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Chapter 5

I stopped in my tracks in the middle of the parking lot.

“Are you coming, or what?” Kaden called out, annoyed, as he unlocked his Jeep.

That’s right. His Jeep. This guy owned a huge, brand spanking new, steel gray Jeep Wrangler.

As Kaden started it up, the motor roared so loudly that I flinched.

I ran around to the passenger seat and was barely inside when Kaden drove off and turned onto the main street.

“There are CDs in the glove compartment,” he said.

I didn’t need any encouragement in that department, and I was amazed at what I found there. There were some groups I didn’t recognize, but I also found a few of my absolute favorites.

It almost felt like a test: Could I find the right soundtrack for our road trip? I continued rummaging through his collection until I found a few burned CDs at the bottom of the pile.

“What’s this K-Mix?” I asked grinning, and held up a disc whose cover was decorated with hearts.

I regretted it immediately. For a split second there was a bitter look on Kaden’s face. But just as fast, his emotion disappeared and I was looking at a hard, impenetrable mask.

“Take it out and give it to me,” he said, strangely calm.

I swallowed hard and did as he asked, though I didn’t feel so good about it. In the blink of an eye he’d cracked and broken the CD with one hand. Then he threw the fragments on the backseat.

I guessed a former girlfriend had given him this heart-covered CD.

“Now that you’ve let your anger out, we can listen to this one,” I offered after a concerned pause. I held out my favorite album by Thirty Seconds to Mars.

He took it from me without looking and shoved it into the narrow slit in the CD player. I hit play on one of my favorite songs.

As the tune came on, I felt Kaden’s eyes on me again. “I took you for a Taylor Swift fan right away, but you don’t look like someone who still listens to Thirty Seconds to Mars.”

For a moment I returned his intense stare before I turned my head and looked out the window again. The landscape was too beautiful to miss. The weather was perfect: Sunlight streamed between the peaks of the nearby mountains and bathed everything in bright light. “Someone like you should know that prejudices are to be enjoyed at your own risk.”

He emitted a sound not unlike a grunt. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I am pretty sure that people sometimes don’t see you as you are. People tend to draw hasty conclusions.”

“Including you, right?” asked Kaden. Now I had to look at him again.

One arm lay casually on the edge of the open window; his eyes were fixed on the road ahead. With his baseball cap on, he looked like a different person.

“What do you mean?” I asked, interested. I’d always judged people by their appearance before. This kind of superficial behavior was the norm in my parents’ circles. But since I’d arrived in Woodshill, I’d been trying to kick this habit.

“You took one look at my tattoos and right away wrote me off as a bad boy,” he reminded me, and turned his baseball cap around so the visor was in back.

“Whatever,” I answered. “I didn’t do that because of your tattoos, but because you have such a strong presence,” I explained.

The corner of Kaden’s mouth twitched. “I have what kind of presence?”

“Come on, Kaden.” I raised one eyebrow snidely and turned to look out the window again. Jared Leto was singing about the truth running free, and as usual his voice gave me goose bumps. The music got under my skin.

“No, really. What do you mean?”

I sighed. “I’m not going to smear anyone with honey if they don’t need it.”

Now he laughed. It was a deep laugh, and mingled with the music.