I was suddenly, thoroughly, ruined.
A car door slammed, snapping my head up and frightening away the skittish tangent my mind had gone on. I recognised the black Lincoln before I recognised Noah, and by the time Cabe had climbed out of the car, it was too late to move. They approached us and I curbed the urge to scramble to my feet—because that would only make me look guilty. People jumped out of their cars to roll around in the forest all the time. It was normal. Yeah, you’re totally pulling this off—
“What the hell are you two doing?” Cabe asked, scratching his head.
Quillan cleared his throat, bringing my attention to the fact that I was still holding his wrists against the ground. I jumped off him, tugging my cardigan back over my shoulder, since it had begun to slip off. He got up, picked a leaf off my sleeve, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Fighting,” I supplied.
I shot Quillan a questioning look, and he seemed to understand what I was asking. He nodded his head slightly.
Noah and Cabe knew the secret. Or at least… they had known.
“Oh,” Cabe was still frowning, “okay then.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Looked like something else.”
Despite his easy reaction, his eyes were suspicious as they swept covertly over me, as though searching my person for evidence of wrongdoing. It pained me to see the doubt in his bearing—the closed-off way that he crossed his arms over his chest, and the tilt of his head as he examined us. Noah was hovering back, his reaction as unreadable as Cabe’s was obvious. His hair had been cut recently, the pure, light golden colour reflecting light from the sun even though his gloomy nature tried to chase all brightness away. His hands were hidden inside his pockets, but his biceps were bunched-up with tension. I tried not to stare at him, but it was obvious that he had been spending more time in the gym. His chest had widened, his shoulders gaining breadth; I was pretty sure I could even see the muscles flexing beneath his shirt as he fisted his hands in his pockets. He had been going to the gym a lot, it seemed. Maybe too much. He probably had things to work through, and Noah wasn’t exactly a ‘talk about your feelings’ kind of guy.
He also looked angry all of a sudden.
He had caught me staring.
“What are you two doing here?” Quillan finally asked.
Cabe turned to him. “I got an alert on one of Silas’s computers, saying that his GPS had been switched on all of a sudden. We followed it here.”
I glanced at Noah, because he still hadn’t said anything. He was watching me, his eyes narrowed. I mustered up a glare in response, because I was done with being pushed around by the guys for one day and Noah was the pushiest of them all. Whenever he wasn’t touting his complete distrust of me and trying to talk the others into giving me up, he was hovering in the shadows, glaring at me. It seemed that Noah wasn’t one to easily forgive—though I was positive that if I thought I had seen someone torture several men to death, I probably wouldn’t forgive so easily either. It only served to prove that Cabe was just as devilish as I had always suspected, because he no longer seemed concerned with the incident.
Noah strode past Cabe and landed right in front of me, grabbing my chin and forcing my head up. He examined me far too thoroughly, his blue eyes brimming with force the same way the sky swelled with terrible premonition whenever a natural disaster was looming. His grip was too tight, but I curbed my complaint. He hadn’t been this close to me since the day of the accident. Once his examination was over, he dropped my chin and rounded on Quillan, pushing against his chest.
“Don’t fuck with us,” he growled, shoving Quillan again. “What the hell is this?” Another push. “What the hell is up with you two?” Quillan was backed up against a tree now, his handsome face etched with surprise. Noah shoved him one last time. “You can’t get involved with her!”
I ran up to them quickly, needing to wedge myself between them since Noah didn’t want to back off.