For the first time I was able to look at Cade again. The duffel bag with the guns was slung over his shoulder, his hand rested against the strap. Cade was a wealth of mystery and confusion to me that I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. Yet, as his compelling eyes landed upon me, I knew with unfailing certainty that he understood me completely. He saw inside of me and knew what kind of person I was.
He saw my many flaws, and for some strange reason he didn’t mind them. He saw the depths of my imperfections, the intensity of my coldness, and he understood it. I was suddenly struck by the realization that I didn’t know what was worse. Being completely understood and accepted for my many defects, or constantly trying to prove that I didn't have them.
Was it better to be accepted for being an awful human being, or to have someone believe that I was something better than I was?
Cade’s eyes narrowed, his head tilted to the side. Displeasure flashed across his features, his hand clenched on the strap around his chest. The moonlight hit his onyx eyes turning them nearly blue in the beams. I had the disconcerting feeling he knew what I was thinking, or at least the direction of my thoughts, and he didn't like them.
“Bethany?”
“I’m fine,” I responded as I turned my attention back to Bret.
“Maybe we should stop.”
“We have to keep moving.”
“Keep moving where?” Jenna asked; her voice faint and forlorn.
“Somewhere.” Though I had no idea where. I just knew that we couldn't sit still. If we stopped we were sitting ducks.
“Somewhere is not an answer!” she retorted. “We have to have somewhere to go; just roaming aimlessly around is doing nothing for any of us! We should find somewhere safe to hide!”
“Since you know where all of those places are, why don’t you just tell us where to go!?” I snapped back.
Jenna glared at me, her delicate jaw clenched as her teeth grated back and forth. “Ok, easy, we should probably come up with some kind of plan,” Bret interjected calmly. “We have to find shelter.”
“I’m not going inside again,” I responded at once.
They all looked at me like I'd sprung another head, even Cade seemed somewhat taken aback. “Bethy…”
“No Aiden. If you guys would like to find shelter that's fine, but there is no way I'm going inside again. Not right now anyway,” I amended when I saw their distraught faces.
“Well we have to find some place to hide!”
Jenna’s whining tone was grating on my last nerve. I understood that she was frightened, but I'd never had a vast storage of patience (yet another fault of mine), and I found that I had even less now. My nerve endings felt as if someone was constantly taking a match to them. I was hurt, I was frightened too, but most of all I was angry and she was enflaming that anger right now.
“And we will.” Cade touched Jenna's arm briefly, reassuringly. I looked quickly away, unable to take the sight of them right now as unreasonable jealousy tore through me. They were both so beautiful, so perfect. “But for now, we have to keep moving.”
“The old lighthouse, only teens go there anymore. It will be safe,” Jenna said.
“Nothing is safe anymore,” Abby whispered.
Jenna’s lower lip trembled, her arm tightened around Abby’s shoulder. “It will be safer than the woods.”
“You really believe that a lighthouse, used to call in ships, set out on a Jetty that can be seen across the bay, is safer than the woods?” I asked incredulously.
“I don’t hear you coming up with any ideas!” she practically wailed.
“Our old tree house.”
We all turned to Aiden. “What?” Bret asked.
“Our old tree house,” Aiden's brown eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. “Our old house is on Cranberry Isle, the area has been built up over the past few years, but it’s still relatively private. Even more private is the tree house that Bethy and I built with our father when we were younger…”
“You intend for us to hide in a tree house!?” Jenna nearly screeched.
I sighed as I rolled my eyes. She was going to be the undoing of my temper, I was certain of it. I just wasn’t sure if it was because she was driving me crazy, or because Cade was trying to console her so much. A day ago the stupid ass had been kissing me, and being so kind and understanding that he had made me cry for the first time in years. Now, just a day later, he was all over Jenna.
I had a boyfriend, I reminded myself sternly. Bret was my boyfriend. To Cade, I had just been something to play with and string along, and now it seemed he had set his sights on the far more beautiful, and pristine, Jenna Howe. I wasn’t jealous of her, not at all. I couldn’t be jealous of her small interaction with Cade when her interest in Bret, and their history, had never bothered me. That made absolutely no sense.
I was angry at myself for believing there was some strange connection between Cade and myself. I was angry at myself for having so many doubts about Bret, a man that loved me and would never do to me what I had done to him. I had been vulnerable when I’d kissed Cade, I’d let him, but I knew better now. Now that I knew what he was really like, I would never allow such a thing to happen again.
I tried to believe everything that I was telling myself, but the awful truth was that I was jealous, and Cade hadn't taken anything from me that I hadn't willingly given to him. I could try and convince myself that what I felt for Cade was wrong and that he was a user, but I wasn't one to lie to myself. I never had been; I never would be. I didn’t believe that Cade had just been toying with me. I didn’t know him well, but I knew that wasn’t the kind of man he was. He was too straightforward for that.
“It’s a little bit more than a tree house,” Aiden told her.
“I’m not dying in a tree house,” Jenna retorted.
“We spent a lot of time on it; it’s more than a tree house,” Aiden insisted. “It’s actually pretty well equipped for a tree house.”
“We haven’t been there in years Aiden, you can’t possibly know what condition it’s still in,” I reminded him.
He shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve been there recently.”
I started as my mouth parted. Aiden and I didn’t tell each other everything, but we shared more, and were closer than most siblings. We looked out for, loved, and protected Abby, but the two of us were closer in age, bonded by more shared experiences, and truly liked each other now that we were older. Going to the tree house didn’t sound like something Aiden would do, he wasn't a nostalgic person, and it definitely seemed like something he would have told me about.