Eight
It’s obvious that Cade is in no rush in the morning, but I am itching to move out of this area and put my dream and whatever lurks in the bushes behind me. By the time he pokes his head out from under the overhang I am handing him an inflight service plate full of eggs and reaching behind him to pack up our belongings.
“What’s this all about?” He reaches up to rub the back of his neck. “I never took you for the housewife sort.”
I wrinkle up my nose at the term. “Hurry up and eat. I want to get moving.”
If he is thinking, we’re only here to give you a rest, he has the grace to keep it to himself. With a mock salute he shovels down his eggs and laces up his boots.
At this point we estimate to have traveled 40 to 50 miles. Far less than we would have if we kept going yesterday. I’m sweating and my breathing is labored, but I keep pushing myself through the trees and over the roots and boulders that pop up in our path.
“You can slow down, you know. We’ve been gone less than a week. It’s not like we’re racing against the clock at this point.”
I pause to catch my breath. “I know you think I imagined something by the water, but I’m sure that I didn’t, and the further we get from that spot, the better I’ll feel.”
Cade swallows, and I can tell he is exercising great restraint not telling me how statistically unlikely it is that we are being followed.
“Have you heard or seen anything since?”
I bite down on my bottom lip. The truth is that I haven’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still feel like someone is watching us and haven’t taken a bath in 48 hours just to avoid whoever might be waiting for the moment we’re separated and vulnerable.
“Not necessarily.”
Cade begins moving again. Every now and again he opens his mouth like he is going to speak and then changes his mind. A few miles from the overhang where we spent the night we spot a cave and Cade gestures for us to take a break inside of it.
Caves here aren’t like caves from the picturebooks of my childhood. There are no bears hibernating inside. Worst case scenario you might encounter some bats. But they aren’t big or threatening. Mostly they don’t want anything to do with you.
What the caves do have are pools of water, warm and inviting. Once inside I slip my shoes off and dangle my legs into the water.
Cade grins. “Might I suggest you go deeper than that? You smell like Tanner on a hunt.”
I scowl, but I know there is partial truth in what he says. Partial, Tanner is in his own league. Obviously there are limited resources for personal hygiene while living in the wilderness, but Tanner manages to bring body odor to whole new levels when the two of them go out alone.
“I do not smell that bad,” I argue.
Cade grimaces.
“Seriously?”
“A little,” he admits. “You smell a little bad. I could wait outside if you want,”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” I say quickly, probably too quickly because he clears his throat and looks everywhere but at me. “I just mean because of what happened last time.”
Cade looks more than a little bit uncomfortable. Back at camp he would dodge this type of moment. He’d rather clean fish by the bucket than put himself in a position that might lead to breaking the group's rules. But we aren’t with the group anymore, and I have a valid reason for wanting him near.
“I’ll turn away,” he says and faces the cave wall behind me. I expect no different, but I wonder how it is possible for Cade to maintain such restraint. Doesn’t he want to know what it’s like to be with a woman? Maybe he already has. I’ve never asked that, but fifteen-year-old boys aren’t always model citizens. Maybe I am the only virgin in this cave. Or maybe he doesn’t find me attractive at all. Both of these possibilities make me feel like a troll.
“You can read The CEO of Christmas Town while you're waiting,” I offer, pulling my shirt up over my head and reaching to unbutton my cut offs.
Cade scoffs, but I watch as he reaches backward toward my bag and pulls the book out. Standing in just my bra and underwear I realize that this is the closest Cade and I have come to being intimate. There have been no risque trips down to the water after the group has gone to sleep, no games of spin the bottle when we were younger or any of those other things that normal boys and girls do when they are becoming men and women.
There is a part of me that wishes he would turn around as I drop my undergarments on the cave floor and step into the warm pool. Just one moment of risk would be something to hold onto. Something I could think about at night when I was wishing I was anywhere but isolated on this damn island.
The water feels amazing as I sink down to my earlobes.
“What part are you at?” I ask, placing my forearms on the lip of the pool and resting my chin on top of them.
Cade’s voice is gravely when he answers. “They’re in the barn.”
I can’t stop a laugh from escaping my lips. The worst possible reaction. Because Cade tosses the book aside and folds his arms across his chest.
“You don’t like that part?” I tease, knowing full well that the CEO and the shopmaker from rural Nebraska do a handful of dirty things in that barn.
The tips of Cade’s ears are red, and if he were facing me, I am pretty sure his cheeks would be as well.
“I like it plenty well. I’d like it a lot more if there wasn’t a naked woman behind me.”
“Oh,” the word slips out before I can stop it, and now the two of us are just here in the dark of the cave, a long stream of sunlight poking through hole in the rock above us, as what he’s just said rumbles around in our heads.
Maybe he didn’t mean to reveal it, but obviously Cade’s restraint comes from relieving himself in private. Suddenly those long walks he insists on take on a new meaning. I feel a little hope blossom. He has desires. It’s figuring out how to unlock them that has my mind spinning.
I’m not sure Christa or Tanner thought about anything the day they crossed the line.
For them it was simple. A moment alone after years of being told no and the two of them were drawn to one another like magnets. The future, the consequences, none of it mattered. Tanner was impulsive like that, but not Cade.
I shouldn’t ask, but the question sits right on the forefront of my mind, and I can’t brush it away no matter how hard I try.
“Have you been with a woman?” I ask. “Before the crash, I mean.”
Cade’s back stiffens.
“You don’t have to answer,” I start when his silence starts to draw out longer than I can bear. Already my heart is pounding like an iron drum in my chest.
“Once,” he replies, and I feel the blood rushing to my head.
Once is not what I expect him to say.
“My girlfriend at school. It was after one of those dances where you get one another flowers and your parents take a thousand pictures.”
A jealous pang hits me in the chest. I’ve never been to one of those dances, and I’ve certainly never spent the night with someone afterwards, but what really bothers me is the idea that Cade once belonged to someone else. That someone else had the freedom to kiss him, touch him, without anyone saying it was wrong, that he kissed her back and might still be kissing her if it weren’t for his family's decision to send him to basketball camp in Australia.