Cade fumed as she stormed into the darkened kitchen, her hand still in a vice-like grip around Ethan’s wrist. Her teeth were clenched tightly, and her face was set in an unattractive scowl, but she was long past the point of caring. The last month had been the ultimate test of her tolerance as she and Brandt had been forced to watch Ethan pace and mutter and snap at anyone who dared to come into the living room and disturb whatever he had going on in his head. Her tolerance had certainly failed the test; she was only moments away from punching the man in the face as hard as she could. She would have already done it if it weren’t for the very real concern that she would break something in the process. In her hand, of course, not in his face.
Cade goaded Ethan into the center of the kitchen and let go of his wrist. Her hand had been curled around his arm tightly enough that when she released him, her fingers ached. She flexed them a few times before she crossed her arms over her chest. Once the kitchen door had swung to a standstill behind them, she finally spoke.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked. Her voice was tight; it almost hurt as it choked its way up from her vocal cords. She dug her fingers into the undersides of her arms, scraping the nails over her skin as she struggled to maintain control. She wanted more than anything to dart forward and wipe the ugly look Ethan was giving her right off his face. Preferably with her fist. Resist, resist, she repeated to herself silently.
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Ethan shot back. His tone mimicked Cade’s as he glared at her in return. They faced off for several more silent, tense minutes. It didn’t take Ethan long to shift his eyes away from Cade’s. Cade allowed a small, triumphant smirk to spread across her face before she stamped it back down and moved toward him.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Cade warned. She looked him over, from his face down to his feet and back up. She wasn’t happy with what she saw. The man had dropped weight, and he looked too tired and thin. “Don’t tell me ‘nothing’ when I know damn well that you’re not acting like the man I’ve been friends with for the past seven years,” she continued. “You’re not acting like yourself at all. You’re fucking … cold. Hell, I’d even go so far as to say you’ve become cruel.”
“I have not!” Ethan protested, raising his voice.
Cade held up a hand to stop Ethan before he could say more and then jabbed her finger hard at the closed kitchen door behind her. “Then what the hell was that?” she demanded, struggling to keep her voice low. “The Ethan I know would never have suggested leaving others to suffer before Michaluk struck! Not when he had the means to do something about it! What is your problem?”
“Nothing, Ca—”
“Do not make me repeat myself,” Cade barked. “You know how much that pisses me off.”
A weighty silence fell between them. It sat on Cade’s shoulders, and she wasn’t sure she could shake it off. Especially not as she watched the way Ethan’s face crumpled. His shoulders sagged, and he looked away from her, almost as if he were ashamed of something. Cade hoped that that something was his behavior. She studied Ethan for a moment more and felt her anger begin to ooze away.
“Ethan?” she questioned.
Ethan didn’t look up at her. “I want … no, I need to go back to Memphis.”
Cade stared at him. An eyebrow slowly raised, seemingly of its own accord, as she took an involuntary step back. “You need to go back to Memphis why, exactly?”
Ethan hesitated and looked down at the floor between the two of them. Cade was oddly reminded of a school-boy on the brink of facing down a punishment for something he’d done wrong, and the impression left a sour taste in her mouth. She didn’t like how … reduced Ethan seemed to have become. She studied his face as she crossed her arms once more. When she finally spoke, her voice was as soft and gentle as she could make it in the face of her remaining irritation.
“You want to go back to look for Anna, don’t you?”
Ethan blew out a slow, heavy breath. He nodded with a reluctance so obvious that Cade had to resist the urge to slap him as her anger tried to well back up in her. He finally looked up at her, and his eyes were shiny, enough so that for the horrifying moment that passed before he answered her, Cade wondered if he’d actually been fighting tears. “I just have to know, Cade. I can’t deal with not knowing.”
“Well, you’re going to have to,” she snapped. It came out more harshly than she intended, but she didn’t regret the tone she had taken with him. Far from it. Cade was past the point of losing patience with Ethan, and she could only hope the hard stance she took with him would knock some sense into his obviously scrambled brain. “You have to deal with it, Ethan! You don’t have a choice!”
“Yes I do!” Ethan growled. For the first time in the conversation—and only the second time in their friendship that she could remember—Ethan raised his voice at her in anger. “I can go back and look for her!”
“She’s dead, Ethan!” Cade said as she struggled to maintain her own cool. She wasn’t going to lose her temper in front of him; she refused to give him the satisfaction. “You heard Lisa. She was in the hospital when it burned. She’s dead!”
“What if she’s not?” Ethan shot back. He did nothing to restrain his own anger as he took a step forward to match the one Cade had already taken toward him. “We don’t know for sure, Cade! We didn’t see her at all! We just left. How do I know she was even actually in that damned place? She could have been … hell, I don’t know, hiding somewhere or something!”
“You’re grasping at straws, Ethan! She’s dead!” Cade hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but the last two words came out in a shout. Silence dropped between them like an anvil again as they stared across the small space between them. Cade realized that she was panting in her anger, and she struggled to control her breathing before she ended up hyperventilating. She clenched her fists at her sides and dug her nails hard into her palms as she fought to maintain control of her emotions. She never lost it, not like that. She’d spent years honing the ability to keep tight control over every twinge of fear and anger and hopelessness that she felt. She didn’t know what had come over her, but she wasn’t going to be the one to back down. And she wasn’t going to let Ethan ruin every fragment of self-imposed training she’d ever had.
Ethan, for his part, looked stunned and hurt by Cade’s words. Before he could say anything, Cade spoke up once more. This time, her voice was quieter, more steady and more in control. She sent up a silent word of thanks as she began.
“Ethan, you can’t go back, okay?” When Ethan opened his mouth to interrupt, Cade held her hand up to stop him. “Wait, let me finish.” She paused to gather her thoughts, piecing them together one by one, and then she continued. “You haven’t been acting like yourself for the past month. Yeah, you were okay when we were initially getting the hell out of Dodge and trying to find your mother, though you acted like an ass to Brandt, and I doubt even you would argue that. But ever since we settled down here in Tupelo, you’ve been driving both of us absolutely insane. You’re cold, you’re distant, you’re careless, you have your ass eternally on your shoulders, and whether you want to hear it or not, you’ve become almost cruel.” She used the word again, even though it pained her to admit it. “You are not the Ethan I know. The Ethan I know would never have even considered suggesting sending two people back out into danger when he had the means to help them. I would ask what the hell has happened to you, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that.”
They stared at each other again after Cade finished her spiel. Ethan didn’t like what she had told him at all. He fought back a scowl as he slid his own arms up to cross over his chest again. His expression was cold as he watched her. When Ethan finally spoke, some of that frigidity filtered into his voice, and it was almost enough to make Cade shiver.
“I don’t trust them,” Ethan admitted. “You can hardly blame me for that. I don’t trust anyone out there. Look at the situation we’re living in! I barely tolerate Brandt being here, but at least he has a useful skill set, and he’s not totally incapable of helping out with keeping the three of us alive. Those two? I don’t know a thing about them, and I don’t trust them any further than I could throw them.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his blond hair, not looking directly at her for a moment. “I don’t want them here,” he continued. “With two more people to deal with, the length of time our supplies will last is cut in half.”
Cade stared at him incredulously, her eyes wide in surprise. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You think like that?”
“Of course I’m serious,” Ethan argued. “I’m looking at this from a practical standpoint, Cade. We can’t afford to take in every single survivor that comes in our general direction. I won’t risk any of us dying because of some stranger interjecting himself into our situation and taking up our supplies.” He blew out a breath and added, “They need to go.”
Cade shook her head. “Not just no, but hell no,” she said. “We are not forcing those men back out onto the street.”
“Then I’m going back to Memphis,” Ethan said decisively. His tone hinted at a finality that Cade sensed she was never going to be able to argue out of him. “And I’m going to look for Anna. You can come with me if you want, or you can stay here and take your chances with Brandt and those other two men.”
“You can’t possibly make me choose—”
Ethan cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “Cade. Which is it going to be?”
Cade looked up at him and bit her lip nearly hard enough to break the skin. She shook her head slowly as she tried to wrap her mind around what he had asked her to do.