Chapter Four

Donovan had hardly been back in Woodland Park for an hour when he summoned Balak, his second-in-command, to a debrief over his recent visit to London. He didn’t particularly want to see this one, but at the moment, he needed him to be informed of the status of this mission. Donovan would have preferred someone more trustworthy and competent to hold Balak’s position in the coven, but as it was now, he was all he had.

Just give it time, Donovan told himself. That won’t be the case for long.

When Balak arrived in the Undergrounds, he acted the way Donovan expected him to; submissive and grateful to see him. Donovan knew that was anything but the case.

“What news from London?” Balak asked him.

Donovan tried not to sneer when his eyes fell on him. “The plan is set,” he told him. “I have spoken at length to both Ms. Whitlow and Ms. Ross. We need only to wait for this to play out and everything should fall effortlessly into our hands.”

Balak nodded.

“How have things been on the home front?” Donovan asked him.

Balak squirmed nervously, but Donovan would have seen it even if he hadn’t. He could see it because Balak had become afraid. That was just something he was able to do when the air became thick with fear. Donovan could see into people’s minds.

He had to hide his emotion when he saw that Balak had tried to seduce Valerie again in direct disobedience to him. Fortunately, that was another thing Donovan was able to do; very well, in fact. He could hide his emotions, hide his thoughts, hide his lies almost completely. Of all the Nephilim, he was one of the hardest for anyone to read. And that, in a circumstance like this, proved very beneficial.

“The meeting went well,” Balak told him. He stood with his hands behind his back, trying to appear strong and positioned for report, but his words were not steady. They held a quiver of fear to them that confirmed what Donovan had seen in his mind. Not that Donovan needed confirmation to that; he was never wrong about what he saw.

“We…maintain our holding position,” he said, trying to make “I did absolutely nothing of value” sound better to Donovan. “Val is ready to move on her assignment at the opportune moment.”

There was no bitterness in Balak when he mentioned Val’s assignment, which Donovan found curious. Perhaps Balak hadn’t caught onto Val’s infatuation with Caden Howell yet.

That cunning little snake, Donovan thought delightedly.

It still amazed him, the deception that surrounded that green-eyed beauty. The thought tickled him when he imagined Balak’s jealousy over the pathetic human boy. He didn’t even try to fight the smile that found its way to his face at the thought. It confused Balak when he saw it, but he was already so nervous that he didn’t question Donovan on why he was smiling.

“Very good,” Donovan said in approval. He would just have to wait until he could watch that play out for his own entertainment before he cut out Balak’s heart.

“When will we know the status in London?” Balak asked him.

Donovan looked up at the moon. “Soon,” he replied. “If I am not mistaken, our lady in waiting is about to make her move.”

. . . . .

Nathaniel didn’t feel right about this. It made him uneasy, Caleb leaving to meet with Samantha; especially when there wasn’t a point to it. They weren’t tracking this sorority anymore because they already knew where Donovan was. Right now, Caleb was just being reckless.

Which was why Nathaniel was following him.

Nathaniel kept enough of a distance that Caleb didn’t see him, and Caleb was distressed enough over everything else that was going on that he didn’t even bother trying to discern Nathaniel’s presence. Definite fortune on Nathaniel’s part. He knew how angry his brother would be if he were to discover him tracking him right now. But when Nathaniel had a feeling like this, the last concern he had was whether or not Caleb would be upset with him. He had priorities above that, like keeping him alive.

Samantha Ross didn’t waste any time getting frisky with Caleb when she met him in the gardens at Hyde Park. Nathaniel wasn’t happy about that. He could see it in Caleb’s reaction to her that this behavior surprised him, but he didn’t fight her at all. That, Nathaniel was even less happy about. Caleb should not have given into her at all, but he certainly shouldn’t have given in this quickly. Something was wrong here.

Wake up, Caleb, Nathaniel urged his brother in his mind. You’re being a fool. But he didn’t voice this out loud. He couldn’t if he wanted to retain his cover.

The more intense Samantha got with him, the more Nathaniel realized that Caleb wasn’t in control of this at all. As much as his brother had lead him to believe that he was the one who dictated their relationship, what Nathaniel saw right now proved that as a lie. Samantha Ross had him wrapped around her finger. But Nathaniel wasn’t just disappointed in Caleb’s weakness; he was disappointed in his impotence…his shortsightedness. And suddenly he found himself wondering if this was the way Seth saw him with Kyla.

Completely different scenario, Nathaniel told himself. Predominantly because Kyla wasn’t a witch, but still, the question gnawed on him.

“I’m staying in the city with my aunt,” Samantha told Caleb. “She’s been lonely, so I’ve taken to doing that a bit on the weekends.”

The two of them were out of Nathaniel’s earshot, but he heard them nonetheless. He had really missed the advantage it placed him in to be able to shift in and out of Naphil form. It certainly changed things.

“Do you need to get back to her?” Caleb asked. There was legitimate disappointment in his voice which heightened Nathaniel’s concern.

Samantha smiled coyly. “She’s out for the night.”

Nathaniel saw a trace of concern play across Caleb’s eyes, but Caleb ignored it and told her, “Lead the way.”

Nathaniel breathed a low growl under his breath. He could have hit Caleb for being so stupid. Then he saw something that struck him in a way he did not want to be struck. When Caleb passed by in a way that he could see his eyes, Nathaniel caught sight of a look in him that he didn’t recognize. Caleb’s eyes didn’t look right. Nathaniel couldn’t place it, but there was something off about them. And the way Caleb followed after her like a puppy dog, it wasn’t like him at all. Even if he had taken things far with Samantha before, Nathaniel had always trusted what his brother said; that he was able to retain control of her. And Nathaniel knew enough of Caleb’s strength and his character to believe that. But right now, whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t Caleb. He wasn’t the one controlling this at all…because something was controlling him.

. . . . .

“Would you like me to take you on a tour of the place?” Samantha asked Caleb teasingly when they arrived at her aunt’s flat. She loved making him wait when it was clear that he didn’t want to. Caleb couldn’t have cared less about the artwork on the walls or her aunt’s recently refinished kitchen and Samantha knew that.

She had made sure that would be the case by the spell she put on him.

It was the first time Samantha had ever done that…the first time she’d had to. But while the other girls engaged in this sort of practice all the time, the spell she had cast on Caleb was another grade of powerful. It had been given to her by Donovan himself to be used in this precise situation.

Samantha had never been able to bring herself to put Caleb under a seduction spell of any sort before. Not only did it seem cruel, but the measure to which she cared about him, she wanted to know that he wanted it too; not that she was just able to control him. That had been the case up until she learned of his betrayal; and until her life had been threatened if she didn’t take care of this…matter.

Samantha could feel Caleb’s eyes burning into her as she walked around the flat, her black spike-heeled pumps clicking against the hardwood, taunting him, begging him to make a move. And he did. More forcefully than he ever had.

It shot her adrenaline skyward when he grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. As he held her hands above her head, Samantha’s mind swung back and forth between a ravenous desire for Caleb Holcomb and keeping herself centered on what she had to stay centered on. It wasn’t easy. The battle in her raged back and forth, back and forth until she couldn’t remember which way was up anymore.

Caleb unzipped her dress and practically tore it off of her. But he left the heels. Samantha was glad he did. Running his hands down her body in a way he never had, Caleb’s breathing was hot and heavy.

Focus, Samantha, she told herself. You can’t fail this.

Wrapping her legs around Caleb’s waist, she reached up to the bottom of her right heel and dislodged a switchblade that had been strapped underneath it. Then right as she pulled it up to ram it into his throat, another hand grabbed hers from behind and jerked her out from beneath him.

The blade skidded across the floor as it was knocked from her hand. Samantha’s eyes were wide and the scream she was about to scream got locked in her throat. Fear paralyzed her as she stared into the eyes of the last person she wanted to be seeing right now, and as Nathaniel Blake tightened his grip on her arm, she knew he was going to kill her.

At the sight of Nathaniel, Caleb seemed to be knocked from the spell she had put him under. She was terrified as Nathaniel held her there like that, so much so that she didn’t even try to fight him. Samantha knew any effort she made would be wasted on his strength. The only chance she had was to reason with him, and she knew how difficult it was to reason with the Nephilim.

“Who are you working for?” Nathaniel snarled at her.

Samantha didn’t respond.

“Why are you doing this?!” he screamed at her.

She winced in fear and closed her eyes, wanting all of this to go away.

Nathaniel jerked her up by the shoulders and slammed her back down again so it jarred her eyes back open. That got her to focus.

“It wasn’t me!” Samantha cried out. “I didn’t want to do this!” She had tears streaming down her face now and she didn’t even have to fake them.

Nathaniel’s grip tightened and she begged him, “Please! I didn’t have a choice…”

“Who?!” he demanded.

Samantha slammed her eyes closed again. “Donovan!” she exclaimed. “It was Donovan!”

At Donovan’s name, Caleb froze.

“What is your involvement with him?” Nathaniel asked her.

Samantha whimpered through her tears. “He only just approached me,” she said, shaking her head. “He…he was the one who placed the hit on Caleb.”

Nathaniel and Caleb exchanged a glance. By it, Samantha could see that they knew who Donovan was, and probably a lot beyond that.

“Why?” Nathaniel asked her. “What does he want with Caleb?”

“I don’t know,” Samantha told him. “I swear I don’t know. I was just following orders.”

Nathaniel was quivering in fury, and Samantha was afraid. She didn’t know what he was going to do to her.

. . . . .

Nathaniel became furious at the thought of Caleb’s life being in danger because of him; furious at his knowing he had abandoned Kyla to Donovan…so furious that he thought he might kill this little witch squirming beneath his grip who had tried to kill his brother.

But instead, he knocked her out with his elbow.

Nathaniel saw Caleb flinch when he did it, but he pretended not to notice. He would address that later; for now, the two of them needed to leave.

“We have to talk to Seth,” Nathaniel told him as he led him out of the flat. “We have to get you out of here.”

And though his brother tried to do so in discretion, Nathaniel saw it out of the corner of his eye when Caleb glanced back toward the room.

“Caleb!” Nathaniel said firmly.

Caleb snapped his head back so he was looking forward as they walked toward the door.

“Do you understand me?” Nathaniel asked him.

Caleb nodded quickly, but he still didn’t have words. He probably wouldn’t for a while. Nathaniel kept moving and dragged the boy along behind him. He could see from his shock that Caleb wouldn’t be able to move himself. Insensitive as it may have been, Nathaniel knew they didn’t have a moment to waste right now. Sensitivity had never been his strong suit, anyway.

Heading straight for Highgate Cemetery (where the brotherhood already had a meeting planned for that night) Nathaniel brought Caleb before their leader.

Thankfully, Ethan and Justin had not yet arrived. Thankfully, Seth already had. Were anything else to be the case, this would not have worked.

Right now, Nathaniel didn’t trust anyone. Not even his brothers.

Seth could discern that something was wrong immediately upon their approach. “What is it?” he asked them. “What happened?”

“Caleb met with Samantha,” Nathaniel told him, and anger immediately flashed across Seth’s eyes.

“He did what?”

Caleb wouldn’t meet his leader’s gaze and he still couldn’t speak.

“That’s not all,” Nathaniel said. “She tried to kill him.”

There was more than anger in Seth’s eyes now. Quickly, he pulled Nathaniel and Caleb aside to where their presence would be masked. He didn’t want to risk Justin and Ethan seeing them if they were to arrive early.

“Tell me what happened,” Seth said once they were in a hidden place.

Nathaniel wasn’t looking forward to this. “It was Donovan,” he said. “He put a hit out on Caleb, and he targeted this coven to carry it out; specifically Samantha Ross. I stopped her because I followed him. I knew you didn’t want him involved with her anymore.”

Seth glared angrily at Caleb, but Caleb didn’t meet his gaze. He didn’t even seem to be aware of it.

“We have to get Caleb out of here,” Nathaniel told him. “He isn’t safe anywhere near London, not with Samantha and her sisters out looking for him. They are going to try to finish what she failed to do.”

Seth didn’t like what he was saying. Nathaniel could tell by the way he held his lips together and the way he kept his eyes off of his.

“They may or may not have been in league with Donovan before,” Nathaniel said, “but they certainly are now. Something we did drove them to this, Seth. We drove Donovan to search out Samantha Ross.”

Seth looked disturbed as he voiced the question they were all asking themselves, even this muted version of Caleb that neither of them was used to. “But how could he have known?”

Nathaniel furrowed his brow, wanting to know the answer to that as well. Caleb probably would have wanted to know too if he wasn’t still too in shock over the fact that his fraud of a girlfriend had just tried to kill him to speak a word.

“It has to be Eli,” Seth said under his breath. “Damn Malachi for keeping me from him.”

Nathaniel felt a check about that one. “We can’t draw conclusions or panic right now,” he told Seth. “What we need to do is get Caleb out of the city.”

Seth looked at him. “You do remember the orders we were given by Malachi and Samuel? Orders specific to keeping you away from Manitou Springs?”

“I remember the orders,” Nathaniel said. “Do you remember that as our leader, you have been charged to protect us?”

That struck a chord in Seth, being called out like that and borderline accused.

“I can keep Caleb safe,” Nathaniel told him, “but I can’t do it here. And if we go back to Colorado, I can keep the ones we have found there safe as well. You know we need their help, Seth…”

Seth grunted under his breath.

“We cannot stand against this coven without them,” Nathaniel said. “And we certainly can’t disband it.”

Seth knew he was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. The last thing he wanted was to permit him to return. Nathaniel knew that as he watched him, and he tried to stay calm and sure so that Seth wouldn’t see how anxious he really was to be going back so quickly on his determination to remove himself from Kyla’s life. But he didn’t have a choice. Everything was different now, and not in a way that Nathaniel knew how to handle.

Perhaps Aria will get her way after all, he thought, depending on the words his leader spoke next.

Seth paced back and forth and deliberated over it for a moment, and it didn’t look easy for him. It actually appeared to cause him a severe amount of pain, right up to the point that he finally told him, “Go.” Then his pain gave way to defeat.

Nathaniel nodded gratefully. “You will cover for us with the others?” he asked.

Seth made a face that said he hadn’t determined yet whether or not they should let Ethan and Justin in on this.

“Seth, they can’t know,” Nathaniel said. “No one can know but the three of us. It’s the only way to ensure that Caleb is safe.”

Seth must have known he was right, even if he wanted to fight him on it. “I will take care of it,” he finally agreed.

Nathaniel felt relief wash over him. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Then he took Caleb by the arm and dragged him out of there before they were spotted by Ethan or Justin on their arrival to the meeting.

. . . . .

Samantha came to on the living room floor of her aunt’s flat. Her head was spinning, throbbing; she didn’t know where she was or what had happened to bring her here. Struggling to her feet, she looked down and slid her hands over her stomach, trying to remember why she was in nothing but the lacy red underwear she had bought this weekend at a high-end lingerie shop in London. Then it all came flooding back to her.

Hyperventilating, Samantha sat on the couch and held her face, which was bound to have a ridiculous amount of bruising from where it had come in contact with Nathaniel Blake’s elbow. She would have questioned if that had all been real, if it had actually happened, but the pain she felt made that much undeniable.

Samantha hung her head between her knees and tried to take deep breaths, but she wasn’t sure she could get this under control without a paper bag. Then she heard the sound of keys jingling in the lock on the front door and she snapped back to her senses.

Grabbing her dress from where it lay strewn on the floor, she scrambled to get out to the fire escape before her aunt came in and saw her. Her shoes were still on, which she wasn’t sure helped the situation considering how well spike-heeled pumps and her aunt’s fire escape didn’t go together. But she didn’t have time to take them off. Samantha’s brain was moving a thousand miles an hour, but it still wasn’t fast enough to catch up with reality and help her to get a grip on what was happening here. She didn’t understand why her aunt was home, and questioned how long she must have been out if it was already almost morning.

Daylight started to break over London when she reached the bus stop that would take her back to Oxford. Judging by the strange looks she got from the other passengers the entire time she was on the bus, she must have looked pretty horrifying. Samantha didn’t want to go back to the house; she didn’t want to see Mara or any of her “sisters” or have to explain to her aunt later why she had bolted and left her bags there. But she knew she had to tell Mara what was going on. She would be furious with her if she didn’t report back immediately, and something this severe was not permitted to be discussed via phone or email or any other technological form of communication. Samantha wasn’t sure why that rule was so critical to them; she only knew it was. And she knew that it was Donovan who set that rule in place.

As soon as she stumbled through the door of the sorority house, Samantha heard gasps of surprise from the few girls who were in the living room and the kitchen. She didn’t pay attention to them, just went straight upstairs where she knew Mara would be. As she expected, their power-driven ringleader was waiting for her with her two lackeys at her side. Loren Ravenholt (the pasty-soft ginger girl who was only part of this sorority because of her rich family) looked as clueless as ever and Cassida Porter (the black model whose image had been known to frequent London magazine centerfolds) had her arms were folded in a mimicking gesture to the blonde at the center. Honestly, Samantha didn’t think Cassida had ever had an original thought or made a conscious gesture on her own. She just mirrored every move that Mara ever made. It was a tad pathetic, but it normally didn’t bother her much. Right now, it bothered her, if only because there was twice as much condemnation coming her way.

“What happened?” Mara asked harshly.

Samantha collapsed onto the bed and held her face, crumpling up into a tiny ball, despite that she knew how furious that would make her.

She was right. Mara grabbed her arm and threw it open so that Samantha was on her back facing up and she couldn’t hide herself from her.

“It was Nathaniel,” Samantha spewed quickly before she let herself think about what she was admitting.

Mara’s eyes narrowed even beyond what they already were. Samantha had never seen anyone with a more slanted look. “What about Nathaniel?” Mara spoke through gritted teeth.

Samantha whimpered involuntarily. She was in so much pain.

“What about Nathaniel?!” Mara shouted at her.

“He must have followed us,” Samantha rambled off quickly. “He stopped me right before I could…”

Mara stepped back, her face falling in fear. “Are you telling me that Caleb Holcomb is still alive?”

Samantha’s mouth tasted bitter. Hearing Mara say it, there was part of her that felt relief, but she also felt the same fear she knew the others felt at this knowledge coming to light. That was the part that made her hesitate to answer, “Yes.”

Mara cursed out loud and ran her fingers over her head until they got caught in her over-volumized hair.

“You have to contact Donovan,” Cassida told her. “You have to let him know.”

Mara cursed at Cassida. “No one is contacting Donovan,” she said firmly. “Not yet.”

Cassida looked worried, and as oblivious as she was most of the time to what was actually going on, Loren did too.

“But Mara,” Cassida started to argue.

Mara spoke loudly and affirmatively, “I said no one!”

Cassida shut up.

“We will remedy this situation first; then we will contact him. I will not be the one to report bad news to Donovan. Not when I am not responsible for this failure.”

Her eyes bore into Samantha when she said it and Samantha cowered away from her and dropped her head in shame.

“What are you going to do?” Cassida asked her.

Mara didn’t answer. She just kept her slanted eyes on Samantha, making the girl not even want to know what was going through her head.

. . . . .

Caden had had plenty of time to cope with his anger over his last encounter with Kyla, but it was still eating at him. That was why he was driving into Woodland Park. It wasn’t an easy drive this time, and he spent the entire length of it attempting to get his head on straight. But it was a drive he knew he had to make.

It became clear to him after Kyla left his room and went back into the house to take care of the kids that he had to let this go. If he was going to gain any ground of trust with her at all or accomplish what he wanted to accomplish here, he had to be calm and as unthreatening as possible. Whatever it took for him to make this right, he needed to do it. It didn’t matter how much the thought of it turned his stomach; there was too much at stake for him to mess this up again.

It wasn’t like Caden hadn’t already come to this realization; he was just a little slow on the uptake sometimes, especially when his emotions got the best of him…which they happened to do when the girl he loved had scars all over her body that she was trying to hide from him.

Caden felt sick at the memory that wouldn’t leave him. He had tried to forget it, but it kept resurfacing, pulling at his anger, his pain, trying to make him do something even stupider than all the stupid things he’d already done.

He hadn’t told Kyla he was on his way over (since he knew she would have objected or locked herself away somewhere if she had the forewarning) and when he showed up at the condo, she was drawing outside. Caden watched her go rigid at the sight of him, and it made him nervous to approach her. She closed her drawing book and slipped it behind the planter to her right that was spilling over with sun-faded flowers, then she looked at him challengingly.

“Don’t worry,” Caden said, holding up his hands. “I’m calling a truce.”

Kyla gave him a skeptical look. “A truce for what?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Caden said. “It just sounded good.”

She narrowed her eyes a little, obviously not buying into his innocent charm. She knew that act too well to fall for it.

“What are you doing here, Caden?” she asked him.

“I came to pick you up,” he said, but her expression remained unchanged. “You need to get out of the house,” Caden told her.

She sarcastically replied, “I am out of the house.”

He rolled his eyes and said, “You need to be around other humans.”

“Humans are overrated,” Kyla grumbled under her breath. Caden gave her a questioning look and she muttered, “Never mind.”

“Seriously, you look like you need to get out of here,” Caden said again. Clearly, he wasn’t going to give up on this easy, and Kyla couldn’t have denied that one if she wanted to.

When Kyla didn’t respond, he told her matter-of-factly, “I’m taking you to band practice with me and not letting you leave until you snap out of whatever this hyper-reclusive emo crap is that you’re trying to pull.”

Kyla looked like she was about to spit her tongue out at him, but she resisted the urge. Instead she sighed and gave in. “Fine,” she agreed.

Caden beamed and she shot him a look. He dropped his smile quickly. “Sorry,” he said.

Kyla rolled her eyes and slipped her drawing book behind the planter; then she stood up off the stairs and followed him to his Jeep.

When they showed up together at the McGallagher’s, the guys gave each other looks that Kyla and Caden both caught. Not that it was difficult considering how discreet they weren’t. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t been doing that sort of thing since they were all in the fifth grade.

Kyla hugged Cody when she came into the basement and greeted the other three with a nod and a nervous shoving of her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Trace didn’t waste a second to throw some predictably inappropriate line at her and Caden didn’t waste a second to tell him to, “cut it out.”

Trace dropped his hands from his bass and held them up in front of him innocently. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Didn’t mean to step on your turf.”

Caden shot him a not-so-amused look and Trace realized he needed to shut up. At least Caden hoped he realized that. If he didn’t, Caden would have to use a more forceful method to make him.

Kyla sighed and shook her head, completely unfazed by Trace’s comment. “So are you guys gonna play this song for me again or what?”

Caden had told her on their way over that they had been practicing the song that the boys had played for her while he was in Nashville.

“Yeah guys, stop messing around,” PJ chimed in. “We need to play.”

Kyla giggled under her breath at the seriousness in PJ’s voice. She had always found him far more amusing than he really was, and more often than not she treated him like he was a cute little puppy, doting on him and hugging him and kissing the top of his head. Caden found it kind of degrading, but then he was probably just jealous.

“Seriously, listen to Peej,” Kyla said. “I want to hear some music.”

The boys gave in after that a little too easily. She could probably tell they just wanted to show off for her, but then that was always the case on nights like this. That sort of thing was just to be expected.

They played the song for her that they had been working on for the past week (which apparently the guys had played for her while Caden was gone) but he sang the vocals this time.

And it sounded really good.

He didn’t know why he was so nervous singing in front of Kyla. He had sung in front of her a thousand times, but his nerves were definitely doing a number on him now as he sang this one. He couldn’t even look at her. The one time he tried, he messed up a verse and a half, after which point he quickly decided not to look at her again until the song was done.

Kyla was staring at him when they finished the song, a smile on her lips that he took as a good sign. The “wow” she gave him when they stopped completely was another one.

“I didn’t know training could do that much for you,” she admitted.

Caden smiled and gave her a look that was supposed to come off as offended. “I’m not sure how I should take that,” he said, acting as though she were implying that he sounded awful before.

Kyla shoved him. “Don’t give me that,” she scoffed.

Caden laughed and put up his hands to shield himself. He knew that wasn’t the case; Kyla had always told him how much she loved his voice. Her compliment just made him nervous, and getting sarcastic with her was the only way he could mask that and keep her from seeing how she got to him.

Trace saw it though, and he didn’t hesitate to call him out on it. Caden should have counted on that.

Shoving him mockingly and badly mimicking a girl’s voice, Trace said, “Oh my gosh, Caden, your voice is so dreamy! I just want to pretend like I’m mad at you so I can shove you and touch your body.”

When Trace started stroking Caden’s chest, it got him punched in the stomach. Kyla just rolled her eyes.

“I guess some things never change,” she muttered to Caden.

“Did you honestly expect them to?” he asked, now holding Trace in a headlock.

Kyla tilted her head a little in contemplation. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I could always hope, right?”

Caden knew she was kidding. That was why it didn’t offend him. But he also saw something in Kyla’s eyes behind the jokes she made on the surface that reminded him of what he was doing himself. The truth was, she had expected them to change, and for whatever reason, that hurt her.

As soon as he recognized this, Caden’s immediate instinct was to get her away from there. He felt the need to reassure her and he didn’t even know why. And that wasn’t something he could do in front of the guys.

“You wanna come home with me?” Caden asked her.

Trace and Zeke lost it when he said that.

Kyla rolled her eyes again and Caden gave them a look. “Not what I meant,” he said. But the damage was already done.

Luckily, Kyla laughed it off, so that was a good thing. She also took it a step further and sarcastically told him, “Well, I’m not normally that kind of girl, but just for tonight.”

Trace and Zeke went nuts when she said that, and even P.J. and Cody chimed in. Caden was beaming, and when Kyla saw the look on his face, she punched him in the arm and told him, “Get out to the Jeep. I’m not waiting around.” Then she left the basement by way of the sliding door that led out to the McGallagher’s backyard.

Trace put up his hands. “She’s all yours, man,” he said.

Caden sighed and stared out the door that she left through. I wish, he thought.

Chapter Five

As soon as they got up to Winding Valley Road, Melissa intercepted Kyla with a bear hug and dragged her inside like a mama carrying her cub back to her den.

“Leave her alone, Mom,” Caden grumbled as he followed behind them.

Melissa ignored him completely. “Are you hungry, darlin’?” she asked Kyla in her thick southern accent. “We’ve got plenty of food, and you’re lookin’ so skinny I’m afraid I might snap you in half!”

Hungry was something Kyla definitely wasn’t, but it was hard to say no to Melissa Howell.

Somehow she and Caden ended up on the back patio by the pool, carrying four platefuls of food without having asked for any of them. The plates spilled over with crackers and cheese and assorted nuts, and about a dozen different kinds of fruit on each one. Kyla balanced the two she held precariously, trying to keep any grapes from escaping and rolling across the flagstone.

She and Caden sat cross-legged on the ground and set the four plates of food down between them, and Kyla grimaced at the sight of it.

“You don’t have to eat it,” Caden told her, making note of her face. “But Mom’s right. You’re starting to look sick.”

She turned away from him and stared into the pool, not that she expected that to keep him from talking. Having the buffer between them of all the guys at band practice was something Kyla was missing now. A lot. She should have thought this through more before agreeing to come home with him.

She could tell that Caden was making an effort to keep things light as she barely nibbled on her food.

“Don’t overdo it now,” he teased her. Kyla wrinkled her nose at him and he said, “No, I’m serious. I think you may be pushing three, maybe four calories now. You better watch it.”

Kyla threw a grape at him and Caden’s mouth fell open in mock-indignation. “Oh, you did not just do that,” he said.

Kyla gave him a smirk and popped one of the grapes that was still on her plate into her mouth. “Yeah, what are you gonna do about it?” she challenged him.

Caden gave her a devilish smile and it was all over. Her attempts to stay closed off to him were so shot she couldn’t even try to resist it anymore. She couldn’t take Caden seriously, or herself for that matter; not when he smiled at her like that.

Provoking him further, she threw a cube of cheddar jack cheese at Caden’s head, and it immediately incited a war. Somehow (though she wasn’t quite sure how) the two of them ended up running around the pool like they had a thousand times before. Caden was armed with a stack of Ritz crackers while Kyla held the bundle of grapes she’d taken off of his plate after she’d exhausted her supply, popping them off one at a time and nailing him repeatedly on his neck or his shoulders or the back of his head.

“Is that the best you got?” he said.

Kyla scowled at him and he laughed at her indignation, turning to launch another cracker in her direction. Then just when she didn’t expect him to, Caden stopped running.

It was so sudden that Kyla couldn’t stop herself from running smack into him, and she realized a few seconds too late that he was counting on that. Dropping his last three crackers on the flagstone and grabbing her by the waist, Caden tackled her full force into the water; fully clothed, unprepared…kicking and screaming the whole way down.

. . . . .

Nathaniel was anxious. Beyond anxious, actually, which was completely out of character for him. Not that everything in his life hadn’t thrown him out of character lately; especially anything revolving around the auburn-haired girl he was currently looking for.

He and Caleb had arrived in Woodland Park not even five minutes ago and Nathaniel had already thrown the boy on watch and told him he would be back; that he had to find Kyla.

Abrupt? Yes. Necessary? He would see.

It disturbed him a little when he didn’t find Kyla at the condo, especially since the Civic was in the driveway. Nathaniel scouted the area, thinking she might be running (even though he didn’t like the idea of her running out there alone) but he didn’t find her there either. Nathaniel started to worry when he didn’t see her anywhere, but then he remembered his own words to her and cursed himself for ever saying them.

“Stay close to Caden Howell,” he had told her.

Nathaniel groaned and looked up toward the mountain. You did that one to yourself, he thought, knowing he didn’t have the right to be mad about it. Truthfully, he should be grateful that she had listened to him. At least if she was with Caden, she was safe.

“Brilliant advice,” he muttered to himself as he looked up toward the mountain. As important as Nathaniel knew her staying near Caden had been (and probably still was) it was also the last thing he wanted.

Well, second to last.

Nathaniel didn’t like what he felt in himself, so he ignored his selfishness and jealousy and flew up onto the mountain to scout out the Howell’s property.

It shouldn’t have surprised him. He knew he should be grateful that Kyla had actually listened to him, but there was a part of him that wished he would have found her alone. Frankly, the idea of her having been with her best friend the entire time he had been gone made him sick.

When Nathaniel reached the property, he circled around to the back of the house to hide himself in the trees, hoping to be able to see her inside the house. But what he found instead did more than surprise him.

At first the sight of her made his heart soar. The fact that she was there, that she was safe, that he was within physical proximity of her instead of half a world away; it was more than enough to alleviate the tension his fear had caused him the entire time he had been separated from her. But then he heard her laughing, and that feeling of reprieve was quickly replaced with a different kind of tension. A sicker kind that he liked far less, if only because of what it implied.

From his place of hiding, Nathaniel watched Caden tackle Kyla into the water. He watched her break through the surface again, screaming in indignation before she jumped on his back. He watched the glimmer come into her eyes that told him she was far less upset than she was letting on.

Caden held his breath and ducked under the water, taking her down with him since she was still clinging to his back. Kyla squealed again and smacked him, and this time it was Caden who came up to the surface laughing.

“Caden Howell!” Kyla screamed as she smacked him again. “I cannot believe you!”

He didn’t respond to that, just leapt at her without hesitating and pulled her back into the water.

This wasn’t the first time Nathaniel had contemplated murder.

After a five-minute splash war and another few rounds of them beating up on each other in the overly-chlorinated water, Kyla swam to the edge of the pool in an attempt to push herself up out of it. She didn’t get far before Caden grabbed her by the belt loops of her cutoff jean shorts and pulled her back into the water with him.

Kyla screamed again.

There had been a lot of times that Nathaniel had heard Kyla scream in the short while he had known her; a lot more than he wished were the case. But he had never heard her like this. Usually when she screamed, it sent a chill to his blood and terrified him beyond measure. This time it didn’t. She didn’t sound scared…she sounded happy. And that hit him like a club to the stomach.

Nathaniel stayed hidden in the bushes at the edge of the Howell’s property. At first he wasn’t sure he could trust what he was seeing. It didn’t seem right to him, given the current condition of, well…everything. But the more he watched them, the more he realized his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

A dizzy detached haze swarmed into his vision. He could hardly let air into his lungs, they were so strained, but then that dizziness turned into something much worse. All Nathaniel could think as he watched them…as he watched her, was that she didn’t even know what had happened to him. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive and she had never looked happier. At least not any time he had ever seen her.

Feeling the fire this caused him on the inside, Nathaniel realized this wasn’t good. This really, really wasn’t good.

. . . . .

The water was warm. Having soaked up the hot mountain sun the entire day before, it was set at the perfect temperature tonight. Not that being pulled into a swimming pool in your clothes could ever be deemed as “perfect,” but for all of its unexpectedness, Kyla was surprised at how perfect it really did feel. Sure, she still put up a fight about it. That was just what she did. But for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was laughing.

Something about it pulled her right back into the place they had left a year ago before Caden ever went to Nashville, before she even knew that he was going to; back to where there was nothing else in the world that mattered but the two of them. She was pulled back to where they were kids, to the hundreds of times they had done spontaneous, stupid things like this before. And for a brief moment, she actually felt safe.

Kyla couldn’t remember the last time she had felt safe. It had been so long. Crawling out of the pool soaking wet, Caden was laughing and she wrinkled her nose and shoved him, acting far more upset about it than she actually was.

The two of them scampered across the flagstone and made their way into his room, leaving drenched footprints on his carpet and puddles of pool water where each of them stood.

“Shower’s yours,” Caden told her.

“You’re dang right it is,” she said teasingly. Then she scampered in there quickly and locked the door behind her. Kyla trembled as she turned the hot water on and slipped out of her clothes, but then she realized she had nothing dry to change into. Holding a towel up in front of her, she cracked the door open and tossed them at Caden.

“Hey!” he said as her chlorine-drenched shorts smacked him in the face. Kyla just laughed.

They didn’t even have to communicate; he already knew she wanted him to take them in the house and dry them for her. If she hadn’t opened the door and thrown them at him, he probably would have asked her for them anyway. That was just how Caden was. And it was just a mutual understanding they had for situations like this.

Of course, throwing her clothes at him and pretending to be demanding about it was a lot more fun for her.

Kyla smiled as she stepped beneath the faucet and let the warm water pour over her, washing the chlorine out of her hair. She closed her eyes when the peace of the moment hit her, and that was when she realized what was happening. In spite of her will and every effort she had made to stop it, her heart was opening to Caden again.

Kyla opened her eyes, feeling suddenly threatened at the thought. It was something she was determined to guard herself against, and yet the very thought of losing that right now made her sick.

She didn’t know what to do.

Torn between what her every instinct told her and what was screaming at her from the inside, Kyla realized that trusting Caden again was like swimming in the dark. Even if she couldn’t see anything around her, even if it was terrifying, she knew it was worth the risk to have him there with her again; because whatever happened, she knew he wouldn’t let her drown. Just like she knew she needed him too badly to shut him out again this time.

She couldn’t shut him out. He was all she had left.

. . . . .

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes, watching through the glass sliding door as Kyla handed her soaking wet clothes to Caden from inside his bathroom.

Nathaniel felt heat rise in his face. He could have killed him.

When Caden stepped out of the bedroom and walked across the flagstone toward the main house with her pile of wet clothes in his arms, Nathaniel made sure to stay hidden. It would not be to his benefit to let the boy spot him now. His or Caden’s. Nathaniel didn’t know what he would do if Caden were to confront him directly; he only knew dismemberment was not out of the question.

Nathaniel forced his eyes closed until Caden was inside the house. If he didn’t have to look at him, he may be less tempted to murder him; or at least that was what he told himself. As soon as he heard the double French doors off the Howell’s kitchen shut behind Caden, Nathaniel slipped across the flagstone himself and into the bedroom he wasn’t sure he should slip into. He heard the water from the shower running, and for a moment it made him falter. But then he pushed aside his hesitation and knocked firmly on the bathroom door.

It probably wasn’t the wisest move he had ever made, (especially considering that he didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was going to say or do) and given the level of anger he was feeling right now, it was anyone’s guess what would actually come from it. But he couldn’t not do it. He had to see her.

“What?” Kyla called out over the sound of the running faucet.

She thought he was Caden.

Nathaniel knocked again and she shut the water off. He heard her scowl and grab a towel from off of a rack on the wall, easily envisioning the disgruntled look on her face as she wrapped it around herself.

“What, Cade?” she asked abruptly as she opened the door. But when she saw that it was Nathaniel and not her “best friend,” Kyla gasped and jumped back in surprise.

Nathaniel wasn’t sure what she was going to say. He wasn’t sure what she was going to do. But he didn’t expect her to do what she actually did.

Giving no regard to her present lack of clothing, Kyla threw her arms around his neck, all but tackling him right there in Caden’s bedroom. He could feel her shaking as she held him, her hand sliding up his neck and behind his head. Clutching at him desperately, she let out a sound that was something between shock and relief. And Nathaniel could not have been more confused.

He pulled back so he could look at her eyes, and what he saw in them completely disproved whatever assumptions he had made.

She was anything but okay without him.

. . . . .

It was one of those feelings like a dream that lingered longer than it should, the amazing kind that you didn’t want to wake from and you wanted to be real, but somewhere in the back of your mind you knew it wasn’t because nothing real was that good. That was what Kyla felt like, being close to Nathaniel again. Nothing felt real to her yet. She couldn’t make it real, but in spite of the frustrating logic that was trying to convince her something else was happening than what actually was, it permeated through her; that undeniable, unexplainable, downright frightening electricity that surged through her at his touch.

That was when she determined real or not, it didn’t matter. If a dream made her feel like this, then she would happily stay dreaming forever.

Kyla pulled Nathaniel closer to kiss him, but then her eyes darted to the sliding glass door. As soon as she saw that Caden was coming back from the house, she panicked, grabbed Nathaniel by the shirt and pulled him into the bathroom with her. She shut the door behind them and turned the water back on quickly, putting her finger up to her lips so he would know to be quiet. Not that Nathaniel wouldn’t have deduced that.

Kyla’s heart pounded as she heard the sliding door open, and as she looked up at Nathaniel where he stood in front of her. His back was up against the door she had made sure to lock, and her hand was on his chest. She looked up at Nathaniel, then down again as she listened for the sound of Caden’s footsteps as he came back into the room.

“Alright, Ky!” he called to her. “Clothes are drying.”

“Thank you!” she called back to him, keeping her hand on Nathaniel’s chest. She looked up at him as she said it, which only caused him to move closer to her.

Sliding his hand up her neck, he pulled her forehead to his and breathed onto her face. Kyla was intoxicated. She literally felt like she was high on some kind of drug she had never actually done in her life, and she questioned again if he was really here…if this was really happening. Surely she had to be hallucinating. She had never felt her pulse spike like that or her nerves so completely raw.

Nathaniel pushed her up against the wall and the noise was much too loud. At that point Kyla thought he might be closer to a cardiac arrest than she was. The look in his eyes alone told her that. She knew that look in him; she had just never seen it to this measure. She knew that he was desperate to kiss her, and yet there was an unbelievable amount of uncertainty and tension between the two of them that neither was sure they should breach. Kyla wanted it, and she could see that Nathaniel wanted it too, but they were both so afraid.

“You okay?” Caden asked her after the thud.

Kyla tried not to laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “Just dropped the shampoo.”

Nathaniel touched her face and slid his hands down her neck. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“Hey Cade, could you grab me another towel?” Kyla called out to him. She tried to control it, but her voice still came dangerously close to shaking. “I accidentally got this one wet,” she told him.

Nathaniel moved his hands down her arms and she thought she might die.

“Good job,” Caden laughed sarcastically. Then they listened for him to leave.

Kyla shoved Nathaniel back out of the bathroom as soon as Caden was gone. “Get out of here!” she told him. She meant it to sound threatening, but the smile on her face and her uneasy breathing told them both that she didn’t want him to go anywhere.

Nathaniel looked like he was about driven out of his mind. She could tell that he didn’t want to leave her, not even for a moment; and seeing that made Kyla seriously debate pulling him back into the bathroom with her and finishing what he was trying to start.

“Meet me down on Skyline Drive,” he whispered to her.

Kyla looked up at him and answered him with her eyes, and in a flash Nathaniel was gone. She jumped back in the shower quickly and rinsed off as best she could in the short amount of time she had (making sure to at least run shampoo through her hair so it wouldn’t smell like chlorine.) She held the towel she had supposedly “dropped” under the faucet for a few seconds and then threw it on the ground and listened to the sliding glass door slide open again.

Deductive reasoning didn’t even need to tell her it was Caden. She could instantly feel the difference between his spirit and Nathaniel’s.

As soon as Caden came back into the room, he draped the new towel over the door handle for her and Kyla grabbed it in a hurry.

“I’m gonna go check on your clothes,” he told her.

“Thank you!” she called out to him as she dried her hair with the towel. Her heart was pounding hard in anxiousness and fear, and she knew she had to make it stop.

You have to get this under control or he’s gonna know something’s up, she told herself. Like that was going make a difference. Nathaniel Blake had basically just come back from the dead; did she really think she was going to be able to force herself to calm down?

Whether or not it was plausible, Kyla knew she needed to figure it out when Caden brought her newly dried clothes back from the house.

Chill the frick out! she screamed at herself as she put her clothes back on. The worst thing she could do right now would be to give Nathaniel away.

“Shower’s all yours,” Kyla said as she stepped out of Caden’s bathroom.

He smirked at her and shut the door behind him, and as soon as she heard the faucet turn back on, Kyla ducked out of his room and scampered down the road. It wasn’t easy in flip-flops, but Kyla didn’t let that stop her. She would have run the thing barefoot if she had to; whatever would get her to Nathaniel.

By the time she got to the end of Winding Valley and approached Skyline Drive, Kyla’s heart crashed to a halt about as quickly as her feet. Nathaniel was standing in the middle of the street staring at her, and the sight of him was almost too much for her to take. She wasn’t sure if she had expected him not to be; somehow the thought of her hallucinating the whole thing wasn’t that unbelievable. In a lot of ways it made more sense to her than what had actually just happened. But whether or not Kyla thought she would see him was irrelevant. He was there, and she couldn’t write it off to hallucination anymore.

That was when it hit her, everything that had happened. She wasn’t sure what it was about seeing him standing there looking at her like that, but it brought a weight of reality with it that Kyla almost wished it wouldn’t have. Suddenly, she became uncertain and afraid. Instead of running to him and throwing her arms around his neck like she wanted to, she stepped toward him carefully in disbelief, not trusting her eyes. A thousand emotions tore through her as she came closer and closer to him. She was ecstatic and relieved and terrified all at once, hardly able to convince herself he was actually there.

Kyla touched his arm and looked up into his face. There was no word she could think of to describe the intensity she saw in him and felt in herself in that moment, but as Nathaniel stared down into her, letting her let everything sink in, Kyla thought he looked different. She couldn’t figure out how, but there was something to his eyes, a depth that wasn’t there before…which said a lot since he had the deepest eyes she had ever seen.

Looking at them now, she couldn’t help but question if something was wrong.

. . . . .

Nathaniel felt completely detached from himself, being this near to Kyla again. Whatever he felt for her before had increased so much it frightened him.

As they stood on the road and she kept touching his arm to see if he was real, she asked him, “What happened?”

He was afraid of that question, and dodged it immediately with a half-truth. “Things were intense,” he told her. “I did my best to get back here as fast as I could, but there were a few…delays.”

Nathaniel decided it would be best not to tell her how he had determined in London not to return to her. There really wasn’t anything good that could come from divulging that fact, and saying something like that would only hurt her…probably as much as the thought of betraying her like that and breaking his promise to her hurt him.

How could he have done that? How could he have made that choice, given everything that had happened? Was he really that afraid?

Kyla wouldn’t stop touching him, but she also wouldn’t move any closer. Somehow she looked like she was at war with herself. “I thought something happened to you,” she admitted in a shaken voice. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

“Funny. You didn’t look too upset to me,” Nathaniel mumbled. Immediately when the words escaped his lips, he regretted letting them.

Kyla gave him a look and took a step back. “What are you talking about?” she asked defensively.

Nathaniel answered her bluntly. “I saw you in the pool with Caden,” he said. His voice was emotionless as he spoke, but he was hardly lacking emotion.

“You were watching me?” Kyla asked him.

“I don’t think that is really the point,” Nathaniel said.

She folded her arms across her chest, looking agitated and extremely uncomfortable. “Just how often do you make a habit of that?” she asked him accusingly. “Because I’m starting to think it’s a lot more than you’re letting me believe.”

Nathaniel didn’t like the question. He also didn’t like the answer to it, and he wasn’t about to give it to her. So instead of giving her what she wanted, he threw back at her, “Don’t act like I’m the only one guilty of stalking here.”

“Maybe,” Kyla told him. “But you’re at a slight advantage since I don’t have superpowers.”

Nathaniel narrowed his eyes and Kyla looked up the road. “I need to get back to Caden,” she said.

A tightness immediately came into his chest when she said it, and he knew he wasn’t keeping the evidence of it off his face. He wanted to tell her to forget the stupid boy and stay with him, but he knew how well that wouldn’t go over. Still, even through his anger, Kyla seemed to see what was behind the look in his eyes.

“He can’t notice I’m missing,” she said as if she were trying to justify her decision. “We can’t have him asking any more questions than he already is.”

Nathaniel furrowed his brow. “What questions is he asking?”

Kyla gave him a loaded look and said she would tell him later.

“Go,” he told her. Saying the word felt like swallowing poison.

He could tell she was frustrated, that she wanted to stay with him, but Kyla turned and ran back to Caden instead, leaving Nathaniel feeling tortured by her absence. He was about driven insane, having to leave her.

He hated that she was with Caden. He hated how safe she was with him. Even thinking about it, the jealousy in him that he had been fighting since he first heard of the boy started to resurface. But Nathaniel shoved it away, knowing what it would cost him to give into that. He remembered the black feather on the mountain, and that was something he could never let happen again.

If he were to go there, Donovan would have exactly what he wanted, and there wouldn’t be a thing Nathaniel could do to stop him.

. . . . .

Kyla ran back to Caden’s room as fast as she could, but apparently she wasn’t fast enough. He was already out of the shower by the time she got there, dressed and sitting on his bed with his guitar.

“Hey,” he greeted her with a smile. Luckily, he didn’t seem too concerned with where she had been.

“Hey,” Kyla said back, trying to cover up how hard she was really breathing. She sat on the bed next to Caden and worked extremely hard at not giving herself away. She tried to act nonchalant, but all she could think about was Nathaniel, and the thought of him did more than make her look nervous. She just wanted to get out of there so she could go back to him, but she knew if she was too abrupt, Caden would be onto her.

Doing her best to cover up the fact that her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking, Kyla flopped onto Caden’s bed on her stomach and looked up at where he was sitting, shaking her head at the sight of him with an acoustic guitar. “I don’t know if I will ever get used to that,” she said.

His smile was still in place as he strummed on it. “I don’t know why it’s so weird for you,” he said. “I mean, I started this way.”

“Yeah, but you were eleven then,” Kyla argued. “And it was what, a year and a half before you switched over to electric?”

Caden rolled his eyes.

“Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she said. “I’m just saying it’s gonna take me a while to get used to.”

That made Caden curious. Looking into her eyes to read her, he almost let himself get vulnerable with her; but then Kyla ruined it by asking a question she knew she shouldn’t have.

“What was it like there?” she asked him hesitantly. “I mean, what was your life like?”

Caden’s smile faded in the way that she knew he was caught off guard, yet trying not to let her read his reaction to the question. Kyla narrowed in on the look and tried to read it. It was clear that there was something he was hiding…something he didn’t want her to know about it. The fact that he had avoided communication with her for so long (and at just about whatever cost) didn’t do much to speak against this theory. It was like he hadn’t wanted her to be a part of his life at all when he was out there, which was why Kyla had never gotten brave enough to directly ask him that question before. Part of her was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to handle the answer.

Why she thought she could handle it now was beyond her. Chances were, she couldn’t, and her asking it at all had been a stupid idea.

“It was okay,” Caden lied. He stopped playing his guitar and put it back on its stand, and he wasn’t smiling anymore.

The fact that Caden was lying was clear, but she didn’t know from which angle he was taking it, if it had been better than okay and he was just afraid to let her know it, or if it had been a whole lot worse. Kyla wished she could read him better, the way she used to be able to, but since she couldn’t, she had to fish around for more answers the old-fashioned way.

“Anybody out there you miss?” she asked him. Her voice was more tensed than it had been with the first question. She wished she could have controlled that better. Actually, she wished she could stop asking questions she didn’t want to hear the answer to altogether, but at this point, she had to know and she didn’t care whether or not she tortured herself with it. Kyla had already gone past the point of no return in her mind; if she didn’t get a straight answer from him now, her imagination was going to take her to every wrong one, and she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it until she knew.

“You never told me about anyone you knew out there,” she said.

Now Caden looked so uncomfortable he was practically twitching. Kyla could tell he regretted having already set down his guitar since he desperately needed something in his hands to keep himself from looking and feeling so uncomfortable right now.

He gave her a copout answer. “The people out there are way nicer than in Colorado,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s kind of strange.”

Kyla nodded and kept her lips pressed together, wondering why he was so determined to avoid the question. Then she realized how she had been doing the same thing to him, only a lot more directly than he was. Every time he tried to find out what was going on in her life, she stalemated him, and now here she was acting like a blatant hypocrite, pushing him to a place he was obviously not wanting to go. That should have stopped her, but it didn’t.

“Caden, is there something you want to tell me?” she asked him.

He swallowed hard, looking desperate for a way out, and seeing that look made Kyla nervous. There was something going on, just like she’d suspected all along. But just before Caden could say something in response, Melissa Howell threw open the glass sliding door of his bedroom and barged in unannounced.

“I brought you some blueberry lemon pound cake and tea,” she told them, carrying an elaborate tray of perfectly arranged cake slices and lemon wedges and chilled tea glasses with bright blue straws in them.

Where Caden normally would have been irritated with such an interruption from his mother, he seemed grateful for it now. “Thanks, Mom,” he told her. “Looks amazing.”

Kyla smiled tensely at Melissa, thinking her timing couldn’t possibly have been worse. But then, maybe it was for the best. With Caden this uncomfortable, he was probably eager to let her leave, which would bring Kyla that much closer to seeing Nathaniel.

The thought of him made her heart flutter, and suddenly she forgot entirely about her suspicions of what had been going on with Caden in Nashville. Somehow that was the last thing she was concerned with anymore.

“I should probably get home,” Kyla told them both. Then she explained in Caden’s direction, “I never told Matthew where I was going when you kidnapped me earlier.”

Melissa looked disappointed and Kyla quickly added, “Think you could wrap some of this up for me so I can take it home to Matthew?”

Melissa’s smile returned and she shuffled out of the room happily, telling her on her way, “I most certainly can!”

Caden grabbed one of the pieces of cake off the plate before his mom took it away. Stuffing it in his mouth made a convenient excuse for him to not have to get back to Kyla’s question right away, but even though she knew exactly what he was doing, she decided not to call him on it.

“You go get that cake from Mom,” he told her with his mouth full. “I’ll be in the Jeep.”

Kyla laughed at him a little and said “okay” as he left his bedroom. As Caden walked away from her, she bit her lip, her heart sinking again as she asked herself why he was dodging her on this. As anxious as she was to get back to Nathaniel, that question was still prodding at her that seemed to create a chasm between her and her best friend. Whatever had happened in Nashville, it still had her so troubled. And she didn’t know why.

Kyla went back into the house and retrieved the brown cake box wrapped in twine with six perfectly packaged slices wrapped in wax paper inside of it. Melissa was ridiculous about things like that. She pretty much made it her goal in life to put Martha Stewart to shame.

“Thank you,” Kyla said as she took the box from her.

Melissa gave her a kiss on the cheek and scooted her out the door. “Come back and see me soon!” she insisted.

Kyla felt nervous at the thought of that, but she forced another smile for Melissa and tried to cover it up. Climbing into Caden’s Jeep, she set the cake box in the backseat, buckled her seatbelt and told herself to breathe.

This was not going to be an easy ride home.

. . . . .

Thinking on the real answer to Kyla’s question, Caden had an acidic taste in his mouth. He remembered how miserable he had been in Nashville, how he had no real friends out there and was constantly alone; and the few friends he ever made through church or mutual friends of his family ended up being fake, two-faced liars who stabbed him in the back and did everything they could to cut down what he knew he was supposed to do. All they had done was make him doubt what he’d heard and make him feel crazy, and reinforced that he could never trust anyone with the deep things of his heart. He couldn’t even trust Kyla with this, because she was too wrapped up in it.

Everything about it was for her, and if she knew that, it would bring them to a point he was determined to avoid; the point he had been avoiding for years. If she knew what she really was to him, it could end everything he had with her, and that was something Caden simply couldn’t risk.

When the distinct feeling of anxiety struck him that Caden knew hadn’t come from him, he glanced at Kyla and noticed the way she was looking out the window. She was trying to be discreet about it, but what he saw in her eyes matched perfectly with the anxiousness he felt in her spirit. And the fact that she wasn’t pressing him about Nashville like he had expected her to was also a little telling.

It was more than uncharacteristic of her; it was suspicious. She seemed far more eager to get home than she should have. There was nothing about her home that Kyla was ever anxious to return to, but right now there was clearly something she wanted to get back to…or someone.

That last thought made Caden nervous. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

Kyla made herself look away from the window. “I’m fine,” she said.

Caden didn’t buy that for a second. It was obvious in just looking at her that something was going on beyond her discomforting thoughts about him in Nashville, but he didn’t push it. He just let it go and kept driving, having to force himself at several points not to ask her again.

Kyla looked twice as anxious when they pulled up Ponderosa, like she was looking for someone, which backed up Caden’s speculation and made him all the more nervous. He was hesitant to let her go because something just felt wrong to him in his spirit; but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Caden was frustrated, and he knew for his sanity he couldn’t let himself think too deeply on why Kyla looked the way she did or what she was so strung up about. He wasn’t sure he could handle that right now. With all he wanted to say to her, (but knew that he couldn’t) he let her leave with a generic, “I’ll see you later.”

After all, that was all they ever did anymore. Just as there was no longer and trust between them, there wasn’t any truth either.

Chapter Six

Kyla was edgy when she came into the house. Matthew gave her a look from where he was eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs at the kitchen counter.

“Have you gotten any dinner?” Kyla asked him.

He shrugged and kept munching on his Cocoa Puffs. Kyla sighed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going,” she apologized as she set the drawing pad she had pulled from behind the plant on the kitchen table.

Matthew eyed it for a second, then turned back to his cereal bowl.

“Caden thought he would be cute tonight and kidnap me and take me to band practice with him,” Kyla explained.

Matthew shrugged again, but he only put about half as much effort into it this time. “I knew where you were,” he said.

Kyla realized Alexa must have told him. She didn’t know why that made her uneasy.
“Do you want me to make you some real food?” she offered.

He shook his head and sipped the remainder of the now chocolate-flavored milk that was left in his bowl.

Kyla felt a little sad. She didn’t like it when her brother was closed off to her like this. She didn’t blame him for it; she just didn’t like it.

“I’m going to bed,” she told Matthew as he got down from his stool at the counter and put his dishes in the sink. She gave him a kiss on the back of his head and went up to her room with her drawing book, slipping it back in between her mattresses the second she shut the door behind her.

Kyla walked over to the window and looked out at the street for Nathaniel. Her heart sank when she didn’t see him, and then her mind started playing tricks on her, making her question if she really had seen him. Then she remembered what it felt like when he touched her and she knew she hadn’t hallucinated it. No hallucination could mimic that feeling.

She kept looking out the window anxiously, not sure if she was going to see him walking up the street or if he was out there watching her from the trees. Her heart was beating so hard in anticipation she felt like she was about to pass out from an unbalanced level of oxygen. Kyla waited there, paced around her room a little, then came back to the window and waited some more.

But Nathaniel didn’t show up.

She was crushed when she didn’t see him. She didn’t understand. She had thought surely he would be as eager to see her as she was to see him.

Kyla tried to sleep, but ended up staring at her ceiling instead for the majority of the night. She didn’t want to stay awake, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. It wasn’t safe for her cardiac function; that was much obvious when the mere thought of Nathaniel touching her shot her blood pressure through the roof. But she just couldn’t help it. The intensity that had been there between them was so far heightened even from before, it consumed her every thought that night (as well as her heart and everything in between.)

Kyla knew if she didn’t see him soon, she might very well go out of her mind.

. . . . .

It was still up on the mountain. The heat that had beaten into it during the day dissipated that evening, making the temperature perfect and the calm night air rest coolly against Nathaniel’s skin. Not that a thing like that should matter to Nephilim like he and Caleb. They had been trained to stand watch under the harshest conditions imaginable, equipped for anything the elements could throw at them. But being up here now, Nathaniel couldn’t help but enjoy it.

The weather was just one of the many earthly things he had started to take more notice of.

After leaving Kyla on Winding Valley Road, Nathaniel and Caleb had taken up watch at the point Ethan had chosen on the mountain before he’d gone back to London and reported him to Seth. Nathaniel wasn’t going to think about that, though. Ethan’s past disloyalty was not his concern right now; watching over those who were below them on this mountain was.

“So help me understand this a little better,” Caleb said as he looked out over the valley and down at the Howell’s home. “Who exactly are the boy and his sister?”

Nathaniel resisted the urge to grimace. “Caden and Alexa Howell,” he answered. “Eli made specific mention of them in his notes; that Donovan is afraid of the boy and that the child is protected.”

Caleb nodded thoughtfully, keeping his eyes on the property. “I can see that,” he murmured, amazed at the level of angelic activity over the place. “They really don’t mess around where she’s concerned, do they?”

Nathaniel told him, “No, they don’t.”

“Do you know why?” Caleb asked him.

Nathaniel was thoughtful before he answered him. “She has extraordinary gifting. Possibly even more than we have seen.”

Caleb looked at him. “You think she might be more than a seer?”

“I’m not sure,” Nathaniel said. “But I can’t say I would be surprised to learn that she was more. It’s difficult to put into words, what it feels like to be near her. She is…exceptionally powerful.”

Caleb looked intrigued.

“As far as I can see it,” Nathaniel explained, “each of them has something we need; something in the way of the…abilities they carry. Not a single one of them is normal.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, analyzing the situation, “so we know the little girl is a seer. What’s the deal with this Caden guy?”

Nathaniel didn’t fight back his grimace this time. “I’m not sure,” he said flatly. “But if it’s enough to make Donovan afraid…”

Caleb finished the thought, “Then it’s gotta be important.”

Nathaniel nodded, agitated by the idea. He hated needing Caden Howell. He hated not knowing why they even did.

“And his relation to Kyla?” Caleb asked him.

Nathaniel flinched and Caleb knew he’d struck a nerve.

“He’s her best friend,” Nathaniel replied robotically. “They grew up together.”

Caleb analyzed his brother’s expression (or lack thereof) and a sly, curious smile started to rise on his face. He looked back at Caden’s bedroom, but he didn’t say another word about whatever he was thinking. It irritated Nathaniel a great deal, too. He would rather Caleb just come out with it than think things in his head without verbalizing them to him.

“So what’s the plan?” Caleb asked him.

Nathaniel re-emphasized, “We are here for two purposes; to protect Kyla and the Howell’s, (while gathering as much new information as we can about them) and to lay low and out of sight.”

That was what he told him, but in his mind, Nathaniel also remembered Aria’s key. He knew he had another purpose here that he hadn’t uncovered yet; he just didn’t know what it was or how to find it. And until he knew, he wasn’t going to bring Caleb into it. His purpose for bringing his brother to Woodland Park in the first place was to keep him from danger, not to throw him right back into it.

“I meant the plan about your uncle,” Caleb said.

Nathaniel sighed. He knew they would have to deal with Howard Blake in the morning, and he really wasn’t looking forward to that. “We’ll need to take care of that, too,” he said. “For tonight, we stay on watch.”

Caleb groaned dramatically. “I hate nightwatch.”

Nathaniel smirked at him a little. “I suppose I could have left you back in London to take your chances with the witches that are trying to kill you.”

“Point taken,” Caleb said. Then he settled himself in as best he could, putting his hands behind his head and fixing his sight below. “So when do I get to meet her?” he asked Nathaniel.

“Not yet,” Nathaniel told him. “I need to take it easy on her, try to gain her trust again. The last time we were together before tonight was slightly…traumatic.”

Caleb contemplated that for a moment and Nathaniel could tell there were wheels turning in his brain. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what his brother was thinking, so he didn’t ask. Nathaniel just stayed with him on watch and wondered, wishing he could go back to Kyla like he knew she expected him to, but knowing when he did that he would have to explain.

That was something Nathaniel just wasn’t ready for.

. . . . .

It was a slow afternoon in the coffee shop. The customers were in a bad mood because of the heat, Kyla’s manager, Morgan, was in a bad mood because Cody wasn’t proving to be as great of a hire as they’d hoped, and Kyla was in a bad mood because she hadn’t seen Nathaniel last night after their rendezvous on Winding Valley Road. Instead she was stuck here cleaning up after Cody and correcting him on everything he did wrong. Genius as the kid was at music, coffee was not his forte.

When Morgan got frustrated enough with him, she passed him off to Kyla, forcing her to drop whatever she was supposed to be doing and try and get across to him what her manager was unable to. Kyla wasn’t happy about the arrangement, but she did it because she wanted Cody to succeed at this. After all, she was the one who convinced Morgan he’d be able to pull it off. She also loved the kid…even if he did suck at pulling shots and steaming milk.

It was as Kyla was explaining to Cody for the third time how to correctly make a half-calf vanilla white mocha soy latte (which he’d just botched on their last customer) when the bell on the door chimed to announce the entrance of a new one. Two new ones actually; Melissa and Alexa Howell.

Kyla beamed when she saw them come in. Walking around the counter to greet them, she gave them each a hug, and as soon as Melissa spotted Cody behind her, she insisted that he do the same.

“Don’t you make me come back there, Cody Fletcher!” she threatened him in a completely unintimidating, motherly way. Melissa was good at that.

After giving Cody a huge bear hug and doting on him for longer than he was comfortable with, Melissa turned back to Kyla and told her how wonderful it was to have her over again last night. “I miss the days when all of you kids would live at our house during the summer.”

Kyla felt uneasy remembering last night, and also remembering last summer. She wasn’t sure which made her feel more nervous.

“My vote is for another one of those crazy band pool parties you always used to throw,” Melissa said.

Cody agreed with her readily, but Kyla forgot to. She was too distracted being pulled even deeper into her memory of last night, of splashing in the pool with Caden…of everything that happened after.

Alexa didn’t say a word, just stared at her. It made Kyla uncomfortable enough that she walked back behind the counter and asked them, “What can I get for you ladies?”

Melissa told her she wanted a non fat mocha latte with extra whipped cream and Kyla smiled to herself. She loved that woman so much.

“What do you want, honey?” Melissa asked her daughter.

Alexa pointed to a giant sugar cookie with pink frosting and white icing drizzle in the pastry case. They called them “Princess Cookies” and nine times out of ten, that was what little girls Alexa’s age would always order.

I guess she isn’t entirely abnormal, Kyla thought to herself as she pulled the most heavily frosted Princess Cookie she could find from the case.

She felt a little bad for thinking that and knew she really shouldn’t be. She loved Alexa…she really did. Kyla might not have understood her, but she loved her just the same. So what if the girl wasn’t normal. What was normal in Kyla’s life anymore?

“Do you have Melissa’s drink?” Kyla asked Cody.

He insisted he was on it, but when Kyla saw him making it wrong, she shot Melissa a worried look and rushed over to help him. Melissa just giggled and rummaged through her purse for her wallet. When Kyla saved the fat free mocha, Cody slunk dejectedly to the backroom to help Morgan stock the shelves. It was about the only thing he couldn’t mess up (though at that point Kyla wouldn’t have put it past him.)

Melissa talked in a hushed voice with her hand on Alexa’s head as she happily munched on her cookie (which had temporarily distracted her from giving Kyla unsettling looks.) “He looks miserable,” Melissa whispered.

Kyla sighed and dropped dramatically over the counter. “I need out of here!” she said in a voice muffled by the arm in front of her face.

Melissa laughed. “When are you off?” she asked her.

“Three hours and twenty-two minutes until I’m free to go run,” Kyla answered without even thinking about it.

“Not that you’re counting,” Melissa said sarcastically.

Kyla smiled at her. “No, never,” she said.

Melissa shook her head. “I don’t understand how anyone could be disciplined enough to run like you do.”

Kyla sighed. “Trust me,” she said, “it takes more discipline for me not to.”

Melissa shook her head at the thought. “So where are you running tonight?” she asked her.

Kyla leaned against the counter. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m kind of sick of all my usual places, so I was thinking of running the Red Rocks/Dakota Ridge loop.”

Alexa stopped nibbling on her cookie, looking thoughtful again for a moment, but she didn’t say anything.

“Haven’t been there in a while?” Melissa asked.

“No, not really,” Kyla admitted. She had spent the past year trying to stay away from the places that reminded her too much of Caden, but now that he was back, there wasn’t really a point to that anymore. She figured she may as well get back to running her favorite trails.

“You just be careful,” Melissa told her. “I still say you’re too pretty to run alone.”

Kyla tried to play the last comment off like it was no big deal, but there was too much truth to Melissa’s observation; at least the danger part of it. Not that her being intercepted and attacked but subhuman creatures with wings had anything to do with her being “pretty.”

Melissa called goodbye to Cody where he was still in the back room with Morgan, and they saw an arm reach out and wave.

Kyla smiled. “Hopefully I will see you soon?” she said before the two of them left.

“I insist on it,” Melissa told her.

As the Howell women walked out the front door with their goodies in hand, Kyla couldn’t help but question the peculiar look she had seen in Alexa’s eyes. She wrote it off once they were gone, concluding that as nice as she had tried to be about it earlier, she had been right in her first assumption: Nothing about Alexa Howell was normal.

. . . . .

The morning after their nightwatch on the mountain, Caleb and Nathaniel approached Howard Blake. Just as Nathaniel had suspected, his uncle was less than thrilled to see his distant nephew, which made the situation uncomfortable, but not impossible. They told Howard they were on summer break from school and passing through (though they failed to mention to or from where) and that they wanted to do some rock-climbing in the area. They asked Uncle Howard if they could crash at his place for a few nights, and though he was reluctant, the man agreed to it begrudgingly (which was the only way he ever agreed to anything.)

Caleb and Nathaniel gave each other a look when Howard left the room, the same idea striking them both, that they needed to scope the place out and discern if there were any Nephilim lurking around or keeping watch on the place that they would do well to avoid. Thus far, Nathaniel had no reason to believe that Donovan was privy to his location, but with that one, he knew he could never be too careful.

As soon as Howard retreated back to his study where he spent most of his days here, Nathaniel told Caleb under his breath, “You stay here. I’m running the perimeter.”

Caleb wanted to protest; that much was evident in his eyes, but Nathaniel gave him a warning glare and he shrunk back.

Making sure his uncle was safely in his study and that his groundskeeper, Miguel, was nowhere in sight, Nathaniel slipped out the window of his room completely undetected. Being that it was broad daylight, he didn’t expect to find anything, and he didn’t. As it appeared, no one had become aware of his hiding place here. It was actually a bit strange to him. He had hardly been as subtle about it as he knew he should have been, bringing Kyla back here with him on multiple occasions (be it for the purpose of bandaging her up when she was broken or just being as close to her as he could.) Nathaniel thought of the night Ethan told him Donovan and Balak were watching him with Kyla and he wondered how they could have missed where he had ended up since he had gone straight back to the estate.

Then he thought of Aria.

If she really was protecting him like she claimed, she could have shielded him from their sight at that point. Nathaniel reached into his pocket and pulled out the key she had given him in London. He had to know what this was about. Keeping Caleb safe was obviously his priority, (and Kyla after him) but still, he had to know what else he was doing here. He had to know how much truth there was to what Aria had told him.

Nathaniel made a bitter face at the thought. As if an angel would lie…

Then he thought of the Watchers, of his father, and he determined that they absolutely could.

But not an angel like Aria.

“What am I doing here?” Nathaniel said out loud. As he asked the question, Aria’s words came back to his memory.

To fight for the future, you must go back to your past. You cannot keep hiding from it and expect to stay alive. If you don’t stop running, you will never find the key that will win this battle, and then everything you have fought for, everything you have done will be completely in vain.

Nathaniel furrowed his brow, frustrated. As far as he knew, this was the only place he had that tied him to his past, and he had found nothing here so far. “What were you talking about?” he asked out loud again, feeling foolish directing the question at someone who wasn’t even there.

Nathaniel didn’t get an answer. He didn’t expect to, but for some reason he couldn’t get his mother’s face out of his mind. It irritated him, having to see it. He didn’t like remembering her face. Seeing it made him feel too many things he didn’t want to feel, so he shoved it away and went back to the estate where Caleb was waiting for him.

When Nathaniel got back to Falcon’s Rest, he found Caleb lying on his back on the bed he had claimed. Nathaniel came in through the window and Caleb spun around and stood to his feet. “Anything?” he asked anxiously.

Nathaniel told him, “We’re clear.”

“So what’s our next move?” Caleb asked.

“Your next move is to stay put,” Nathaniel said. “Mine is to find Kyla.”

Caleb wrinkled his nose and scowled. He wasn’t good at staying put.

. . . . .

Kyla drove out to the trail that ran through Red Rock Canyon, nostalgia sweeping over her the second she stepped out of the car. She didn’t know why she didn’t come here more often; it was so full of incredible memories for her. Mostly memories of running out here in the grueling heat with her Cross Country team, and quite a few of just her and Caden before everything had gotten so painful and complicated between them.

That was when Kyla remembered why she didn’t come here anymore. It hurt her to remember the happy things.

It wasn’t that she and Caden weren’t working everything out now and that she didn’t have him back; it just wasn’t the same. There was always that lingering fear that he would leave her again, or if he didn’t leave, that she would lose him in some way. But then, Kyla had that fear over everyone she loved. She had for two years.

Balancing precariously as she stretched her quads before she ran, Kyla was startled by a voice that she didn’t expect to hear, enough that she almost fell over.

“Hey,” the voice said from behind her.

She spun around quickly to see who it was; not that she needed visual confirmation to recognize that voice. “What are you doing here?” she asked Caden.

He was standing in front of her in his running clothes like the presumptuous little punk that he was. And he was smiling.

“What?” he asked her teasingly. “You really think I’d let you come to the Red Rocks without me?”

Kyla’s heart swelled at the sight of his smile. It was a real one; the kind she’d hardly seen since Caden had been home.

“Alexa told me you were coming here,” he said. “And given recent events, I thought you could use a bodyguard.”

So that explained the girl’s contemplative look in the coffee shop that afternoon. Kyla shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she muttered.

Caden didn’t respond to that, he just kept smiling. “So we doin’ the whole loop?” he asked her.

“You better believe it,” Kyla told him. “And you better start stretching now, ‘cause I’m not slowing down to wait for you!”

Caden laughed. “You sound mighty sure of yourself for someone who got beat last time she ran this trail with me.”

“I had a twisted ankle!” Kyla protested.

Caden rolled his eyes just to make her mad. “Sure, James, whatever you say.”

Kyla scowled and threw back at him, “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and show me what you got?” And the two of them took off running.

They both started out much too fast (like they usually did) and then about a half-mile into it, they settled into their pace. It was hot out; a whole lot hotter than most people knew Colorado could get. But being this high up in the mountains put them that much closer to the sun, which was absolutely brutal on their skin. Kyla had never been able to take the heat. That was why it didn’t surprise Caden when she ripped off her tank top and tucked it into the back of her running shorts. She had been doing that as long as they had been spending their summers running together.

Caden teased her by yanking her tank top out of the back of her shorts and she grabbed it back and swatted his legs with it. He didn’t fight back; he just laughed. It felt amazing being able to laugh with him again, just like it had last night in the pool. Kyla really couldn’t get over it.

They took a break amidst the oddly shaped rocks that had coined this place its name, stretching their legs as a happy nostalgic feeling swept them up in their memories of the past.

“Remember when we used to play hide and seek here?” Caden asked her.

Kyla gave him a look. “How could I ever forget that?” she asked. “I beat you every time.”

“Not every time,” he corrected her. “I believe there was a day in the summer before we started the fifth grade where I successfully threw a black mark on your record.”

“I totally let you win that day,” Kyla argued. “You had just had to put your dog down the night before and I felt bad for you.”

Caden frowned. “You did not. I won that fair and square.”

Kyla shoved him and he stumbled a step or two before he caught himself and pulled his leg back behind him to keep stretching. Caden laughed and then his smile faded a little as he contemplated something.

“I really miss that dog,” he said. “I miss all of it…what things used to be like.”

That hit her deeper than she wanted it to. “I miss it too,” she said softly.

Caden must have heard some kind of pain in her voice, because he quickly said, “Hey, none of that. We’re here now and that’s what matters.”

She tried to tell herself he was right, but she couldn’t feel the same way he did; not when she knew everything that had happened…all the things he didn’t know. Not when she knew how different everything was now.

The truth was, Kyla didn’t know if things could ever go back to the way they were, because it wouldn’t ever just be the two of them again. And as much as she had wanted that at one point, Kyla couldn’t bring herself to want that anymore.

Not when that would mean her not having Nathaniel.

She got up quickly, not wanting to continue this discussion or even those thoughts, and she started running back on the trail. Caden chased after her and they pushed themselves on the last few miles to the point that she almost collapsed when they got back to the cars. Then Kyla almost collapsed for an entirely different reason.

There, standing by the Civic waiting for her and looking more than surprised at the sight of the boy beside her, was Nathaniel.

. . . . . .

Caden could have killed him. He realized that when fury hit him at the sight of Nathaniel Blake; fury he wasn’t expecting to feel. But it came on him so fast he couldn’t even stop it. It was a reflex reaction, his stepping forward to confront him, but Kyla jerked him back quickly before he could take another. Caden’s eyes darted over to her fiercely, and when he saw her face he realized she already knew that Nathaniel was back. She had already seen him. Something about it made Caden feel betrayed. He wasn’t even sure if it was fair of him to feel that way, but he really didn’t care about fair right now.

“Caden, don’t,” Kyla said. She was afraid, no doubt remembering the last time he and Nathaniel had seen each other, but Caden’s adrenaline was so jacked up that he almost couldn’t care about that either.

Kyla turned to Nathaniel sharply and asked him, “What are you doing here?” It came out harsher than she seemed to mean for it to, and it surprised Nathaniel as well.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I thought you would be alone.”

Kyla looked panicked, and she wasn’t letting go of Caden (not that he couldn’t have broken out of her hold if he wanted to.) He figured he had better play along for the moment and restrain himself as much as he could if he wanted to find out what was really going on here. Throwing punches wasn’t going to get him answers, and in this instance there was a good chance it could get him killed. But he still couldn’t stop himself from throwing out, “Yeah, like I would ever let her be alone after…”

Kyla cut him off. “Caden! I mean it. Stop.”

Caden was burning. As much as his words should have provoked Nathaniel, he didn’t look provoked. He just kept his eyes fixed on Kyla. He seemed concerned and apologetic, and Caden couldn’t figure out why.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he told her. “I’m sorry.”

Kyla’s eyes softened in a desperation Caden had seen in her before. She didn’t want him to leave, but she was holding back from saying it out loud, probably for his benefit. The thought infuriated him. She looked torn, but Caden didn’t care. He grabbed her and pulled her away from Nathaniel on protective instinct, and instead of reacting to the gesture violently like Caden expected him to, Nathaniel looked completely defeated. He didn’t take offense to Caden pulling her away from him; his strength just seemed to falter and he looked weakened by it instead. Nathaniel didn’t even say a word to him; he just dropped his head and turned away from them, getting back on the Ducati he had come here on (which only made Caden hate him that much more.)

That was confusing, but Caden didn’t waste his time questioning Nathaniel’s emotional state of being. He just waited until he was gone and then turned to Kyla and questioned her.

“How did he know you would be here?” he demanded.

Kyla looked frightened, but she didn’t answer him.

“Kyla, how did he know?”

Finally she blurted out, “I don’t know!”

Caden clenched his fists. “Great,” he said. “Now he’s stalking you?”

Kyla tried to defend him and Caden flashed her a look. “If I let you leave, you’ll go after him, won’t you?” he accused her.

She pressed her lips together, but she didn’t deny it. It felt about as good as a kidney punch. “Fine,” he said, giving into his anger. “Go.”

Kyla looked at him, confused. “Go after him!” he told her, waving his hand in the direction Nathaniel had left.

Kyla bit her lip and looked up the highway, then she turned back to Caden. He wouldn’t look at her; he couldn’t. He felt too betrayed.

Kyla didn’t say another word to him; she just got in the Civic and drove away. And once she was out of sight, Caden halfway collapsed, resting his hands on his legs and doubling over so he could breathe. But even then, he was hardly able to, and it wasn’t the six miles they had just run together. It was his best friend. It was Nathaniel Blake. It was the feeling he couldn’t shake that he was going to lose her.

. . . . .

Kyla couldn’t decide whether she had made the right decision to leave Caden back at the Red Rocks. It was stupid, and on a trust level it probably set her back miles with her best friend, but she was so out of her mind desperate to see Nathaniel that that logic couldn’t find her in the moment when Caden had told her to leave.

Now that she was driving back in the direction of Woodland Park (with the full intention of heading straight to the Blake Estate) Kyla rethought the move. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel nervously, unable to decide what to do. Then finally she turned onto Paradise Circle and headed back home, determining that she would make her decision there.

Just in case running back to Nathaniel right now proves to be a horrendous mistake, she thought. There was a good chance of that. And yet Kyla still had a difficult time convincing herself that this should dissuade her.

She played through both scenarios in her mind; driving up to Falcon’s Rest to see Nathaniel and calling Caden to apologize to him and ask him to come over. But when Kyla pulled onto Ponderosa, her decision was made for her when she saw the gorgeous blonde on the midnight black Ducati waiting for her up the road.

Her heart crashed into her chest at the sight of Nathaniel, and quicker than she saw him, any and all thoughts and concerns she had about Caden fled from her quickly along with it. She scrambled to get out of the car, knowing she looked anything but smooth doing it, but right now, Kyla couldn’t have cared less. She just had to get to him.

Nathaniel had parked the bike enough of a distance up the road that she would be able to see him, but so that Matthew and Loni wouldn’t. He was waiting for her, though; that much was obvious. It was also what had Kyla scrambling to reach him as fast as was humanly possible.

She ran at first, but the closer she got to him, the more she slowed down. She didn’t mean to; being near to him again was just so overwhelming that the awe of it hit her every time she ever was.

She was also afraid after their encounter at Red Rock Canyon.

The sky was dusked, making it difficult for her to see his eyes clearly, but that didn’t inhibit her ability to read him at all.

He looked easily as nervous as she was as he told her, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to show up like that. I didn’t know you were with him…” He sounded frustrated by his own stupidity and irritated on the last sentence.

“I didn’t know I would be,” Kyla said. “He just showed up.”

Nathaniel furrowed his brow. “I should have been more careful.”

Kyla stepped up to him and put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s better that he knows you’re here.”

Nathaniel looked at her. “How can that possibly be better?”

Kyla tilted her head a little. “Well for one,” she said, “it’s one less thing I have to lie to him about.”

She saw the tension come into his face and realized how selfish that was to their purpose. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that’s petty.”

Nathaniel shook his head, cringing like he felt guilty. “No, it’s not,” he said. He looked tortured over something and Kyla wasn’t sure what it was. It took him a moment before he was able to look at her, much less speak again. “I’m sorry…” Nathaniel finally said.

“For what?” Kyla asked him.

He sneered at her in disgust even though she wasn’t the one he was disgusted with. “For this,” he said. “For everything. For ever putting you in this position in the first place.”

“It wasn’t like you tried to,” Kyla said. “It just happened. It’s not your fault that I’m in this, Nathaniel.”

“How do you know that?” he threw back at her. “What if there was something I could have done to stop it?”

“Cut it out,” she said firmly. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. We’ve already been over this. If I wanted out, I wouldn’t be here with you right now, and that is my decision to make.”

Her hand on his arm was burning from its contact with his skin. Nathaniel’s eyes darted down to it and she knew he could feel it too. “Kyla…” he started to say. He slid his other hand along her shoulders and slowly to the back of her head when his eyes darted up behind her and he dropped his hand quickly.

It was Matthew.

Kyla didn’t know how he had seen them, but somehow he had realized that she and Nathaniel were out here. She knew this because he was now making his way up the road toward them with an unhappy, very set look on his face.

That wasn’t like her brother.

Kyla stepped back from Nathaniel and swallowed nervously. “What are you doing out here?” she asked him.

Matthew didn’t look at her. He kept his gaze fixed on Nathaniel, but he didn’t say a word to him. Luckily Nathaniel broke the awkward silence by extending a hand to him.

“You must be Matthew,” he said. “I’m Nathaniel.”

Matthew reluctantly shook his hand, but he kept looking at him suspiciously. Then Kyla watched as something happened; something she didn’t understand. Matthew’s countenance started to change as he looked at Nathaniel, and where he had been angry before, he began to look confused. Whatever it was about, it upset him, and he pulled his hand back quickly. It surprised Kyla a little because the move was so abrupt. Clearly, something was really disturbing him, and for her life, Kyla couldn’t imagine what it was. Even Nathaniel didn’t seem to know.

Turning toward his sister, Matthew said, “I need your help inside.”

She didn’t know if it was just an excuse or if that would even matter at this point. Kyla had to do whatever she could to get Matthew away from Nathaniel. Bringing her little brother this close to her silver-winged hero was not something she was comfortable with, and it wasn’t even until that moment that she realized she felt that way. Her keeping them apart all this time was her way of unconsciously protecting Matthew, but now with the two of them face to face, Kyla was terrified. It wasn’t just about what Matthew might see in Nathaniel, either. It was also the thought of having that wall breached that she didn’t even realize she’d set up. Kyla knew that Nathaniel would never knowingly endanger Matthew or even let anything happen to him. But even in her knowing that, she couldn’t take the risk.

She would never risk her little brother. Not for anything.

“I’ll be right there,” she tried to tell Matthew, but he was forceful in his response.

“I’d rather you come with me now,” he said.

Nathaniel nodded to Kyla to let her know it was okay, and she looked at him apologetically before she turned to go back inside with Matthew.

Kyla was frustrated that they had been interrupted again. It was about to drive her mad, not being able to talk to Nathaniel…not being able to be close to him.

Soon, Kyla told herself as she walked away. You’ll be alone with him soon.