I get motion sick in the back of vehicles. Terribly inconvenient. Very real condition."

Winona's voice came soft but clear, surprising even herself. "I... I don't mind sitting up front. If no one else wants to. It's fine. I just—I don't mind."

Sally planted her hands on her hips, her tomboy grin fierce and certain. "Nope. I'm calling it. I volunteer. I've got the best jokes, I won't fall asleep, and I've been in trucks like this before. Put me up front, coach."

The six women stood in a loose semicircle around you, each volunteering, each looking at you with expressions that ranged from Adrienne's steady composure to Sally's eager brightness. Behind them, Adam checked his watch, Wendell studied the tree line, Joaquin hadn't returned yet, Sajad was on his phone, and Ethan looked mildly confused about why this was taking so long.

None of the men noticed what you were beginning to notice—the way six pairs of eyes were locked on you with something a little too focused, a little too warm, each woman waiting to see if you'd choose her.

The camp had taken shape in a natural clearing among lodgepole pines, tucked into a broad meadow where a creek bent lazily through granite boulders and sun- fallen logs. You'd chosen the spot for its proximity to water, its wind-sheltered drainage, and the way the late afternoon light filtered through the canopy in warm amber shafts that made even the most functional campsite look cinematic.

The tents were pitched in a loose crescent around a central fire ring. Sleeping bags had been unrolled. Packs were propped against trees. The camp smelled like pine resin and creek water and the first tentative wisps of Sajad's cooking—something with onions and garlic sizzling in a cast-iron skillet balanced on a flat rock beside the coals he'd already gotten started.

Sajad himself was stationed at the fire ring, a towel over one shoulder, stirring with the focus of a man who had been told by Kelly that dinner was his department tonight and who intended to impress.

"She said she wanted to 'go look for wood,'" Sajad had said when Kelly bounced up from her camping chair and headed toward you with her boots already laced. "Which I think means she wanted to go look for wood and also not be anywhere near me for twenty minutes. Fine. I've got the rice. Someone's gotta be the adult."

He'd said it with affection, the way long-term partners do when they've learned to decode each other's patterns. Kelly had merely smiled at him over her shoulder—slow, warm, guilty in a way she clearly found charming in herself—and kept walking.

Now you stood near the edge of camp with six women forming a loose cluster around you, all of them having volunteered for the firewood run with varying degrees of subtlety. The task was straightforward: scatter into the surrounding forest and collect dead and down wood—fallen branches, dry limbs, anything on the ground already. The rule was simple too: nobody goes alone.

"Partner up," you said, scanning the tree line and pointing toward the northwest where deadfall was likely thicker on the leeward slope. "Stay within earshot of your partner. If you hear three whistle blasts, that's me calling everyone back. Grab what you can carry comfortably—nothing green, nothing standing dead, nothing you have to break off a live tree."

You paused. "I need one person with me. I'm going to head up toward the ridge where I saw some good downed timber on the way in. It's a steeper approach, so I want someone who can handle the terrain."

What happened next was not a fight. Not exactly. But it had the specific energy of six women who had each independently rehearsed exactly what they would say if this moment arrived.

Adrienne spoke first, her voice steady and unbothered, the way she always sounded—like the answer was obvious and she was simply stating it before anyone else could waste time.

"I'll go with you. I've done steep terrain before—I grew up around sandstone switchbacks and I did backcountry work at ASU. I won't slow you down."

She said it the way someone hands you a business card: confident, professional, no excess. Her gray-green eyes held yours with quiet certainty, and there was something in the set of her jaw—not aggressive, just settled—like she'd already decided and was simply waiting for you to confirm.

Jayda cut in, her voice lower, more measured, her braid shifting as she tilted her head.

"I can handle a ridge. I've scrambled worse than anything in the Sierras—Scree slopes in the Rockies, ice fields near Lake Louise. I'm not bragging, I'm just—accurate."

Her dark eyes were calm but intent, the way she looked when she was solving something—a plot point in one of her mystery drafts, or the specific moment a person's story stopped adding up. She wasn't competing with Adrienne so much as refusing to be out-positioned.

Ruth fidgeted with the hem of her flannel, her pink hair catching the breeze, but her voice was surprisingly firm when it came.

"I want to go with you. I know I look—I know people think archery isn't really outdoors stuff, but I hiked my way through the Hudson Valley on training weekends and I've got good balance. I won't complain about the climb."

She held your gaze for a moment, then looked down at her boots, then back up—like she was daring herself not to retreat from her own nerve.

Kelly leaned against a pine trunk with her arms crossed, one ankle hooked over the other, her red hair loosely braided and draped over one shoulder. She looked like she was deciding which restaurant to try rather than volunteering for physical labor.

"I'll come," she said simply. "I don't mind steep. And I could use the walk after sitting in that truck. Besides, Sajad's got dinner handled—he doesn't need me hovering. He always says I hover. I don't hover. I observe."

Her pale green eyes drifted to you with a lazy, unblinking warmth that somehow felt more direct than anyone else's intensity.

Winona had been standing quietly at the back, her dark hair falling around her soft face, her large eyes moving between each speaker like she was watching a sport she didn't fully understand the rules of but was deeply invested in the outcome.

"I could go," she said, her voice barely above a murmur. "I know I'm not—I mean, I'm not the strongest hiker. But I'd try really hard. And I'd stay close. I just—I'd like to go with you."

The last part came out quieter than the rest, almost swallowed by the creek noise, but she didn't look away when she said it.

Sally planted her feet wide and pointed at herself with both thumbs, her short blonde hair ruffling in the mountain breeze.

"Pick me. I'm fast, I'm strong, I grew up hauling hay bales and splitting firewood for my grandpa's cabin, and I will carry more wood than any two people combined. I'm not being dramatic—I'm being statistical."

Her grin was bright and competitive, her pale green eyes snapping with the same sharpness you'd seen in someone who genuinely loved proving herself.

The other women in the group had already started pairing off without drama—Adam and Wendell drifted together with the passive ease of men who were fine either way, Ethan and Joaquin lingered near the gear. But all six of the women who wanted to go with you were still standing in a loose semicircle, waiting.

Adrienne's hands were in her pockets. Jayda's arms were folded. Ruth was biting her lower lip. Kelly hadn't moved. Winona's fingers were laced together in front of her. Sally was practically vibrating.

Six women. One ridge trail. And they were all looking at you like the answer mattered more than firewood ever could.

The wind moved through the pines, carrying the smell of Sajad's onions and garlic and something that might have been cumin, and somewhere behind you a Clark's nutcracker called twice from a dead snag, and nobody moved, and nobody spoke, and the moment held.

The fire had burned down to a low bed of coals by the time the sky started to shift, the last bruised purple light clinging to the western ridgeline like it was reluctant to leave. Dinner had been good—Sajad's campfire rice with roasted vegetables, eaten from tin plates balanced on knees around the ring—and the conversation had been loose and easy, full of the particular kind of talk that happens when people have been outside all day and their bodies are pleasantly tired and their guard is lowered by fatigue and altitude and the smell of pine smoke.

But now the food was done. The dishes had been rinsed in the creek. The bear canisters were sealed and hung. And the sky was doing something that made conversation feel inadequate.

The Milky Way was coming out.

It started as a faint smudge above the eastern ridge, a watercolor wash of pale light that could have been mistaken for a thin cloud layer if you didn't know what you were looking at. But as the last of the sunset drained from the horizon, the smear sharpened and resolved into something staggering—a river of light arcing overhead from one mountain shoulder to the other, dense with stars so numerous they looked like spilled salt on black velvet.

You'd seen it a hundred times, maybe more. You'd guided groups through every season the Sierras offered, and the night sky never stopped being extraordinary. But you never got tired of watching other people see it for what felt like the first time.

"Whoa," Ruth breathed from somewhere behind you, her voice stripped of everything except wonder.

You suggested the field. A broad, flat meadow maybe two hundred yards from camp, where the tree line fell away and the sky opened up completely—unobstructed horizon in every direction, the grass short and soft from a summer of grazing elk, the ground still warm from the day's sun. It was the kind of place that made you feel like you were lying at the bottom of a cathedral.

"Go find your own spot," you told them, spreading your arms toward the meadow. "Give yourself space. Thirty feet apart at least. Lie down and just—look up. Let your eyes adjust. Don't talk for a few minutes. Let the sky come to you."

They drifted out into the field like sleepwalkers, silhouettes against the stars, each one pulling away from the others as they found their own square of grass and lowered themselves down.

Sajad had stayed at camp—he was the type who preferred the fire to the sky, content to sit in his chair with his phone on airplane mode and a warm mug of something. Adam followed him after a moment, claiming his back was tight from the truck ride. Wendell went too, mumbling about wanting to check something in the tent. Joaquin lingered at the edge of the meadow for a moment, then retreated to camp as well, pulling his jacket tighter. Ethan stood at the tree line for a while, hands in his pockets, then quietly turned and walked back toward the tents without explanation, leaving Winona alone in the grass with her face tilted up and her fingers pressed flat against the earth on either side of her body.

The men, one by one, had filtered away. Whether by instinct or disinterest or simple fatigue, they had ceded the field.

Only the six women remained.

And you.

You walked the perimeter slowly, boots whispering through dry grass, making sure everyone was accounted for, making sure no one had wandered too far or gotten disoriented in the dark. It was second nature—guide instinct, the habit of always knowing where your people were. But tonight the habit served a different purpose, because as you moved through the meadow, you could see every single one of them, laid out like stars in their own right across the dark expanse of grass.

They could not see each other. That was the thing. The distance and the darkness and the way the terrain dipped slightly between them meant each woman was essentially alone—a private island of grass and starlight and breath. They had no idea who was nearest to them. They had no idea who you were looking at.

But you could see all of them.

Adrienne was lying perfectly still about forty yards northeast of camp, her arms at her sides, her short black hair fanned against the ground, her gray-green eyes open and fixed upward with the same steady, absorbing intensity she brought to everything. She looked like she was memorizing the sky. Her chest rose and fell slowly, and one hand was resting on her stomach, fingers slightly curled, and she had not moved in several minutes. She looked peaceful. She looked patient. She looked like she was waiting for something she would never ask for out loud.

Jayda was farther out, nearly at the edge of the meadow where the grass met a scatter of granite. She was lying on her side, propped on one elbow at first, but eventually she lowered herself fully, her long braid coiled beside her like a sleeping snake. Her eyes were open too—dark, heavy-lidded, reflecting starlight—and her expression was unreadable, the way it always was when she was thinking deeply, when the mystery-writer part of her brain was turning the night into something with structure and meaning. Her lips were slightly parted. She looked beautiful and alone and entirely unaware that you were watching.

Ruth was closer to the center of the field, curled slightly on her side with her knees drawn up and her pink hair splayed against the grass like a watercolor stain. She had one hand tucked under her cheek, and her eyes were half-closed, not with sleepiness but with something tender—as if the sky was too much to take in all at once and she was letting it in slowly, in pieces, the way she probably did with anything that mattered. Her breathing was soft and even, and every few moments her lips curved into a small, involuntary smile that had no audience and needed none.

Kelly had chosen a spot with the casual precision of someone who always landed exactly where she wanted to. She was lying flat on her back with her knees up and her vivid red hair pooled around her head like a halo, one arm thrown over her eyes in a posture that suggested she was less stargazing and more luxuriating. But after a while she moved her arm, and her pale green eyes opened to the sky, and something shifted in her face—the lazy amusement gave way to something rawer, something unguarded, and she lay very still for a long time with her lips pressed together like she was trying not to feel something she was definitely feeling.

Winona had barely moved since she lay down. She was on her back with her arms spread wide, her dark hair a messy river around her head, her large dark eyes enormous and glassy with reflected starlight. She looked like a painting—soft, luminous, slightly unreal. Her breathing was shallow, almost reverent, and her fingers were gently opening and closing against the grass as if she were trying to hold onto something invisible. She looked like the sky was making her emotional and she was letting it. She looked like someone who had been waiting her whole life to feel this small and this seen at the same time.

Sally had claimed a spot nearest the camp, lying on her back with her legs crossed at the ankle and her short blonde hair ruffled by the faint breeze. She had one arm behind her head and her pale green eyes were wide open, darting from constellation to constellation with the restless, hungry curiosity of someone who wanted to know every name, every story, every myth attached to every point of light. Her lips were moving—she was whispering the names to herself, or maybe narrating, or maybe just talking because the silence was too full to sit in quietly. She looked sharp and soft at once, tough and awed, and when a meteor streaked across the northern sky she let out a small, delighted gasp that she immediately tried to suppress, pressing her lips together and grinning up at the dark like a kid who'd gotten away with something.

Six women. Six separate patches of grass and starlight and breath. Six small, private worlds, each one unaware of the others, each one fully visible to you.

You stood at the edge of the meadow with the Milky Way pouring overhead and the creek murmuring behind you and the coals glowing amber at camp and the mountain air sharp and cold and perfect against your skin.

The grass was soft. The night was enormous. Every woman in that field had chosen her spot, and every woman in that field was alone, and every woman in that field would welcome you if you walked toward her.

The only question was which direction your boots would take you.

The lake revealed itself gradually, the way the best places in the Sierras always do—not all at once, but in stages, as if the mountains wanted to make sure you'd earned it. First came the smell of still water and alpine granite, sharp and clean after three days of trail dust. Then the sound changed, the creek they'd been following widening and slowing, losing its voice until it became something glassy and quiet. Then the trees thinned, and the canopy opened, and the trail bent around a shoulder of exposed rock, and there it was.

Cynthia Lake.

It sat in a granite bowl roughly two miles long and half a mile wide, ringed by lodgepole and whitebark pine, its surface so still it looked like someone had poured mercury into the landscape. The water was the color of deep teal where it caught the sky and almost black where it reflected the treeline, and on the far shore a cascade tumbled down a rock face in a thin white thread, feeding the lake with snowmelt that had traveled through miles of underground channels before surfacing here, clean and cold enough to ache.

Nestled against the near shore, tucked into a natural alcove of boulders and old-growth pines, sat the cabin.

It wasn't much—a single-room structure of hand-hewn logs with a corrugated metal roof, a stone chimney, a covered porch, and a padlocked door that you opened with a key you'd carried on a cord around your neck for the last forty-eight hours. The Forest Service maintained it minimally, stocking it with emergency supplies, a woodstove, a rough-hewn table, and a loft with sleeping platforms. It smelled like pitch and cold stone and the particular kind of dust that accumulates in places people visit but don't live.

But the real treasure was on the shore.

Four kayaks, pulled well above the waterline and overturned on a flat stretch of gravel, their hulls scratched and faded by years of use. Single-seaters, sit-on-top models, stable enough for beginners but responsive enough to be fun. They were part of the cabin's cache—left behind by rangers and volunteer groups, maintained by nobody, available to anyone who could find them.

The women saw the kayaks before they saw anything else.

"Oh my God," Sally said, dropping her pack on the cabin porch with a heavy thud and pointing at the shoreline with both hands. "Are those—are those kayaks? On an alpine lake? In the middle of nowhere?"

Her pale green eyes were enormous, her short blonde hair wind-tossed and wild after two days on the trail, and she looked like someone who had just been told Christmas was real and also today.

"Those are definitely kayaks," Adrienne confirmed, already walking toward the shore, her gray-green eyes scanning the hulls with the practiced assessment of someone who had spent time on Arizona lakes. "Sit-on-tops. Stable hull design. These are good for flatwater."

Jayda followed without being asked, her platinum braid swinging against her back, her heavy-lidded eyes tracking the distance to the far shore with the automatic calculation of someone who had paddled glacial lakes in the Canadian Rockies.

"Wind's dropping," she murmured, glancing at the ripple pattern near the center of the lake. "Should be glass calm by evening. Good conditions for beginners."

Ruth stood at the edge of the porch, her pink hair catching the alpine light, her brown eyes wide and uncertain.

"I've never been in a kayak," she admitted, her voice carrying the particular tone of someone who wanted to but was afraid of looking foolish. "Is it hard? I mean—I have good balance, from archery, but the water is—"

"Freezing," Kelly supplied helpfully, having already opened the cabin door and discovered the woodstove. "Alpine lake water is always freezing. That's part of the charm. You suffer beautifully and then you have a story."

She said it with her usual dreamy irreverence, but her pale green eyes kept drifting to the kayaks and then to you, and there was something in the set of her mouth—a lazy, deliberate interest that had nothing to do with paddling technique.

Winona had walked to the water's edge without saying anything, her dark hair loose around her soft face, her large eyes reflecting the lake's surface like a mirror. She crouched down and touched the water with her fingertips, then pulled her hand back quickly, gasping softly.

"Cold," she whispered, smiling despite herself. "But so pretty. It's like glass."

She looked back at you, then at the kayaks, then back at the water, and the wanting in her expression was not subtle.

You gave them an hour to set up camp inside the cabin, to eat, to drink water, to let their bodies recover from the pack in. But nobody rested. Not really. Every few minutes someone would walk to the porch and look at the kayaks. Someone would ask how deep the lake was. Someone would ask if there were fish. Someone would ask—casually, carefully, as if the question didn't matter—whether you'd be teaching them.

And then, finally, when the afternoon light had gone golden and the lake had turned to silk, you walked down to the shore and righted the first kayak, and they materialized around you like they'd been waiting on a timer.

"I want to go first," Sally said, arriving at your elbow with the eager certainty of someone who had been pacing inside the cabin for forty minutes. "I'm a fast learner and I won't be scared of the water. Plus I can paddle hard—I've got good arm strength. Farm girl. Hay bales. You know."

"Technically I should go first," Adrienne said, her tone calm and reasonable, standing on your other side with her arms crossed. "I have actual lake experience. I can demonstrate proper form for the others so you don't have to repeat yourself six times."

Jayda was already rolling up her sleeves, her freckled forearms flexing subtly as she examined the paddle nearest to you. "I'll go whenever you want. I've paddled before—Moraine Lake, Lake Minnewanka. I won't need much instruction on grip or stroke. Just tell me where to go."

Ruth appeared at the waterline, her pink hair bright against the dark water behind her, her expression caught between excitement and nervousness.

"Could you teach me first? Like—personally? I learn better one-on-one. In archery, the best instruction I ever got was when a coach stood right next to me and adjusted my form by hand. I just—I focus better that way."

Her cheeks were pink, and she was looking at you with the earnest, slightly flustered energy of someone who had just said something that sounded reasonable in her head but felt very different out loud.

Kelly had lowered herself onto a flat boulder near the kayaks, legs crossed, chin in her hand, watching the negotiations with the serene amusement of a woman who had decided to wait for the chaos to resolve itself.

"I'll go last," she said, and everyone looked at her, surprised. "That way you'll be tired and won't try to correct my technique. I paddle how I paddle. It's a whole philosophy."

She winked at you—a slow, deliberate motion—and then looked back at the lake as if the conversation was over.

Winona stood slightly apart from the others, her fingers clasped in front of her, her dark eyes moving between you and the kayaks with quiet, barely contained longing.

"I don't want to be a bother," she said softly. "But if there's a turn—I'd really love to go out on the water. With you. If you have time. It's okay if you don't."

She said it like she was already preparing to be graceful about rejection, and the way she looked at you—hopeful and hesitant and so entirely sincere—made the lake seem warmer than it was.

The kayaks sat on the gravel, waiting. The lake stretched out beyond them, impossibly still, impossibly blue, reflecting six women and one decision and the whole weight of the mountain afternoon.

Four kayaks. Six women who wanted you in the seat beside them—or in the water beside them—or at least close enough to reach.

The sun was dropping. The light was perfect. And every single one of them was watching you pick up a paddle.

It had started at breakfast.

Kelly was the one who made it look accidental—she always was the best at performing carelessness. She'd been stirring a pot of camp oats over the fire ring when she leaned over to Adrienne and murmured, in a voice so casual it could have been about weather, that she'd found something interesting on her morning walk. A cluster of wild valerian growing near the creek bend, roots thick and pungent, the kind that grew in moist alpine soil and smelled like old socks and earth and—if you knew what to do with it—could turn a grown man's eyelids into concrete curtains within twenty minutes.

Adrienne had barely looked up from her coffee. "How much."

"Enough," Kelly said.

Jayda was the one who found the second plant. She'd identified it on a ridge scramble the previous afternoon—California poppy, the wild variety, not enough to harm but enough to deepen the sleep of someone already predisposed to drowsiness. She'd harvested a handful of the dried pods without comment, stored them in a side pocket of her pack, and mentioned it to Ruth during a water-fetching run with the quiet specificity of a woman who had been reading about natural sedatives in mystery novels for years and had always wondered.

Ruth was the one who worried. She stood near the creek with her arms wrapped around herself, her pink hair damp from mist, her brown eyes troubled.

"This feels wrong," she said. "I know we all agreed. I know why we're doing it. But what if something—"

"Nothing will happen," Jayda said, her voice low and steady. "Valerian is sold in every health food store in North America. Poppy tea is mild. They'll sleep hard and wake up fine and think they were just tired from the trail. I've read about this. Extensively."

"That's not reassuring coming from a woman who writes murder mysteries."

"It should be. I know the difference between fiction and dosing."

Sally was the one who mixed it. She'd volunteered with the breezy confidence of someone who had made herbal remedies with her grandmother in rural Illinois and didn't see this as fundamentally different from the chamomile tinctures she'd helped bottle as a kid.

"My grandma used valerian for my grandpa's snoring," she said, crushing the roots with a flat stone on a piece of bark, her short blonde hair falling across her eyes. "He slept like a log and woke up asking for biscuits. This is basically the same thing. Just—more of it. And combined. And purposeful."

Winona was the one who delivered it. She was the least suspicious of all of them—the soft one, the quiet one, the one nobody ever watched for deception. She carried four mugs of "herbal trail tea" to the men where they sat around the afternoon fire, and she smiled at each of them with her large dark eyes and gentle voice and said, "Kelly made this. It's supposed to help with muscle soreness."

Ethan took his without question. Joaquin drank half and set it down. Adam finished his entirely. Sajad—who had been Kelly's primary concern—accepted his mug from Winona with a grateful nod and drank it in three long swallows because Kelly had specifically instructed Winona to tell him it was her special recipe and she'd be offended if he didn't finish it.

Within thirty minutes, Adam was yawning. Within forty-five, Joaquin had dozed off against a log. Ethan was blinking slowly, his head bobbing, mumbling something about being more tired than he expected. Sajad was the last to go—he kept trying to finish a sentence about the next day's route, and the words kept coming out wrong, and finally his chin dropped to his chest and the mug rolled out of his hand and Kelly caught it before it hit the ground.

The men slept. Hard. Deep. The heavy, drugged sleep of people who had been gently and carefully put down by six women who had been planning this for two days.

The camp went quiet.

And the women looked at each other across the firelight with expressions that ranged from Kelly's satisfied smirk to Ruth's guilty bite of her lower lip to Sally's wide-eyed exhale to Adrienne's steady, unreadable composure to Jayda's cool nod to Winona's trembling hands.

Nobody said what they were all thinking. Not yet.

Instead, they went about their business. Kelly cleaned the cookware with unusual thoroughness. Adrienne checked the bear hang. Jayda sat on the porch and pretended to read. Ruth paced near the water. Sally reorganized her pack for the third time. Winona sat on her sleeping bag and stared at the wall of the cabin and pressed her palms flat against her knees to stop them from shaking.

The hours passed. The men snored in a dissonant chorus from the loft above the cabin's main room. The fire burned low. The lake reflected stars.

And then, sometime after midnight, you walked toward the tent.

It was your tent—the one you always pitched slightly apart from the group, the guide's distance, close enough to respond to emergencies but far enough to give everyone their privacy. You'd been doing a perimeter check, the way you always did, walking the tree line with your headlamp off, letting your eyes adjust, listening for animal movement and weather changes and the particular kind of silence that meant everything was fine. Your boots were quiet on the needle floor. Your jacket was unzipped. You were thinking about tomorrow's route.

You were not thinking about six women standing in a loose cluster outside your tent in the dark.

But there they were.

Adrienne was closest, leaning against a pine trunk with her arms crossed, her gray-green eyes catching starlight, her expression calm and certain in the way of a woman who had made a decision and was simply waiting for the logistics to catch up. She wore a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a thin tank top, and her short black hair was mussed from restless waiting.

Kelly was beside her, leaning against the same tree but facing the other direction, her vivid red hair loose around her shoulders, her pale green eyes half-lidded and heavy with something that looked less like sleepiness and more like anticipation. She had her hands in the pockets of a oversized sweater that kept slipping off one shoulder, and she was chewing her lower lip in a way that was entirely unlike her usual lazy composure.

Jayda stood a few paces back, her braid undone for once, her platinum hair falling in a straight sheet against her brown skin, her dark eyes sharp and unreadable and focused on you with the particular intensity of a woman who had been composing this scene in her head for days and was now watching it become real.

Ruth was fidgeting with the hem of her flannel, her pink hair glowing faintly in the ambient starlight, her cheeks flushed, her brown eyes wide and bright and nervous and wanting and guilty and excited all at once. She kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and her lips were parted slightly, and she looked like she might cry or laugh or both.

Winona stood at the very back, almost hidden behind Sally, her dark hair tangled around her soft face, her large eyes enormous and glassy, her hands clasped together at her chest like she was holding something precious and fragile and slightly illegal. She was trembling. Not from cold.

Sally was the one who stepped forward. She always was—the one who moved first, who spoke first, who refused to let a moment pass without grabbing it with both hands. Her short blonde hair was wild, her pale green eyes burning with the particular ferocity of a woman from rural Illinois who had spent her whole life dreaming about bigger landscapes and had finally found one.

She stopped three feet from you. Close enough to touch. Far enough to be chosen.

"The men are asleep," she said. Her voice was steady. Her chin was up. Her hands were shaking slightly at her sides. "They'll be asleep for hours. Kelly and Jayda made sure. Winona delivered it. Ruth mixed it. I—I helped. We all helped."

She swallowed.

"We're done pretending," she said. "Every single one of us has been thinking about you since the parking lot. Since before the parking lot. Since the emails. Since we signed up for this trip. And we—we talked about it. All of us. Tonight. While the men were snoring. And nobody argued. Nobody hesitated. We all want the same thing."

She took one more step. Close enough now that you could see the starlight reflected in her eyes, the faint freckles across her nose, the rapid pulse in her throat.

"We want you," she said. "Not coy. Not subtle. Not 'maybe if the moment is right.' We want you. Out here. In the wild. Under the stars. In your tent. On the ground. Wherever. However. All of us. Together or one at a time or however you want it."

Behind her, Adrienne unfolded her arms. Kelly stopped chewing her lip. Jayda's eyes darkened. Ruth pressed her hand to her own chest. Winona made a small, involuntary sound that was not quite a word.

The lake was black glass behind them. The stars were absurd above them. The mountains were silent witnesses. And six women who had spent their entire lives being disciplined, careful, restrained, and good were standing in the dark outside your tent, asking you with everything they had to let them be something else entirely.

Sally's voice dropped to barely above a whisper.

"Please."

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