The next day, Cooper was in a better mood, while Clara was tired and groggy from sleeping on the ground.
She almost hated how chirpy he was, knowing she was the exact opposite of him. Even with the sleeping bag, she'd never slept on the ground before, and it wasn’t an experience she would ever care to repeat. It felt like she hadn't even truly rested; the aches in her body might actually feel worse because of it.
When she opened her eyes, it was considerably lighter. Cooper sat with his legs crossed, clearly having been up a while, and when she met his eyes, he smiled down at her, looking refreshed. If she hadn't trusted her memory, she would have thought she'd imagined his attitude the day before, seeing as he was back to his usual self, if not a little livelier.
"Hey, how did you sleep?"
Terribly.
Not that she could—or would—tell him that. She was almost envious of how truly relaxed he looked, but then it wasn’t his fault. Usually, she was the one getting up early, since Cooper wasn’t a morning person, but he just seemed to thrive outdoors, unlike her. She felt envious, but all she could do was sigh.
So, she put on a brave face, saying, "I feel fine."
She didn’t give him the chance to prove her wrong, rolling over, pushing herself into a sitting position and blinking her eyes. She ran a hand over her face and grimaced, imagining how gross she looked. She hadn't thought to carry a mirror, as it hadn't been a necessity at the time. They were going to meet people; she had to make a good impression, but it hadn't been top of her list when she'd been thinking of what to carry for the trip.
Clara looked around and wondered what time it was. She wondered if there was a way she could get any water, enough to wash her face, at least. She wouldn’t use the little water they'd carried just for that, though. They hadn't brought a lot, simply because water was heavy in large quantities. After riding out in the sun, she'd drunk quite a bit, and the journey wasn’t even half done yet. She just hoped Cooper would tell her if there was something wrong with how she looked, so she wouldn’t make a fool of herself. She ran her hands through her hair to get it to behave, wiped her sleeves around her mouth and chin in case she'd drooled in her sleep, and hoped that would be enough.
"I brought a flask of coffee," Cooper went on. "I knew you'd be tired this morning. I'm pretty sure I remember you telling me you've never gone camping."
She grimaced, taking the offered flask. "I haven't."
"It's almost unbelievable with all the trips you told me you'd gone on."
She didn’t tell him her parents' idea of camping was to go off to some resort, where there was all the luxuries civilization brought with the wild out in your back yard. The few 'camping' trips the family had been on, they hadn't actually had to sleep outside. Cooper didn’t consider that camping. He almost seemed affronted when others claimed that to be their camping experience.
So instead, she took a drink of the coffee. It was strong, but there was a bit of sweetness, so he must have added sugar or something. It was just the instant stuff, nothing even close to Starbucks, but it was still coffee and she groaned at the taste of it, taking a bit more. It was even a little warm.
She didn’t ask him where he got it from, how he even warmed it, she was just grateful he had it on hand. He must have been up longer than she'd thought; she even wondered where Dante had gone off to, though it should have occurred to her earlier that he wasn't there.
But it didn’t matter. Instead, she gave him a hug, keeping a hold of the flask as she brought her arms around him, tucking into his neck as she squeezed him lightly, sighing when his own arms came around her to hold her close.
"I don’t know what I would do without you," she said truthfully.
Cooper had been there to keep her going, so many times when she'd wanted to just give up. She had even given up on herself plenty of times, but Cooper had never given up on her. Just knowing he never would, encouraged her to keep trying.
They stayed that way for a moment, then she pulled back to drink more of the coffee. Then she could hear Dante outside, probably just waiting on the two of them. She made herself hurry so she was outside, and they were packing up to move on moments later.
After they had everything sufficiently put away, they continued on their trip. This time, Cooper rode ahead of Clara and Dante.
When she paused to think about it, Clara realized the two of them had been acting oddly that morning, so very different from how hostile they'd felt with each other just the evening before. She wondered what had changed, what had happened between them in that period when they were awake and she was still asleep. Whatever it was, it was enough that Cooper had ridden ahead without asking, leaving them both alone.
She was a little suspicious of why. Yesterday, Cooper had made a point of holding Clara to him, and when she woke, it was to Cooper with Dante nowhere in sight. That he would leave them alone so readily, after his almost possessive behavior, made her think something big must have happened.
Would they tell her if she asked, though? She glanced sideways at Dante, saw his clenched jaw, and imagined not. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with all the tension gone, but she still found herself curious.
Dante had been kicked out of his house, but Clara hadn't really let herself think about it before. She wondered, now, how things had gone when she'd left them. Michelle had looked, at the very least, willing to hear him out when she told him to get in the house, leaving Clara to go on to her own.
He hadn't done what she'd accused him of. For a moment, there was the fear that he had told her, or somehow given away their affair. She swept the thoughts away, though. If he had done that, then Clara would have found out earlier, because Michelle would have come to the house to cause a scene. For now, she was punishing, and only blaming Dante for her misunderstanding.
"Dante?"
He shot a glance at her, eyebrow arched.
"What happened with Michelle?"
She saw his face darken as he looked forward. He was silent so long she didn’t think he would answer her, and she almost apologized for asking in the first place, when he let out a gust of air. He glanced at her with a light frown, his expression almost worried.
"We'd been arguing for days over me going off with you. She showed some restraint, at least, there was no shouting, and she tried to keep the children out of the argument. I tried to talk her down, to get her to see reason, but Michelle's convinced we've been sleeping together. She just doesn’t have the proof, and she's been afraid of making more of a fool of herself by accusing you so openly without proof."
So, that was why Michelle hadn't come by the house yet. It almost seemed inevitable in a way, now, that she would, and Clara dreaded it happening.
Clara bit her lip. It was what she'd feared, and yet better in a way. The way he spoke, meant Michelle didn’t truly know, yet. For the time being, it was just a theory she believed. If they lied and did it well, she could change her mind. Dante hadn't admitted anything and didn’t plan to. In his own way, he did care, though Clara assumed it was more for the sake of his kids than his wife.
But just thinking of lying to her, point blank, after everything they had already done…
"She has good reason to believe that," she reminded him.
He didn’t argue. They both knew it was true.
"It just seems a little ironic that she caught me out after the affair was over." He shrugged. "There's nothing to admit to now, so when I tell her I'm not having an affair, it's actually true. And she won't believe me. I wouldn’t mind, anyway, except I'm not being allowed to see my kids."
He tried to sound nonchalant, but she could tell it was hurting him, particularly that last bit.
"I'm so sorry, Dante," she murmured, trying to console him. "I was a part of this and you're the only one dealing with it. It's not fair she's not letting you see the kids. They love you more than they do her because she's hardly there for them anyway."
"I brought it up, but she just said she
could be there for them from now on, that they didn’t need me."
She pretended not to have heard his voice quiver. "It's not so easy a thing. The baby may be different, she's still too young, but your five-year-old daughter isn’t going to just accept her because she suddenly has the time. I've never had kids, but even I know it'll take more than that for Abigail to warm up to her."
Clara remembered how the little girl had been wary of her own mother, when the family had come over to her place the day after the crash, and Cooper had convinced them to stay for dinner. She had left her mother's side while her father held the baby and moved to sit with Clara instead. Michelle hadn't even blinked an eye.
"It's not fair you're the only one who gets the blame…"
She didn’t realize the words were spoken out loud until he broke through her thoughts.
"I'm the only one that really matters. I'm the one married to her. Besides, you have more problems of your own. You don’t need my family giving you any more. I pursued you, not the other way around."
"I let myself get caught," she pointed out.
But he was stubborn. "Don't worry about it. I'll deal with Michelle on my own."
It was almost amusing how he'd changed his tune. The day she told him their affair wouldn’t continue, he had argued about her being a willing participant, which she had been. Now, he wanted to keep her out of it when it was impossible.
"I'm using this trip as a way to figure out how to get myself back into the house."
"Wouldn’t that be counterproductive? The two of us leaving town together started all this, didn’t it?"
"Well, yeah, but having Cooper around is different. When we came over to your house and Cooper made a point of sitting with you, she assumed there was something between you. She actually thinks you were cheating on him with me."
She saw the sideways glance he sent away when he said that, and she could guess what he wanted to know. Whatever he was trying to get from her, there was nothing there. She and Cooper weren’t together, but she scoffed anyway at the thought of her cheating on anyone with Dante. Especially Cooper, the one person beside her sister and grandmother that she really cared for.
"Anyway, I deserve the kids more than she does if we split—I raised them and cared for them while Michelle worked. Her first day at home, she just watched me take care of them both since she had no idea what to do, and since then I've been the one to tell her what to do. She can't even cook, and I don’t know what she's been feeding them since I left."
He sounded worried as he talked, and she felt for him. She wondered if they even still had food left. She felt a stab of guilt that she couldn’t share with them. Tessa wouldn’t allow it, and she was pretty sure Michelle wouldn’t take the help, anyway. She was just that stubborn.
"You're definitely more deserving," she agreed. "But you should wait until you've calmed down to think on the subject. If it comes to a split, you have to remember that Michelle is the mother, and they usually get more sympathy in custody battles. Your best bet would be to try and avoid it getting to that point as much as possible."
He didn’t say anything, but she could guess what he was thinking. It might have already crossed that point. He wasn’t just thinking of how to get back into his house, but how to keep his children with him.
Clara wasn’t sure he was thinking clearly. As admirable as it was that he wanted his children with him, he would need a way to take care of them, a place for them to stay. There was always Cooper's apartment. She wasn’t sure if he would be okay with letting Dante stay there for the time being if he needed to, but then how would Dante provide for them in the current crisis?
Cooper must have heard them talking. When Clara looked ahead, she saw he was a lot closer than he had been, and when he glanced back, there was a frown on his face.
"Hey, Clara," he called back. "Come up here and ride alongside me."
Clara shrugged to Dante and pushed her legs faster so she aligned with Cooper. Dante wasn’t far behind, but he still kept somewhat behind them.
As they got closer, Clara started to have a bad feeling that something wasn’t right. Her chest felt a little tight. It took her a moment to realize why, and she inhaled a sharp breath that was followed by a harsh cough. She slowed down, and the guys slowed with her.
"I can smell smoke."
She shouldn’t have been able to, this far out. She couldn’t visibly see something wrong, but the smell filled her with dread. She was worried they had found a ghost town, but as they approached, she saw that there were people milling around, even if they were few in number.
None of them acted like anything was wrong. She wondered if they caught the smoke, or if they were so used to it that it didn’t bother them. But then they got even closer, and she saw there was a bonfire in the road, which was the source of the smoke. No one seemed to think there was anything weird about it, and that in itself was worrying.
However, as they approached, they realized there were people patrolling. People with guns.
They all stopped almost at the same time, and Clara held her breath. It was understandable that there would be patrols, her own town had them, but then their patrols usually happened at night just to keep the peace. Why would these people find the need to be patrolling in the day time, and armed with guns at that?
"We should turn away," she murmured, keeping her voice quiet. "They haven't noticed us yet, and we should go before they do. I have a bad feeling about this town."
She almost felt paralyzed with the extent of her fear. Were they going to die here? She didn’t want to think it, but how could she not? It would be cruel, and entirely unfair, for her and Cooper to have walked away from the plane crash, when it took hundreds of others, only to die here at the hands of these men. She glanced at the other two, frantic, wondering why neither one was moving to do as she'd suggested. It was dangerous. There was no reason for them to linger, the mission was a failure. They had to go back.
But neither man moved.
"There are people in the town dancing around the fire," Dante muttered in realization. He must have been looking beyond the armed people, but Clara couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off the guns. "I think they're all holding bottles of spirits in their hands—they're drunk."
Dammit! Get out of there already!
But it was already too late. If they had stopped a little farther off, they might have gotten away. Before they could turn back, though, one of the men with guns spotted the three, even though they'd stopped their approach. Something was yelled to the drunk citizens as the other men noticed them, and she could feel it was already too late. If they just turned around and rode off, they would be shot at.
Still, she wouldn’t just stay there and wait.
"Guys," she hissed, pushing as much urgency into her tone as she could, "We should turn around and go, now."
But they wouldn’t listen. She almost cursed as both Cooper and Dante edged forward, wondering why they picked now to be on the same page.
"You there!" one of the men with guns shouted. "Freeze where you are."
The gun was pointed at them, and Clara could feel herself break into a sweat. She was tempted to ignore him, turn and ride off. But the guys were already dismounting their bikes. It went against every self-preservation instinct that was telling her to just run, but there was no way she would leave them both.
They all obeyed, and one of the men came forward. He left someone with his gun, not that it mattered because there were several men still aiming right at them. He reached for Dante's bike first, tugging it away from the man's hands and dragging it back to his group. Then he returned for Cooper's, and hers.
He was taking all their things. Even the bags with their food and supplies.
"Hey! You can't do that!"
There was a roll of laughter at her protest of indignation. She wasn’t sure why she'd even spoken up. Clearly, the men didn’t care. She wasn’t carrying anything, so the man taking their things just took
the bags Cooper and Dante had on them. One of the other men came forward, right for her, and she kept her chin held up. He held his gun in his hand, but she still didn’t expect it when he whacked her in the face with the gun.
She cried out at the burst of pain, falling to the ground, barely feeling the impact as she hit the concrete, where she laid feeling dizzy. There was a ringing in one of her ears, and she could hardly bring herself to move. She heard when Dante and Cooper protested, followed by more raucous laughter.
"Why don’t you three go back to where you came from," she heard someone tell them, sounding amused. "And this time, on foot."
More rounds of laughter that had her head ringing louder.
Clara realized she could barely feel any pain in her cheek, and she wondered why. It should have hurt, badly. Then she realized she felt almost… floaty. Like everything was suddenly so far away and she was up in the clouds, experiencing it all and yet not at the same time.
She just barely felt someone scooping her up. Cooper, her mind supplied. Then he was moving, and she dizzily realized they were running away from gunshots. There was a short burst of anxiety that died almost immediately, and she wondered idly if she hadn't just imagined it.
She drifted from consciousness.
Chapter Eight
When Clara woke up, it was night time.
It took her a moment to remember what had happened, and her body froze for a second, before relaxing into the hard ground. Somehow, she could tell they were away from danger. The silence was also a huge giveaway. They were under the cover of trees, so it was a bit outside of the town, which meant they had moved while she was unconscious. She remembered hearing gunshots, but they must have just been warning shots if they got away from it.
She was surprised she was still alive. Clara must have passed out, but how many hours had passed? It was likely in the middle of the night, and it had been early when they set out, so a long while. They must have carried her all this way. She felt a light ache in her head and wondered if the knock to the head had given her a concussion. She blinked her eyes and tried to look around without moving her head too much.
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