Love Fool (One Night Only Season 2: Hunter's Story)

Chapter One

I'm convinced I did something unforgivable in another life.

There's no crime I've committed in my current seventeen years of existence as Hunter Gray, the straight-A student and mostly well-behaved son and brother, that could explain why I'm stuck eating breakfast with two celebrity-obsessed fourteen-year-old girls at the moment scandal has struck their favorite pop stars. Never mind that I could be at our house in town right now rather than here at the lake, far away from this conversation and other things I'd like to avoid, but my parents refused to let me stay home. It's karmic punishment for something.

"Can you believe what Bowie posted?" Paisley, my sister, asks. She passes her phone across the table to Brooke, her best friend and fellow aspiring celebrity stalker.

Brooke takes the phone and scans what's on the screen. She gawks as she twirls a strand of her pastel-blue hair around her finger. The action reminds me of her older sister, Trinity, which sends my already dark mood off a cliff. Trin is the last person I want to be reminded of.

"Brutal," Brooke says. "Cayden had better drop-kick him across the continent for that. I know I would."

"I don't understand why he's so mad about her dropping out of their tour," Paisley huffs. "What did he expect after her concert in L.A.? She saw people die."

I shovel a spoonful of cereal in my mouth so I don't groan at this topic coming up again. It's been three straight weeks of Paisley's chatter about an explosion at a concert that was across the border, in the United States, and over three-thousand kilometers away from where we live in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. There's no question that Paisley and I are related, with both of us having the same golden-brown waves of hair, dark amber eyes, and other physical resemblances, but our personality differences sometimes make me wonder if one of us was dropped here from another planet.

"What kind of boyfriend doesn't get that?" Brooke sounds furious. "He should be consoling her, and not rage-posting all over the place."

"Do you think they broke up?"

"Not Cayden and Bowie!" I clutch my chest. "The world will end if they aren't together. You'll have to talk about something else, like people you know in real life."

"Mom!" Paisley complains.

"Hunter." Mom's tone of voice tells me it's her first and last warning.

I slump over in my seat. "I know. Save it for when you aren't around to hear it or take it outside."

"You got it," she replies.

I wait for the lecture about how I should look out for Paisley as her older brother, instead of finding new ways to antagonize her, but Mom spares me this time. She's probably as tired as I am of hearing about Cayden Indigo and Bowie Nelson, the two singers it seems everyone my sister's age is obsessed with. I knew Mom was reaching her limit when she nixed Paisley's request to listen to their music on the drive out here and fired up her go-to playlist of nineties hits, in spite of our protests that the nineties songs are equally overplayed.

"Is Trin coming to the bonfire tonight?" Paisley asks. Her question is directed at Brooke, but she shoots a pointed look at me. It's payback for my Cayden-and-Bowie sarcasm. Shots fired and returned.

"My parents are, but I think she said she has other plans."

Brooke glances at me. She doesn't have to say what Trinity's other plans are, since the uncomfortable look on her face just confirmed they involve Landon McKay, my former best friend and Trinity's present boyfriend. Landon and Trin used to be fixtures at my family's house and here at our camp, but that was then and this awkward conversation is now. Cheaters and backstabbers aren't welcome here.