As I tug my shorts on, I think about all of the possibilities for that tree snap. The most logical explanation is Cade, but he isn’t like that. There is nothing sneaky about him and even if he were to give into some kind of temptation and come down to the water I can’t imagine him running away when caught.
Still damp from my bath I finish dressing and hurry back to camp. Cade is sitting cross-legged, pulling the meat from the shells of two blue crabs that lay belly up beside him. His brows furrow when he sees me.
I realize that I must look shaken. My hair is still dripping from the ends and my tank top sticks to my body like a second skin. In one hand I’m holding my shoes and the other my bag.
“Lena?”
“There was someone by the water,” I say, dropping my shoes and bag at my feet.
I know how it sounds. We haven’t seen another living soul in the entirety of our seven years and we can’t be more than fifteen miles from camp, but I know what I heard.
Cade’s face twists into a troubled expression. “You saw someone?”
“No, but—”
His face softens around the eyes and he returns his attention to the crab in his hand. “It was probably just a bird.”
“A bird big enough to snap a stick in half with a step?” I ask, plopping down beside him. With shaky hands I brush the sand from my feet and pull my shoes on.
Cade’s lips curve up in a half smile. “Could have been the one with the red feet. I’ve had one of those sneak up on me before.”
“It wasn’t a bird. I know how those move. I’ve chased them through these forests a hundred times. This was different.”
There are only three possibilities and Cade knows it. Either someone from our group has been tracking us, some kind of large animal lives on this part of the island, or there are people here that we don’t know about.
Cade stops what he is doing and studies me. “I can check the woods if you want.”
I am still shivering from the cold bath and the uneasy feeling that we aren’t as alone as we feel, so I wrap my arms around my middle and hug myself for warmth.
“I don’t want to separate.”
No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I regret them. I promised Cade that I could hold my own. That he wouldn’t have to protect me, but I need him and it shows.
I expect him to roll his eyes or warn me that this is exactly what he was afraid of. Instead, he hands me a lump of crab meat and looks toward the treeline. “I don’t think there is anyone or anything out here to be afraid of. But we need to keep moving anyway. Whatever you thought you heard will be a day behind us by nightfall.”
I nod, knowing that it is better to stay silent than let my voice show him how afraid I really am.
When the two of us finish eating Cade pulls his pocket knife from the seat of his cargo shorts and begins stripping the bark from a thick stick in front of him.
“But Lena,” he says, drawing my attention from my hands wrapped tight around my knees to keep from trembling. “Nothing’s going to hurt you when you’re with me.” His eyes lock on mine “I won’t let that happen.”
I want to say thank you, but the intensity in his expression steals the words from my brain. Besides, the way he’s looking at me makes me think he wants to say more and I don’t want to stop him if it means he’ll talk to me, really talk to me.
He doesn’t though, he returns his focus to the stick in his hand and I give up hope that today is the day I crack his shell. Instead I worry about what I heard down by the water.
I know he Cade is right, but it doesn’t stop my senses from being on high alert. Every breeze and birdcall feels like a threat as we leave camp and head further into the unknown.
Hours pass with the two of us hiking in silence. I can’t help but look over my shoulder every few minutes. That feeling that someone is with us hasn’t gone away, and even though I know Cade would wrestle a bear if he had to I feel shaky and uncertain. I was so anxious to leave camp and search for the unknown that I forgot to consider what would happen if we found it and it wasn’t a haven, but a threat.
The sun is beating down on us and I’m drenched with sweat in no time. Cade peels the shirt from his back and tucks it in the waistband of his cargo shorts. I itch to do the same, but I know it would make him uncomfortable, and we have too many miles to travel together to start pushing the boundaries now.
“Can we stop for awhile?” I ask, pulling an in-flight service water bottle from my bag. When I was a kid and they said the ocean was full of plastic that took years to degrade I marveled at the idea of the great garbage patch floating into oblivion. Now that I’d spent seven years sharing the same 50 single serve water bottles with the rest of our group I was grateful that humanity had failed to come up with a better solution.
Cade plops his bag on the ground under the shade of a big tree and stretches out beneath it. He rests his head on the bag and his long legs stretch out toward me. If he would allow it I would curl up beside him, my ear tight to his chest where I could lull myself to sleep to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Instead I lay in the grass in front of him, and open the sun-worn copy of my favorite book.
I’ve read this one no less than 100 times. Of all the books passengers brought with them on the plane this one I can’t put aside. This one has been calling me back since my first reading. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that the four siblings are isolated from the outside world that I relate to or the illicit desire between the older brother and sister, but something about their story makes me want to climb inside their life and escape my own.
Cade doesn’t get it, even though I made him read it years ago when the sex and violence still felt raw to me.
“It doesn’t change, you know,” he says, eyeing me over the cover of the book. “They’ll still crawl out the window at the end.”
“I don’t want it to change,” I answer, turning the page slowly and deliberately.
Cade picks up a stick and digs a rut in the ground in front of him. “What they do in that book is wrong and dangerous.”
“And romantic,” I add, with my eyes trained on the page in front of me.
Cade’s face twists with disgust. “Siblings can’t be...together like that.”
“Maybe not in the real world. But in the attic, after years of isolation, don’t you think they had the right to love like anyone else?”
Cade sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. “You can’t just break the rules because you want something badly.”
I grip the book harder in my hand, hoping to steady the little tremble that works its way through my body. We are talking about the book and we are not talking about the book.
These conversations happen often between us. Sometimes I think it is because he is cruel and only doles out bread crumbs of affection. Other times I think it is because he’s been living on the island since he was a boy and doesn’t know how to be a man.
“I want Cathy to have all the things a woman is supposed to have,” I say carefully. “Even if she can’t have them in the normal ways.”
Cade studies me across the grass between us. “You want those things too?”
I can feel my cheeks growing hot and the blood pulsing through my veins. Is this the moment? Should I tell him that not only do I want them, but I want them with him? That I have always wanted that?