Cheating Time (16 page)

Jayden studied me. Based on the furrow of
his brow and the grit of his jaw, he had lots of emotions battling
for control. In the end, he settled on admiration and nodded in a
way that said if anyone in the world could save Tawney, it would be
someone in my family—and that someone could be me.

I gave him a half smile and said, "You need
to get a few hours of sleep. And I'm not sure how much longer I'm
going to have all of this adrenaline pumping through me."

It took Jayden a few minutes to consider my
proposal. "I want you to sit next to the tree by my tent. If you
hear anything, wake me up right away. I'm a light sleeper so I'll
hear you if you need me."

"'Kay," I said, turning back toward the
camp.

As we walked side by side, we did the
talking we should have already done.

"The safe house I'm taking you to is six
days away, in good weather and with strong hikers. We're going to
have to stay the course and keep Tawney motivated," Jayden
explained.

"For the next few days after we stop for the
night, I want to work on building a stretcher so we can drag her
behind us if she gets too weak to walk," I suggested.

Jayden glanced over at me and said, "That's
actually a very good idea."

I shrug. "I try to have them periodically.
Why're you acting so surprised?"

Jayden's own shoulders bounced. "It's just
that you've changed so much since you've been gone."

"I'm exactly the same person. Your memory is
for shit."

"No. No, you're not. The old Carlie would
still be angry with me for not taking you up on your offer and
coming with you and your family the day you left," he
explained.

I still remember the day we left; I'd stood
with him near the babbling brook out in the forest close to the
campgrounds where we'd always done our survival training.

"I told you then it was your choice. You
wanted to stay with Barone and his band of hooligans. We all
understood. My tiny little family will never be able to compete
with the power you'd have as a Lead Surrogate Soldier. He could
offer you that… We couldn't. I get it."

Jayden didn't say anything, but his angry
silence told me I'd said the wrong thing.
Again.

"Listen, I know we both like to annoy each
other, but I wasn't trying to do that. I was just letting you know
I understood," I explained.

"You don't know everything you think you
know, Carlie. Stop assuming you do," he snapped, his words short
and bitter. Then he sped up and got ahead of me. Without a
good night
or a
kiss my ass
, Jayden crawled into his tent.

Everything about his mood shift irritated
me. I'd not said anything offensive. Yet he acted as if I had. The
more I thought about his abrupt moodiness, the madder I got. I was
too annoyed to sit next to the tree near
his
tent, so I defiantly found a tree near
Tawney's tent and made just enough noise for Jayden to know I was
nowhere near where he'd ordered me to be.

My actions were sullen and immature. They
absolutely overrode all good judgment, but I couldn't find it
within myself to care. First of all, I couldn't be that close to
Jayden without kicking him through his tent. Second of all, I knew
it would infuriate him for me to guard the camp while sitting
anywhere but where he'd ordered me to sit.

You can suck it, Jayden
St. Romaine!

I expected him to charge out of his tent and
scold me for being the worst soldier ever, but he didn't. Then I
remembered Dad and his expectations of me and was ashamed of myself
and my actions. That guilt spanked me around more viciously than
anything Jayden could ever had done until his regular deep breaths,
signaling he was asleep, made their way out to me.

By then, I had no choice but to sit in that
spot as quiet as a mouse, because the first move I made would wake
him, would make him think danger was near, would keep him from
going back to sleep. Letting him sleep for as long as possible and
without interruption would be my only way of making amends without
begging for forgiveness.

Which I'm not going to
do.

I glanced around the dark forest surrounding
us and decided this was the first time ever I'd been assigned guard
duty. Dad and Jayden had always assumed the guard would be one of
them so their training included that of swapping out that
responsibility. They sacrificed sleep and pretended—since back
then, there was no real danger—to keep our camp safe.

The dark, quiet alone time with nothing but
me and my thoughts was nothing less than torturous. After I stopped
considering Jayden and the unintentional offense I'd committed, I
worried about Mom and Dad and what they'd faced after they made it
back to the capital.

With visions of the worst possible scenarios
pinging through my head, something Dad said to Mom suddenly
occurred to me and made me angry. Dad had said someone had been
beating Jayden pretty bad. When he'd said it, I'd been so worried
about leaving Mom and Dad that I hadn't allowed myself to think too
much about it. In the quiet of guard duty, it became an event worth
fixating on.

I'll find out who's
been beating him, and they'll pay,
I swore as if I'd not
just wanted to hurt him myself.

Sitting under this tree with nothing but the
rustling of leaves and the calls of night creatures, I couldn't
help but wonder what else Jayden had been enduring since we left.
The longer I thought about it, no matter how much Jayden had
irritated me throughout my life, the madder I got and the more I
wanted to ask Jayden about it.

They'll pay,
I swore again silently.

* * *

Four long and painful hours later, I had
picked and poked through everything I knew to be true as it related
to my family and President Barone. I'd worked myself up until I was
buzzing with worry, anger, and fear, and I'd pledged a million
times that I'd do whatever it took to get my family out of
President Barone's crosshairs.

In that equation—because he meant so much to
Tawney and Dad and in my opinion he deserved a lot more than
beatings—Jayden was included in my umbrella of security.

Our circle of trust, love,
and loyalty.

Without meaning to and before I could hold
it back, a giant yawn made its way out of me. I was quite sure I
might finally be able to sleep for a few hours (or a few days), but
I still owed Jayden, so I stayed put.

My commitment didn't matter. Jayden had
heard me and came crawling out of his tent seconds later. He stood
and stretched with the grace of a cat. He was tall, lean, and
sinuously muscular. No matter how big of an ass he could be or how
tired I was, I had to admit that he put every other male figure in
the world to shame.

He's just that
beautiful
, I thought as his shirt rode up over his hips
and revealed abs that could've been sculpted in marble they were so
perfect.

Seeing him and thinking such lusty
thoughts—about Jayden St. Romaine of all people—woke me like I'd
just had the caffeine from a triple shot espresso injected into my
veins. Jayden never even glanced toward the tree where he'd told me
to sit. He'd known all along I'd defied him. Something about that
made me feel a little better because I suspected if it were a real
problem, he'd have crawled out of his tent, threw me over his
shoulder, and sat me on my ass exactly where he wanted me to
be.

Yeah… he would
have.

"Did you like what you saw?" Jayden said,
raising his brows and effectively picking up our bickering where we
left off before I spent an hour in his chest bawling like a
baby.

My mouth snapped closed and the clamping of
my teeth echoed through the forest. I was so embarrassed that I'd
been caught appreciating Jayden that my face felt as if it had been
doused with gas and lit on fire.

Jayden's only response was a low chuckle.
Then he walked over to where I'd been quietly sitting, leaned his
back against the tree, and slid down next to me.

"You're a real ass!" I spat, finding my
voice and keeping my words as clean as possible in case Gran could
hear us.

No matter what I said, Jayden knew what was
going through my mind based on my glare, clenched fists, and
gritting teeth. Obviously glad things between us had gotten back to
normal, he chuckled again.

"Go get some rest. I got this," he
whispered.

The last thing I wanted was to accept
anything from him.

"I'm fine. You can get more sleep. My
MicroPharm is working overtime," I said, turning away from him and
studying the forest intently.

I acted as if guard duty was what I'd been
doing for the last four hours, not wallowing in my problems.

"Yeah… I'm sure it is, but nothing will
replace sleep, and that's exactly what you need so you won't slow
us down today. We've got enough things working against us without
me having to worry about you. Now, go," he ordered.

I shrugged. "I'd think you'd be happy to
leave me behind. You could tell Mom and Dad you did everything you
could, but in the end, you could only save Gran," I looked over my
shoulder and gave him my own raised brow before dragging out the
rest of my words in order to make sure he knew I saw what was going
on between them. "
And Tawney
."

Something flashed across his face. Regret.
Hurt. Anger. It happened too fast for me to know what had turned
his brilliant jade eyes mossy.

"Are you jealous?"

A little too defensively, I scowled. "Why
would I be? She's practically my sister. I want her to be happy.
Nothing more."

"You were just looking at me like I was the
last piece of chocolate cake in the world. That's not how a sister
looks at a sister's boyfriend."

Damn him for taunting me.
Damn him for remembering chocolate cake is my all-time favorite
food in the world.

If I were Tawney, he and I would be able to
laugh about my beloved birthday ritual. It had started with my
fourth birthday, and every year since, my parents had begrudgingly
conceded to my whim—I bequeathed chocolate cake the main course and
demanded the sizes served be big enough to leave you bloated and
full and unable to eat anything with the first ounce of nutritional
value.

I snapped back to reality when he winked at
me.

"You wish," I retorted.

"Yeah… I kind of do," he admitted before
looking away and clearing his throat.

Speechless, I studied him and tried to
figure out what game he was playing. First, he was flirting with
Tawney. Now, he was saying things he shouldn't be saying to me.

"What are you doing? Even if I did like
you—
which I don't
—I'll not betray
Tawney. If she likes you, you're hers," I whispered so low that
even if she happened to be awake, she'd never know what I'd just
said.

As if egging me on were his goal in life,
Jayden smirked and shrugged his shoulders before saying, "You of
all people should know exactly what I'm doing. She needs something
that will give her the motivation she needs to make it on her own
to the safe house. I'm giving her what she's always wanted.
A knight in shining armor.
It's a
harmless thing to do, and it will help her over the next few
weeks."

My mouth dropped to my chest.

"Do you have any morals?"

"Carles, don't be jealous. I told you it's
not real. You'll have me back as your very own pain in the ass soon
enough."

I closed my eyes and shook my head. It took
every ounce of restraint I had not to close the small distance
between us, wrap my hands around his neck, and choke him until he
understood what he was doing was wrong. His intentions might have
been coming from the right place, but toying with Tawney's emotions
wasn't something he should have been doing.
Not now.

"If she finds out you're doing this out of
pity, that alone will kill her. No girl wants a pity boyfriend.
That's the worst thing ever."

With another shrug, he said, "Then it's your
job to encourage her to keep up the pace so we're at the safe house
as soon as possible. I'm putting you in charge of keeping her
moving. If you fail, I'll intervene and do whatever I have to
do."

The only person who knew better than me that
all Tawney had ever wanted was a
knight in
shining armor
was Jayden. We'd both watched as she'd
spent years burying her nose books. All of them had the same theme:
a man saved a woman just in time for them to pledge their eternal
love to each other.

I'd actually seen her nearly swoon on at
least one occasion when her all-time favorite male character
finally and wholeheartedly admitted he loved her all-time favorite
female character. Their happily ever ending was perfect, and it was
the kind that had Tawney floating around the house for weeks after
she finished the series.

She even took to following me around,
demanding I read their story. She claimed if I read the book, I'd
understand how important it was to have someone you could share
everything with, including the most private and intimate pieces of
yourself.
Share my feelings
with.

I'd ignored her and her lectures and avoided
her whenever possible. Her nagging got so bad that if I'd had to
listen to her tell me one more time that I needed a boyfriend or
that my life would never be full without one, I might have resorted
to drastic measures and cut off my ears.

I remembered the moment when I'd caved to
her persuasion. It had been a Saturday, and we'd been enduring yet
another weekend of survival training in the rain. I barely recalled
the circumstances, but somehow I'd sprained my ankle while sparing
with Jayden. I'd kicked out one leg. He'd grabbed it, and the next
thing I knew, the ankle steadying me had given out. Before I could
prevent it, I was face down in the muddy floor of the forest.