“Nope,” I said. I brushed his hand aside and then leaned down to kiss him again. I needed him to see that I wasn’t just in this to get off one time – that there was more to it than that – and the lesson wasn’t going to stick if I let him tempt me. “I’ll get a cloth and some water.”
I headed into the bathroom and cast around. There was a stack of towels on a shelf over the sink, so I grabbed the smallest one I could see and ran the tap. I wiped off my hand and came back into the room, climbing up beside Cade again on the bed and reaching to swipe it across his stomach when he tried to take the towel from me. At the intimate touch, the muscles of his stomach clenched with tension and then relaxed. “Fuck, that’s cold!” he exclaimed, but I didn’t think that was all it was.
He was still flighty around me. Nervous. I needed to do something, say something, to fix that.
“God, Red,” I said, with a light chuckle. “You really –”
The radio on our little table buzzed into life, and both me and Cade stared at it in surprise.
“Cade? You there?”
Cade moved faster than I would have imagined to be possible. Within seconds he had thrown himself over the side of the bed and rushed to pick up the radio, immediately speaking back into it. “Caleb? Is that you?”
“Hey, little bro,” Caleb’s familiar tones replied, and I sank my head into my hands in relief. Caleb was alive.
As much as I’d been trying to stay upbeat and positive for Cade’s sake, I’d been worried about my friends, too. In fact, I hadn’t realized how worried I was until I heard Caleb’s voice. Heard proof that he was alive.
“Oh my God,” Cade said, his voice tight and fast with emotion. “Oh, God, Caleb, I was so worried…”
“You think I wasn’t wearing the floorboards out, pacing up and down thinking about how Mom was going to kill me for getting us both killed?” Caleb asked, and I could hear a chuckle in his voice – but also how stressed he must have been. He was telling the truth about the thoughts that had been running through his head.
“Oh, God, Mom,” Cade said, with a chuckle back. He wiped the back of one of his hands across his eyes. “You think anyone told her anything?”
“Are you still under the snow?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, I am too, so there’s no way anyone told her anything,” Caleb laughed. “You know for sure we would have been out of here by now.”
Cade laughed back. His laughter sounded kind of wet – like there were tears right behind it. “Caleb…” he said, once it had died off his lips. His voice was almost hoarse.
“It’s alright, little bro,” Caleb said. “We’re safe over here. Aubrey’s talking about how she never gets to see me because of football practice and she’s actually glad it happened. How about you? You holding up well?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re doing okay,” Cade said. My ears perked up a little at the fact he had included me in that ‘we’. Was that how he thought of us? Were we a ‘we’?
“Thorny’s not stealing all your food? He’s looking after you?”
Cade glanced in my direction and quickly away. “The food is safe,” he said. “We’re okay over here.”
I bit my lip. What did that mean?
He’d glanced away from me like he was ashamed – and it didn’t sound like he was going to mention absolutely anything at all about what just happened between us. Okay, so it just happened, and we hadn’t had a chance to talk about it yet. But I was the supposedly straight athlete with a reputation to protect – so why did it look to my eyes like he was the one with the shameful secret?
“I’d better go,” Caleb said. “They told us not to use this channel for too long – just one quick chat to let you know I’m okay. They need the lines clear for their rescue operation. They wanted me to wait until tomorrow, but I got them to agree, so we shouldn’t push it.”
“Right,” Cade said with a sigh. “They told us that, too. I guess I’ll speak to you really soon.”
“Yeah, really soon,” Caleb said. “Tomorrow, that’s what they said. We’ll be out tomorrow.”
I saw the muscles around Cade’s jaw tense. The same way they had when Caleb had asked about me. “Yeah, tomorrow. Bye, then,” he said, and I realized he’d decided to lie.
He was going to let Caleb think we were getting out of here tomorrow, too, when the rescuers actually told us it was going to be a few days.
So, was he trying to save Caleb’s feelings by not telling him about us, too?
There was silence on the other end of the radio – no response, not even a crackle. Cade sighed after a moment and put the radio down on the table where it had been before, rubbing a hand across his forehead and then his eyes.
“That’s really great news,” I said, trying to get him to engage with me again. I had the feeling it would be a good idea for us to talk. To set some expectations and some boundaries – of which I didn’t think I had many at all.
