#cammie and zach

[cammie-morgan-goode]

In OSOT, when cam comes back, zach says it's different, and he seem a bit distance quite a while, with him & bex always together. Do you think he's also mad at cam that's why? Or something else?

Oh my poor Zachy boy…

Zach’s mad. He’s furious with Cam. He’s pissed at her.

But not for the reasons we think.

Zach is the one who gave Cammie the idea of running away. He said so in OGSY. He told Cam that they should run. That they would keep each other safe. And Cam told him no. Cammie told him that that was not an option.

And what does she do? She leaves without him and she runs.

Zach doesn’t know where she is. She didn’t leave a note for anyone, she didn’t say goodbye, she’s just gone.

Zach has nobody. He can’t go home. He can’t go to his mom. He can’t go back to school. He doesn’t know if Cammie is even alive until they find her in Switzerland. And during that time he has Bex. And Bex is the only constant in his life that summer. She is the only one keeping his feet on the ground and keeping him from doing something stupid. Because if he can’t find Cammie, what does he have left? Joe’s in a coma for goodness sake.

And then to make matters worse, Cam comes back and she’s different. She can’t remember anything from that summer. He doesn’t even want to think about what she could’ve endured. He doesn’t want to process that. Between the sessions with Dr. Steve, the weapons incident, the memory loss, the fact that the Circle is still out there…

He tried to find Cam and he failed.

Things are different between them and while Cam is trying to process that and her missing summer, Zach is trying to process the fact that anything could have happened to Cammie and there was nothing he could do to stop that.

[they-didnt-last]

we never got a gallagher girls tv adaptation because they knew the zammie edits would be too powerful

[incorrectgallaghergirlsquotes]

Assigning each Gallagher Girls character a Taylor Swift era:

(assuming I haven’t done this already)

Taylor Swift— Matthew Morgan

Fearless— Josh Abrams

Speak Now— Macey McHenry

RED— Rachel Morgan

1989— Abigail Cameron

reputation— Cammie Morgan

Lover— Liz Sutton

Folklore— Edward Townsend

Evermore— Zachary Goode

Midnights— Bex Baxter

TTPD— Joe Solomon

[gildengirl]

“I wanted a thousand different things as we stood there, but most of all, I wanted the girl who had been beside me in Boston to turn and realize that I was beside her now. ... “This feels like a safe house.” She finally turned to look at me. “Doesn't it feel safe, Cam?” “Yeah, Macey,” I said softly. “It does.”

- Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

[notanothergallaghergirlsblog]

Cammie: What did you guys get in your yearbook? Bex: 'Prettiest Smile' Liz: 'Nicest Personality' Macey: 'Most likely to start a bar fight' Zach: 'Least likely to start a bar fight, but most likely to win one'

[g-girlshavingfun]

December Prompts

17) An attic - Cammie x Zach

Zach and Cammie are spending the Christmas after the events of UWS at her Grandparent’s ranch in Nebraska with the rest of her family, and they manage to find a moment of peace away from the adults together. (3,836)

———————————————————————

“We’re not talking about Dubai unless you want to talk about how I saved the day again.”

“Was that before or after you nearly got us caught in the first place?”

“It was certainly after you fucked up your Arabic in front of the Prime Minister, I can tell you that much.”

Zach was losing his mind.

When Cammie had asked him if he wanted to join her and her family at her grandparent’s ranch over Christmas, assuming they weren’t distributed on assignments of course, he had already been nervous. He was a dangerous looking kid who attended a school for troubled boys as far as civilians were concerned, so adults didn’t tend to like him on first meeting. Even the spies in his girlfriend’s family tended to take some time to warm to him, to trust him, to like him, although in fairness those adults knew who his mother was. With only a week away from work, he had worried that Cammie’s grandparents would have him labelled as a troublemaker from the get-go and he wouldn’t have time to persuade them otherwise. Cammie had tried to ease his fears. Had told him that her grandpa would love him as long as he helped out on the ranch, that her grandma would spend the entire week trying to force feed him, that they were kind and loving and very accepting. In the end, it was only the promise that Joe was coming as well, was being dragged to see them for the first time since their son’s funeral, no longer just their son’s best friend but now their daughter-in-law’s new husband, that convinced him to come.

Of course, Zach hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that Townsend would be coming as well.

He should have. Obviously. Him and Abby seemed to be attached at the hip after making up after their most recent fight, and a foot chase with some stray Circle lackeys had left his bad knee in a brace, so it wasn’t a surprise that he had been dragged along to what was apparently her first visit to the ranch since before Matthew Morgan’s first funeral.

It wasn’t all bad. Between Grandma Morgan fawning over the three girls, over college classes and wedding pictures and Abby Darling what happened to your shoulder, and Grandpa Morgan unknowingly pitting the two men against one another when he took them both out into the fields, Cammie’s grandparents didn’t have as much time to interrogate him about his childhood and his family and his plans for the future. In fact, very few invasive questions had been asked at all, and none had been asked about his parents. Someone, either Cammie or Mrs Morgan, had obviously pre-warned the couple about the complicated relationship between Townsend and Zach, as neither of them gave a second thought to their physical similarities or the lingering awkwardness or the way Abby and Cammie kept trying to push them to talk to one another.

That was the problem. The awkwardness.

Even though Townsend had been making painful efforts with him, explaining himself and his relationship with Catherine when she had revealed the truth, stiffly asking questions about his likes and interests in the months after they had found out, going out of his way to look out for him and Cammie both when they started at Langley, the entire situation was still awkward. He didn’t ask for a father, had stopped asking for one a long time ago, and clearly Townsend hadn’t been looking for a son. Plus there was the Cammie/Abby issue making everything slightly more complicated. And the Joe issue. And the Catherine issue. And the… well there were just a lot of issues.

Of course, when Townsend wasn’t bumbling through another uncomfortable attempt at bonding with him, or endearing himself to Grandma Morgan by bonding with Cammie, or suffering through a joint interrogation by Grandpa Morgan and Mrs Morgan, he was doing what he did best. Bickering with Abby.

“My Arabic was flawless-”

“So flawless he tipped off the presidential guard?”

“There was no indication that that was him Abigail, besides-”

Zach was losing his mind.

From across the room, he managed to catch Mrs Morgan’s gaze from where she leaned against her dozing husband, the exasperated glare on her face betrayed by the amusement twinkling in her eyes. She rolled them at him anyway, drawing a small quirk of lips out of him.

“If you seriously suggest that the guards made us because of my table etiquette again, I’m gonna lose it.”

“This is you not losing it?”

It was just the five of them in the room, Grandma Morgan out at an evening pottery class while her husband had gone across the road to bring their neighbours some of their chicken’s eggs. Cammie had disappeared some some ago, which would’ve made him panic had both entrances to the ranch house not been within his eyeline, had the open plan layout not given them visuals on all four exterior angles of the building, had she not promised to stay inside. That left him with the man who was his father, seated uncomfortably on the couch with his girlfriend’s feet in his lap, said girlfriend who was also his own girlfriend’s aunt, and his girlfriend’s mother and stepfather. Talk about awkward.

“You know what Ed? At least I can speak Romanian without my accent slipping through.”

And of course they wouldn’t stop arguing.

“That was one time, and it was years ago!”

Zach was losing his mind.

Thankfully, Mrs Morgan seemed to take pity on him, gesturing to the stairs with her eyes and giving him a slight nod when he raised his eyebrows in question. Truthfully he had wanted to track Cammie down for the past 20 minutes, but he felt a bit bad leaving Mrs Morgan alone with the bickering pair, Joe being no help having fallen asleep over an hour ago. Grateful for the permitted reprieve, he slipped out of his own chair and made his way up the carpeted steps, smirking to himself when he heard the woman who granted it to him begin to tease her sister about an assignment in Bahrain where her own cover momentarily slipped. Townsend had just laughed in response, the two of them seemingly working together to wind Abby up when Zach reached the top of the stairs, the noise from below fading into the background.

Once at the top of the stairs he took a cursory look around, assessed the empty bathroom and the guest room opposite, his room, devoid of life. At one end of the end of the hallway, the room shared by Cammie’s grandparents looked undisturbed, the door still propped ajar by Grandpa Morgan’s jacket caught in the hinges as it was this morning, and the at other end, the room currently shared by Townsend and Abby looked similarly untouched. If he stood on his tiptoes, Zach could just make out the gleam of a dime propped against the top of the door, positioned to fall on the metal handle and make a clang Zach didn’t doubt any agent in the vicinity would react to should someone other than the intended couple open the door. Adjacent to their room, the room Zach was sure used to belong to Mr Morgan by the speed at which Mrs Morgan relinquished it to her sister, her and Joe opting to stay in the den downstairs instead, was Cammie’s. Though the door was wide open, Zach kept his distance, certain he’d face the wrath of someone in this house if he was caught in her bedroom, though he wasn’t entirely sure who would be the most mad. She wasn’t in there anyway. It was too quiet.

That left the attic.

Zach looked up, eyeing the overhead hatch and assessing its placement. It did look slightly misaligned compared to earlier this morning. Taking the access pole, he slowly and quietly slid the hatch open, pulling down the contained ladder and climbing up, sealing up the entrance behind him as he crept into the dim space.

There she was.

Dirty blonde hair still pulled back in the braid Abby had worked on this morning, dust smearing her her prominent cheekbones, rosy cheeks gleaming at him, she seemed to glow in the dim yellow light of the attic. Her feet were wrapped up in the fluffiest socks Zach had ever seen, her torso adorned with one of her father’s checkered shirts layered over one of her stepfather’s sweatshirts. She sat curled up in the corner against a stack of cardboard boxes, the shadows cast by the towers of storage around her obscuring her features from him, a pile of albums to her left and an open book propped up on her lap. Disturbed by his entrance, she looked up towards him as he crawled past old TVs and suitcases to get to her, shooting him a warm smile as he perched himself at her side.

“Ah, you found me.”

He’ll always find her. He’ll never stop looking.

But he didn’t want to bring down the pleasant mood, to chill the soft warmth glowing in his chest, so he just smirked at her. “You’re getting sloppy Gallagher Girl.” She shot him a grin and an eye roll for that, eyes lighting up slightly at the fond nickname. Something thick built up in his throat, in his lungs, in his heart. Something that might be love.

No. It was definitely love.

“Are they still fighting?”

“Like an uptight cat and a stubborn dog.”

“Cats and dogs have nothing on those two.” Chuckling as she knocked her shoulder into his, he wrapped an arm around her and drew them close together, sighing in contentment as she laid her head on his shoulder. “Sorry I disappeared.”

The words were heavier than they needed to be. Both of them silently acknowledging that she had a history of disappearing, of scaring him, of scaring them all. The memories of that summer clogged in his throat, choking him, suffocating him. Pushing through it, he pressed a kiss to her forehead in forgiveness, reaching out for the book, a photo album, sat in her lap.

“Your parents?” She hummed in confirmation and nodded against his shoulder, angling the album towards him so he could get a better look.

An unknown version of Mrs Morgan looked back at him from the photo album, dark hair framing a younger face, expression light with joy and love and youth. Adorned in a white silken dress, she didn’t look that different to the woman Zach remembered from the summer just passed, though the man standing beside her was markedly so. Joe was tall, not quite as tall as Townsend but enough that he was nearly a full head taller than his wife. On the other hand, Mr and Mrs Morgan stood at roughly the same height in these pictures, though Zach was sure she was wearing heels. His hair was lighter than Joe’s, his skin more tanned, his body slimmer where Joe’s was lean. Rather than a subtle smirk, his face was plastered with a wide, crooked grin, eye’s alight with warmth where Joe’s were deep and contemplative. The biggest similarity between the two was how they looked at the woman pictured next to them, loving and trusting and astonished. Zach wondered if he looked that lovestruck looking at that woman’s daughter.

Cammie’s voice broke him out of his musings. “All of Grandma’s wedding questions got me thinking about Mom and Dad’s. Thought I’d hunt down the photo albums while Luke and Lorelai get into it downstairs.”

“Who?”

She blinked up at him. “You’ve never watched- Never mind, we’ll add it to the list.”

Once the Circle had been taken down, the couple could finally spend some time together outside of the Academy without looking over their shoulders every five minutes, without one of them disappearing in a mysterious puff of smoke, without fearing that Zach’s mother could capture or kill them any moment. In doing so, Cammie discovered that his childhood wasn’t just devoid of a father, a normal mother-son relationship, friends his own age, but he also didn’t get the opportunity to watch much TV, Catherine usually picking them up and moving them across the world before they could think to set up an aerial. Every time Zach didn’t catch a reference one of the girls, usually Macey, made, Cammie made a note of the relevant context he was missing and tried to set aside time for the two of them to watch it together.

Last weekend they had watched Mean Girls.

Zach turned to watch his girlfriend’s face as she continued flicking through the album. How her eyes got misty at every picture of her parents, how her smile stretched out her face when she found pictures with Joe lurking in the background, how her laugh brought light the the otherwise gloomy attic when she turned the page to find a picture of her aunt jumping on her father’s back. At a picture of Mr Morgan with his parents, she hesitated, her finger running across her grandparent’s faces, the grief and pain of the last few years absent in the memories of their younger selves.

“At dad’s funeral, the first one I mean, Grandma was completely out of it. She hugged me once then stopped acknowledging I was there. Stopped acknowledging anyone. Grandpa kept crying. He was trying not to, was trying to be strong for Grandma and I, Mom too, but he just kept crying. They lost their child…” Her words failed her, trailing off into the silence and darkness surrounding them. Biting her lip, she appeared deep in thought, eyes a million miles away.

It only took a moment for his memories of last summer to come flooding back, Mrs Morgan’s blank expression haunting him. The way her voice cracked around Cammie’s name and she seemed to shake where she stood. The way her feet seemed to carry her in the direction of her daughter’s room before remembering, stalling, stumbling in place. The way he caught her hunched over Joe in the hospital wing, weeping into her knees with his fingers clutched in one hand, the goodbye Cammie left them in the other.

Looking at his girlfriend’s face, it wasn’t hard to tell that her mind had jumped to the same thoughts.

“Your mom hasn’t lost you Cam, you’re fine.”

Shaking her head, she smiled at him, the pain of agonising over whatever distress she caused her mom still present in her eyes. “How do you do that? How do you always know what I’m thinking.”

I don’t.

If he did, he never would’ve left her alone that summer, never would’ve left her to run off without him. If he did, he would’ve been brave enough to ask her out properly long before he actually managed to. If he did, he wouldn’t spend half his time worrying that she finally realised she was too good for him.

Still, it was nice to know that Cammie thought he could read her mind.

Smirking at her, he just pointed to himself with the arm not wrapped around her. “Spy.” Cammie laughed, throwing her head back in glee. He loved her laugh, loved that despite everything she had gone through, everything his own mother put her through, she still found the strength to laugh so freely. In awe of the woman before him, he moved closer towards her, leant his forehead against hers, pressed his lips to hers and whispered softly against them. “I know you Gallagher Girl.”

She smiled, rubbed her nose against his before moving away. Turning the page agin, she traced the image of her parents trapped in a world before she existed. “It’s a wonder spies have kids at all, knowing they could follow in their footsteps, knowing they could lose them like that. Really makes you think…” Her voice trailed off again, eyes staring deep into his.

Suddenly he remembered their conversation in the moment after he learned Townsend was his father. How he told her he didn’t want kids, wouldn’t want to mess them up like his mother did him. He meant it at the time. He thinks he still means it now. He’s only 18, but he can’t imagine ever knowing anything about being a dad, can’t imagine ever having someone to learn it from, can’t imagine ever risking fucking it all up. Still, looking at Cammie now, how beautiful she looked covered in dust and half concealed by darkness, hiding amongst memories that weren’t hers and ruminating on a future that might be, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe one day he might change his mind.

Blinking the thoughts away, he instead shot her a self-deprecating gin, tilted his head into the hand that cupped his cheek. “Reckon my parents would disagree.”

Cammie shook her head at him, ignored the existence of his mother and focussed on the on parent they both kind of liked. “You and Townsend have been getting along!” Thumb soothing up and down his face, she leant forward again and pressed their foreheads together, whispering softly. “He cares about you Zach, really. He’s a good guy.”

Zach just shrugged. “It’s still not the same.”

Sure, Townsend was a decent guy. Zach knew now that he didn’t know Zach was his for the first 18 years of his life, knew that he would’ve done something about it if he had. And he guesses the man cares about him, as much as he seemed to care about anyone that wasn’t Abby at least. But it still wasn’t the same, the man was never going to love him the way Cammie’s parents loved her. Zach was never going to get that.

Looking back down at the photo album, he studied the pictures of her parents again.

“You look a lot like him.” She blinked at him, casting her gaze briefly back to the photo album before looking back at him. Her eyes looked misty again. “Both of them actually, but more him.”

Sniffling, Cammie just shrugged, tone mimicking his self-deprecation from earlier. “Not having as many of the Cameron genes certainly helps the whole Chameleon thing.”

Zach knew she thought of herself as plain, as average, as indistinguishable. Knew she felt unremarkable compared to her mother’s side of the family. He thought it was ridiculous. From the moment he met her he knew she’d be the face he remembered for the rest of time. She was the most stunning person he knew. It amazed him that she couldn’t see that.

Running a finger down her cheek, cupping it in his hand, his other arm moving to wrap around her waist, pulling her body into his, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “You always stick out in a crowd to me Gallagher Girl.”

And he kissed her.

Immediately intoxicated by the taste of her, he groaned into her mouth even as he felt her smile against him. They moved together in rhythm, pushing and pulling at one another in a familiar dance of passion. His hand ran from her face to her hair, dislodging the braid that it sat in and running his fingers through the waves of it, nails scratching against her scalp as her own fingers began tickling across his chest. Breaking apart briefly for air, he smirked at her, closing in again to nibble slightly at her lower lip, the breathy whimper that he was met with making his toes curl. Zach was desperate for her. He was just about to lean her backwards to the floor of the attic, press his body on top of hers so he could feel every inch of her when-

“Cameron Ann Morgan! If you and your boyfriend aren’t down here in 5 minutes I’m going to assume you’re doing something inappropriate in the family home and come up there with the intention of removing his skull from his body.”

They sprung apart at the resounding boom of Abby’s voice coming from directly below them, Cammie giggling silently against his lips as he gaped in mock outrage.

Remove my skull from my body? He mouthed at her.

At least it’s just your skull? She mouthed in return.

Winking at her, he grinned and moved his lips silently again, heart filled with light. I knew I was growing on her.

Mrs Morgan’s voice sounded from even further below, what sounded like another floor separating the two sisters. “Abby I told you to go get them not to threaten them!”

“I only threatened one of them! Besides, I’m doing you a favour Rach, trust me.” Voice switching from defensive and amused as she addressed her sister to firm yet teasing as she yelled up at them, Abby rapped her knuckles against the wall as she continued. “Now quit making eyes at each other and get down here squirt, your mom’s too uptight to be a grandmother before she’s 50!”

“Hey!”

Cammie shook her head at him, giggling as he tried to dejectedly lay his head against her shoulder, tried to hide the flush that crept its way up his face. A matching red hue had taken over her cheeks and her neck as she pushed him off her and made her way to the hatch of the attic, poking her head out to speak to her aunt.

“You realise I currently share a wall with you and Townsend right? Talk about inappropriate.”

“Ew Cam. Seriously?” Zach muttered under his breath. He may not think of the guy as his dad, but he also didn’t need to be thinking of him like that.

“Get down here Kiddo, before your aunt gives Townsend a stroke with all the baby talk.”

Cammie swung her legs out of the attic in response to her mom’s voice, a steadying hand reaching up to help her before she turned back to Zach. “You coming?”

“Be with you in a second.”

Studying him for a moment before nodding in ascent, Cammie left him to it.

In the dark silence that remained, he took a deep breath. All at once, he remembered another attic, darker and colder somehow, where instead of photo albums and memories of a good man, it held only weapons and files and tools and misery. He remembered the loneliness that lived in his veins when that attic sat above him, how there wasn’t a room he walked into where he didn’t feel scared and small. He thought about the people in the house below him. The man who was trying to be his father and the man who taught him how to be a man. The woman who had gone out on a limb to trust him and the woman who had gone out on a limb to keep him safe. He thought about the girl who brought him to life, who erased any trace of loneliness from his blood, any sense of cold from his life.

He smiled.

———————————————————————

Authors note:

A little late but the longest instalment yet! Mostly Zammie, as per @gildengirl and @bryn-not-brynn’s request, but also a healthy dose of Zach ruminating on the weird little family situation he’s found himself in.

[jltonnere]

No matter how many times I read these books the dialogue in books 4 through 6 still sends me absolutely feral.

[letlizsayfuck]

When do you think Cammie and Zach’s first time was? What do you think it was like?

Did I open Pandora’s box by answering a sex question? I feel like I opened Pandora’s box.

I think it happens sometime after Cammie gets settled at Georgetown. For the first time in both of their lives, they’re fully alone and finally feel safe.

It’s everything you can expect in a first time. Awkward, clumsy, sweet. Clothes get stuck and heads are bumped. Laughs are exchanged. Cammie accidentally knees Zach in the stomach and Zach almost knocks Cammie over when he trips over his boxers. Battling terrorists and attending the country’s most rigorous academic institution didn’t exactly prepare Cammie for situations like this.

And despite all his witty innuendos and cool demeanor, Zach is just as inexperienced as Cammie. This becomes painfully evident when he tries to open the condom with his teeth, tearing it in the process. But frantically hunting for a backup condom whilst naked is a bonding ritual every couple must experience and it all works out in the end.

[mus1cjunki3]

Book 6 cammie vs Book 1 cammie

[doodle-do-wop]

How and when do you think Zach fell for Cammie?

How?

With his jelly legs thats how lmao

I'm so sorry I think I'm funny

And I am

But no seriously though? How could you not fall for Cammie? She's sweet and kind, she tries so hard in whatever she sets her mind on. Sometimes it's endearing, other times you just wanna wrap her up in a blanket and pray she doesn't get a concussion somehow.

Cammie's probably got a bunch of little things that just make her Cammie.

Maybe she fidgets with her pens when she's got one in her hand and she's talking and doing that little nervous ramble/babble she does often.

Maybe she's super fidgety (like how Zach mentioned in CMH) and she'll end up shaking the whole table by accident or she'll pat her hands when she's excited or rub them on her jeans when she's nervous, pick at her nails if there's chipping polish.

There's just so much about Cammie Zach could've slowly fallen in love with before he fell for the Morgan/Cameron trap of cutie-with-freckles

When?

Honestly pretty early on I'd say. Zach hit the ground zooming and joined the Cameron Morgan Crush Club that consists of almost every teenager who meets Cammie with a few exceptions.

[depressedwetnapkin]

Catherine: Girl your roots are showing so much and- did you even wash your hair while running away from me? We gotta fix that. STEVE! GET THE DYE AND SCISSORS!

Cammie: Blease just let me leave

[cammie-morgan-goode]

On the deleted scenes, Ally said that instead of Cam seeing Mr. mosckowitz working out, Zach is also an option. But she still wrote Mosckowitz on the deleted scene. Can you fulfill my (& I know most of us, ahem) fantasy of it being Zach??? Thanks!!!

There's something weird about having boys go to your all-girls school. For one, it's an all-girls school which means no boys. For two, it's a whole different thing when said boys are trained better than you are.

Cammie hadn't realized that with the arrival of these boys, a ton of drama would ensue. She felt like she was drowning. And for the first time in her life, she was starting to feel like she just wasn't good enough.

There was a time when she was one of the best in her class. There was a time when people would see her train and think "I aspire to be that".

But now she was being overshadowed.

And for being the Chameleon? She didn't like it at all.

"One of a girl's greatest assets are her feet. If you cannot balance on the balls of your feet and anticipate where your opponent's feet are moving, you will not make it away from a fight." Ms. Hancock tells them, making her way along the mats on the ground. "Pay attention to your partner's feet. Pay attention to their movements. Do they lean on their left foot before they move? Do they suck in a breath before they punch? Do they pay more attention to your feet or your hands? Anything can give away your next move, ladies,"

Cammie stared at Bex across from her, watching her best friend smirk. She'd been sparring with Bex since the sixth grade. She knew that Bex favored her left leg. She knew that Bex's weakness were her knees and her hair. (Which could be anyone's weakness, but Bex made it personal!)

And without hesitation, Cammie's arm shot out, aiming for Bex's head. Bex dodged it easily, leaning onto her right hip. She ducked and swung her leg out, aiming for Cammie's left knee. But, Cammie sidestepped, making Bex fall to the mat.

Ms. Hancock called time and Cammie helped Bex up off the mats. The two girls grabbed their water bottles, drinking from them eagerly. They started following each other out, chattering on and on about nonsense. Cammie didn't even turn as the group of boys entered the P&E barn, faces already red from doing runs outside.

Bex was the one who stopped her though, hand flying out in front of Cammie's chest before she even made it off the mats. Cammie almost yelled at her in protest until she followed Bex's gaze.

The group of boys, some with their shirts off, were already shoving and pushing each other. They were loud and energetic, hyped up with excitement for their workout. Cammie had never seen anything like it.

Her gaze snags on a certain boy with dark hair, separated from the rest. His shirt is slowly getting drenched in sweat as he lags behind. Most would think he's slow and a weak link but, Cammie knew better. And she hated that the boy in question was making his way over to her.

Or so she thought.

Zach stopped a few feet behind the girls, lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. He lifted his arms up above his head, his shirt lifting again. The Blackthorne boy shifted on the balls of his feet. Cammie couldn’t stop the image of Zach’s toned calves from entering her mind.

Cammie could feel her cheeks turning red which had nothing to do with the sweat already on her body. She wasn't staring of course but, she could see Zach out of the corner of her eye.

The boys were split away from each other. Some were down on the ground, doing pushups, their legs out straight and their chests a mere inch from the floor. Others had taken it upon themselves to throw punches at each other. But not Zach.

Zach was working out alone, no partner. No spotter. He preferred it that way.

Cammie tried not to notice Zach in the corner of the barn. She tried to focus on her own training or even moving her feet forward. But that was nearly impossible when the Blackthorne Boy in question was doing pull ups.

Zach's face was scrunched up with concentration as he pulled himself up over the bar. He alternated his legs, bringing them to his stomach and then letting them fall, never breaking stride.

Cammie could see the muscles straining beneath his shirt, see the tightening of the skin on his biceps. She could only imagine the smooth skin of his abs glistening with sweat. She knew he had lost count but, Cammie hadn't. 12... 13... 14...

Cammie hit the mat with a thunderous smack.

Her head hit the floor hard, her body crumbling beneath her. The fall left her gasping for air, chest heaving. And all she could see was Bex's snickering expression above her.

"Distracting, huh, Cammie dear," Bex said in her perfect accent.

Cammie coughed, trying to get air back into her lungs. She glared at Bex. Her eyes wide with anger. Until a tall figure entered her cloudy vision.

"Need a hand, Morgan?" Zach said, his eyes glistening with pride. He held out his hand again, this time in her line of sight.

Cammie cleared her throat and grabbed his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. Cammie couldn't look him in the face. She knew her face was redder than Liz when she fell asleep by the pool in Alabama.

"Do you find me distracting, Gallagher Girl?" Zach asked, smirking so wide. He was practically grinning from ear to ear. And Cammie hated it.

"In your dreams, Zachary." Cammie said quickly, before turning on her heel and nearly running out of the barn.

She didn't think she ever felt heat like that when she was training before.

And she wouldn't mind if she felt it again.

(Written by: @cammie-morgan-goode)

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[incorrectgallaghergirlsquotes]

Do you think Bex, Cam or Macey or Zach will ever teach at the Gallagher academy in the future?

Honestly I could see all of them teaching there at some point. Coming in to teach coveops or another class for a semester or a year could be fun for Bex or Macey. I do think Cammie eventually takes her mom’s position as headmistress. And it is my personal headcanon that, rather than have Zach just be the Gallagher coveops teacher, I think he becomes headmaster of Blackthorne.

[gildengirl]

“Oh, and Cammie.” At the sound of his voice, I spun around, expecting to hear him crack a joke or call me Gallagher Girl. The last thing I expected was to feel his arms sliding around me, to sense the whole world turning upside down as Zach dipped me in the middle of the foyer and pressed his lips to mine. Then he smiled that smile I'd come to know. “I always finish what I start.”

- Ally Carter, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

[notanothergallaghergirlsblog]

Bex: What does 'take out' mean? Cammie: Food. Liz: Dating Macey: Murder Zach: IT CAN MEAN ALL THREE IF YOU'RE NOT A COWARD.