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I drag my hand through my hair. “Jesus.” I’m jealous. I want it to be me who made her come. “She needs to push Reed harder.”
“He backed off when she tried last time.”
“He’s a red-blooded male. He’ll break eventually, and then he’ll understand how right she feels.”
Cade lets out a huff of air. “We all need to be in on this if it’s going to work.”
I nod. “Agreed. I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Laney
DUSK IS APPROACHING.
I sit on the porch in our lookout spot. We’ve long since given up watching out for rescue helicopters or planes. Now it’s just a peaceful spot to sit and look out over the forest.
Movement comes nearby, and I turn to find Darius joining me.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi yourself.”
He settles into the chair beside me. “Cade told me about you and him in the woods today.”
My cheeks heat. “Oh, right. Does it bother you?”
“Only in that I wish I was there.”
I’m not sure what to say. Instead of going over what happened today, I take the opportunity to change the subject.
“What was it like when you lost your sight?”
It’s a question I’ve been dying to ask him ever since we first met, but I never wanted to intrude before. Now we’ve grown closer, and I want us to be closer still. I want to know everything about him. I want to understand how his mind works, and what he’s feeling, and all the events in his past that made him the man he is today.
There’s something intensely masculine about Darius, but in a different way than Cade. He brings a calm sensitivity with it, and while I know he loses his temper, it’s mainly at his own frustrations than directed at anyone else.
“Terrifying,” he admits. “I was just a little kid, and I couldn’t get my head around the idea that I wasn’t going to get better again. My mom had only died a year or so earlier, and in my mind, when people got sick, they either got better or they died. That I’d gotten sick and was never going to make a full recovery simply refused to sink in. It didn’t help that when I dreamed, I still could see in my dreams. It was like when I was asleep, I had a whole world opened back up to me again, but then when I woke up, I was back in the dark.”
I reach out and take his hand, my heart breaking for the little boy he’d once been. “That must have been awful.”
“It was. I know people say kids are adaptable, but that didn’t mean I didn’t struggle. All I could think about was all the things I was missing out on, that I couldn’t go to school with my friends, and that I’d never play sports again, and that everyone would treat me differently.”
“Oh, Dax.”
“Cade was amazing, though. I swear, I don’t know what I’d have done without him. I know he blames himself for bringing the virus into the house and giving it to me, but it wasn’t his fault. He stuck around the whole time, except for when he had to go to school. He fought with Reed, trying to convince him to let him stay home with me and get homeschooled as well, but Reed put his foot down. He said I needed the one-on-one time with the tutor, which I did, and that Cade needed to get a regular education. Cade fought him so hard about it, but Reed didn’t back down.”
I picture them both as boys, a slightly older Cade fighting to be with his little brother. Cade has acted like an asshole toward me on plenty of occasions, but I find myself softening toward him.
“Did Cade really believe it was his fault you went blind?”
“He did.”
“Does he still?”
Darius twists his lips as he thinks. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I hope not. Besides, I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t lost my sight. I might have never picked up the violin.”
“What if you had the choice between being able to see and never playing the violin again?”
