“WHY ARE YOU SO QUIET?” I ask, plucking at a strand of my fraying cutoff shorts. Cade hasn’t said a word to me since we said our goodbyes to his family.
I had all these visions for what it’d be like to finally go out in public with Cade. None of them included having him ignore me.
We both sit in the truck, idling on the side of the curb as people rush around us.
“Cade?” I press. Nerves settle in my stomach. He won’t even look at me. His body is eerily still as he stares straight ahead.
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he shifts the car into drive and pulls away from the curb. I look in the mirror, watching the airport disappear behind us as I wonder what’s going through his head.
Cade doesn’t make me wait for long. As we’re pulling onto the highway, he glances over at me.
“What are we doing?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I’m good going wherever you want to.”
He shakes his head. “No. What are we doing with us, Goldie? You’re leaving in two days. What the hell are we thinking?”
I try to get him to look at me again, but he’s too focused on the road. His grip is so tight on the steering wheel that his knuckles are turning white. My mind races with so many answers, but he’s caught me so off guard that I don’t even know what to say.
“I don’t think we were thinking. I think we were feeling, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
He laughs. It’s bitter and cold, not the one I’ve fallen in love with. “That makes one of us. There’s so many things I see wrong with it.”
A pit forms in my stomach. I wish we weren’t driving so he could look at me. I wish I didn’t know him well enough to know that he’s shutting down. He’s shutting me out. “Like what?”
I know I shouldn’t ask it. I know I don’t want to hear whatever answer he gives me, but I can’t help myself. I’m a masochist and I want to know every detail going through his head, even if his sudden change in demeanor is bound to cause me hurt.
“Like you’re leaving. You’re leaving and I’m staying and there’s no way we can make this work with the distance between us.”
“People do long distance all the time.”
“People try long distance all the time,” he corrects, pulling the car off at an unfamiliar exit. Wherever he’s taking us, it isn’t home. I don’t even ask him where, I’m too caught up in the way he’s breaking my heart. “People don’t survive long distance all the time.”
My bottom lip quivers as I try my best to not cry. I will not cry over him. I will not cry like this. Most of all, I won’t let him do this to us.
Cade and I are different. We can survive this. I know my love for him is enough to survive anything. The problem is, I don’t know if he feels the same.
“Don’t do this,” I beg. “This was supposed to be our first real date. Don’t ruin it.”
He lets out an angry sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger. “God, I’ve fucked this up so bad,” he mutters under his breath. His jaw clenches so tight I can hear his teeth grind against each other in the quiet cab of the truck.
“What does that mean?”
He pulls into the parking lot of a retail shopping center. Angrily, he shifts the car into park and finally faces me. The look in his eyes makes my heart stop. He looks at me cold and unattached. You’d have no idea that last night I was staring into those copper eyes as he looked at me in what I swore was love.
“It means I should’ve never let this happen between us. Do you hear yourself? I took your virginity and I haven’t even taken you on a real date. That’s so fucked up. I’ve fucked up.”
I jolt at his last words, at the regret in his tone. Tears spill down my cheeks, no matter how much I fight them. “I don’t care. Every single one of our moments together have been perfect. I didn’t need a date. I just need you.”
He rakes his hands over his face. “Being at the airport made things real. In two days you’ll be getting on that plane, and you’ll say goodbye to Sutten.”
“You make it sound like it’s final.”
“Isn’t it? How often do you plan to come back?”
I shrug, quickly wiping the tears off my cheeks in hopes that he doesn’t catch them. “I don’t know. A lot? There’s breaks, and summer, and I can even try to transfer at the end of the semester and move back.”
“You don’t want to move back.”
“I can think for myself.” My words are cold, but he made me this way. His sudden mood change has me feeling all sorts of emotions, most of all rage and despair. “Stop telling me what I do and don’t want.”
Cade stares at me. I’d give anything to know what runs through his head, but his walls have gone back up. His defenses are high, and he’s retreating back to the Cade I knew before this summer. The one who was quiet and didn’t tell me what he was thinking.
The Cade that looked at me like Pippa’s friend, the person he grew up with, and not the girl he had feelings for.
Sighing, he opens his car door. I stare at him, my mouth hanging open as I try to piece together what’s happening. My door swings open. He takes a step back, his arms folding across his chest.
‘Follow me.”
