Page 47

They pass the ball of twine on the way to the bluff and it looks exactly how Kara expected. A giant ball of twine nearly as tall as her.

Wade says they should set it rolling and see how far it goes down the hill they drove up to reach it. She nudges him with a shake of her head and they both laugh, continuing their journey from something only mildly exciting to what she hopes might be…very romantic.

Addison said that about the bluff, and if Kara’s being honest with herself, she’s ready to take any sort of assistance she can get in that area.

She’s better off forgetting it entirely, but things have shifted in a way that has her pleasantly puzzled.

Wade’s been more tactile than ever. She doesn’t know how to encourage him beyond the obvious jump from where they are now to pushing a limit they’ve silently set in stone.

Why aren’t you together? Addison asked, like it wasn’t the most complicated question.

Wade doesn’t feel that way about her. Never has. If he did, something would have come of it long ago. He’d have made a move, even a small one. He’d have made it explicitly clear that his I Love You meant he was in love with her.

He’d have said something when she asked before the turn why it didn’t work out with every other woman he dated.

‘Just wasn’t meant to be,’ he used to say after every breakup. Never once did he say ‘Because she’s not you.’

Then again, Kara is in love with him and she’s never said it out loud.

She hid it deep inside of herself as if it would tear them apart should he ever get a hint of her true feelings.

She hasn’t made an overt move in all this time. So really, what does she know? Maybe he shares her same fears, and that’s kept them both locked in limbo for an eternity.

Either way, something is shifting now, and terrified as she is to risk their friendship, she’s trying to remain open to it.

Make sure he knows his gestures are welcome, even if she’s too scared to make one, too.

Perhaps she’s been kidding herself to assume things could ever go back to what they were.

They are both different in every way a person can be.

Of course their relationship is forced to evolve as well.

She just isn’t confident enough in the direction it’ll ultimately land.

When he pulls up to a ramshackled house on the way to the bluff, saying they should check it for supplies and hunt some rabbits in the woods for their next meal, she smiles when he rubs her arm after dismounting the bike.

Just a single, random stroke gone in the span of a blink, but it’s another one of those boundary-pushing tests.

Touch me all you want, she thinks, as they head into the house, remembering what she told him before. Touch me anywhere you want.

Maybe she needs to try some of this, too. Nothing he’s done so far could risk what they have, and if he’s able to set her mind running wild with the barest of chaste touches, then she needs to up her game and figure out how to do the same.

There’s nothing romantic about this house, though, as they step over a body in the hall and rummage through long-expired food.

“This stuff never goes bad. Bet would could still eat it and not die.” She holds up a packet of dry oatmeal, the instant type they’d have to boil water to make. He winces as if she’d shown him a handful of shit.

“Never touching that again. Ate oatmeal almost every night in that cell, if it wasn’t left-over slop the animals wouldn’t eat. Nearly threw up.”

“What?”

“Was nothing.” He shrugs, busying himself in a pantry so he doesn’t have to look at her. She gets the feeling this is something he forgot they’ve never talked about.

They don’t tend to discuss the details of his time there. Now that he clearly wants to talk, she flails for a way to encourage it. She will listen even if it hurts. Even if it makes her want to spin around and go back to rip Silas apart limb from limb.

She snags those oatmeal packets anyway, unable to pass up edible food regardless of their tastes, and follows him outside, where they hunt two rabbits that they carry with them to the bluff.

She doesn’t stop thinking about what she’s learned.

What they served him for dinner is likely the least of what he endured, but it stacks neatly atop everything else, and her regret only grows worse.

If it’s anyone’s job to protect him, it’s hers.

She failed despite the fact that he’s here with her now.

“All this time I assumed it was landlocked out here,” she says, as they stand at the edge of a cliff dropping off into blue waters.

“Still kinda is. Dunno if this counts. Can you come back some? Too close.”

She hadn’t noticed that her toes kiss the edge, but Wade is staring at her like she might jump right off. He lets out an audible sigh when she moves several feet back where they work on building up a fire for their meal.

She stood at a cliff like this once, long before the turn, fully entertaining the idea of jumping.

It was Wade who followed her through the woods to make sure she made it out.

Tear tracks dried on her skin after a hard day at school.

She missed her father. Everyone in her class hated her.

Her home life with their foster family chipped away at her, and she was so damn tired.

Who would even miss her? And then Wade showed up, offering her a soda from his backpack and sitting on the edge of the cliff as if they had plans to hang out and shoot the shit.

He might miss her, she realized, and sat down beside him.

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, once the flames of the campfire lick steadily between them. “For all the times I made you worry.”

“You mean like just now ‘cause that’s a long drop.”

“For that and for everything else.”

His face softens as she joins him cross-legged on the ground. “Always gonna worry about you. Sometimes more than others.”

“I worry about you, too. You know you can always talk to me about what happened with Silas? Only if you want. If you don’t, that’s okay.”

“Dunno why it matters now.”

“Because I want to know you like you said you want to know me, even the parts that are difficult. I’m not trying to bring back bad memories, and if you really can’t talk about it, I’ll understand, but what happened to you matters, Wade. It matters to me.”

He sighs, turning the rabbit over with a slight nod. “Stripped me naked, starved me, beat me. Made me fight the dead ones for entertainment. Sometimes the other prisoners.”

She’s already seeing red, and he hasn’t even finished yet. It’s a struggle not to cut in. All she wants is to rant and rave about the monster who hurt someone who absolutely never deserved it.

“It was the isolation more than anything,” he continues.

“Even more than the bass in my eardrums, it was not seeing daylight for years, that had me seeing shit in my head. Then when I did see someone, it always fucking hurt. I don’t think I would have lost it as much as I did if they hadn’t kept me in the dark for so long.

But I wasn’t the only one they kept like that.

Especially later, when they got more organized.

There were others. People who wronged Silas.

I couldn’t do a damn thing for them either. ”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“My brain knows that. My heart doesn’t.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes.”

He raises a brow. “You’re feeling guilty about things that aren’t your fault?”

“Have you met me?”

He snorts. “Fair point. Seriously, though….if you wanna talk—”

“I don’t. Not yet.”

She can’t talk about it, which feels slightly hypocritical when she just asked him to discuss one of his worst traumas over a campfire. How does she tell him what she’s done and not risk losing him entirely? He doesn’t push, and a part of her is grateful, while the other part wishes he might.

“When I was with them, I was always thinking about you.” He flips their dinner over to roast the other side. “But you already know that. You came to me in my dreams. In my hallucinations. In my worst moments, you manifested like an angel telling me to keep going.”

She sniffles, her eyes watering. Her first instinct to be dismissive and self-deprecating wins over. “I’m no angel.”

“You were mine. Still are. Plus…don’t have to worry about never seeing you again because you’re right here. I get to see you every day now.”

“Are you sure you’re not sick of me yet?”

“Not a chance. You’ll always be a better view than any of these sights we stop at.”

He said that so sweetly that she could mistake it for a compliment if she didn’t know better. He can’t be serious, so she goes for the safety of a joke. She is crashing and burning today on all counts. “Read that on a t-shirt somewhere?”

“No.”

“Oh.” That sassy smirk has been wiped clean off her face while she basks in the fact that Wade just implied he thinks she’s pretty. He’s never shown any indication that he gave it much thought, but damn if he isn’t spinning her world sideways with this revelation.

“What’s gotten into you lately?” she says softly.

“Sorry, I’ll stop-”

“No, don’t be sorry. I like it.”

“Yeah?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

* * *

This spot used to be a popular campsite. There are a few trailers once they wander further down the bluff. Mini ones and giant ones, and some that look more expensive than a real house that she desperately wants to stay the night in.

They put down six rotters roaming the park from a distance and two more inside their selected trailer. She nearly squeals in delight at just how well-kept the place is.

After the windows are left open, the smell is gone and she can convince herself they’re out here like anyone used to be back in the day. Looking for adventure and campfires by the overlook.

She finds a book on the counter titled one hundred and one simple yoga poses for beginners and picks it up with a grin. “I wanna learn how to do this.”

“You’re full of shit,” he teases.

“What? You don’t think I’m limber enough?”