Chapter 7: In the Middle

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Cadence was ready to go to Aurora’s room. She headed back into the living area to see a smorgasbord laid out before her. The aroma of fresh bacon mingled with orange juice and pastries, sending her stomach into a tailspin. “Good grief,” she muttered sinking down into a chair at the overloaded table. “Now that’s what I call a surprise.”

“Well, we don’t do this very often, so I wanted you to have everything you might want,” Aaron replied from his spot across the room on the sofa. He closed his laptop and came over as Cadence dug in, but she knew he wouldn’t eat anything. “After you get back from Aurora’s, what do you want to do today?”

They’d talked about various touristy sites they could visit but hadn’t pinned anything down. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’d tell you to surprise me again, but something tells me we won’t have time for everything you might plan.” She bit into a crisp piece of bacon, and the flavor overwhelmed her taste buds. She hadn’t realized she was famished until she was faced with an endless supply of food. It dawned on her that if Elliott were there, he could easily put all of this away.

“Well, you think about it, and let me know,” he said, kissing her on the head before walking back to the sofa.

“Are you working?” she asked, wishing he could close his laptop. But then he’d have his IAC. It never ended. She’d already told him while they were in Fiji on their honeymoon neither of them would be utilizing their IACs and their laptops were staying in KC.

“Just checking a few things.” He said it as if it were no big deal, but she knew it was more than that.

She kept her comments to herself, though. Having been wedding obsessed since their last major hunt in April, she wasn’t one to tell him that he couldn’t pore over his work. Cadence popped the last bite of a muffin into her mouth and surveyed the table. Her stomach told her she’d had enough, but there were so many more pastries she wanted to try. Deciding they could wait until later and Aurora needed her, she wiped her hands off on a napkin, took another swig of orange juice, and crossed the room to kiss Aaron goodbye.

He closed his laptop as she approached, not in a secretive way but in order to signal she had his attention. “Good luck,” he said as she stooped to kiss him.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll need it.” Being good friends with both parties during a break up—or whatever this was—was never easy. She thought back to when Kash and Drew had broken up in high school and the horrible aftermath of that fight. Cadence could do without another situation like that. “Has Elliott checked in with you?”

“Yeah, he found a place to rent a motorcycle, and he’s on his way back to Kansas City.”

She shook her head. Part of her had hoped he’d stick around so that he could talk it out with Roar after she’d had a chance to calm down. But it seemed like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe whatever this was between them was over now. Maybe that was for the better.

“All right,” she said, stalling long enough. “I’ll be back.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile, and Cadence headed out the door, praying she’d know what to say. She was never very good at making people feel better.

Aurora’s room was just down the hallway, so she didn’t have much time to think about her words before her friend opened the door, her eyes red, and her nose drippy. Cadence opened her arms, and Aurora enveloped her, unable to speak through her tears.

Cadence smoothed back her long red hair, still tangled as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it since she’d gotten up. She was wearing her pajamas and smelled a little like Vampire. But Cadence let all of that go and tried to make her feel better. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Take some deep breaths. It’ll be okay.”

“It’ll... never... be... okay,” Aurora countered. She towered over Cadence, even though she had on shoes, and Aurora was barefoot, but at the moment, the Amazonian seemed like a little child.

Afraid her ribs might end up accidentally getting crushed, Cadence slipped out of her grasp and led her over to the sofa. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“He just... he never treats me like I matter, like he doesn’t even have to tell me where he’s going. And why does he need a strip club?” she shouted, tearing up again. “I thought that’s what I was supposed to be doing!”

Without knowing the intimate details of their arrangement, Cadence didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t address it. “I think you just need to try to take some deep breaths and calm down, sweetie,” she said, patting her friend’s knee. “I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this.”

Aurora had a wadded up tissue in her hand that looked like it was the only one she’d ever owned, so Cadence looked around for the box and spied it on a desk across the room. She brought it over, and Aurora broke into another diatribe about everything Elliott ever did that was stupid or unfair, and how she’d tried to reason with him and gotten nowhere. Cadence just listened, biting back interjections that seemed unjust to her absent friend since that’s not what Aurora needed to hear right now, and after almost an hour of talking and crying, she managed to say a few things that got Aurora feeling slightly better, like maybe some time away from each other was for the best, and Elliott hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time, so maybe he didn’t remember how to treat a lady. She didn’t say that she was confident Aurora wasn’t his girlfriend and that she needed to take a step back and think about that because she was pretty sure that had been Elliott’s argument when he’d tried to defend himself earlier, and he’d gotten nowhere with it.

“Why don’t you just spend the rest of the afternoon at the pool?” Cadence suggested, once Aurora seemed to have her crying under control. “It’s a nice day outside.”

Aurora seemed to be considering that suggestion when there was a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” Cadence offered, figuring it was either one of their friends or room service. She pulled the door open and thought she was wrong on both counts. “Oh, Ashley. Hi.” She tried to keep her tone light. No reason to get into it with the blonde bombshell right now.