anxiety radiating from her pretty face. Jenna was next to her, curled up against the wall sleeping soundly.
“That thing really is dead , right?” she asked worriedly.
“It’s dead,” Bret confirmed.
I curled up on my thin pile of blankets and tuck ed an old sweatshirt under my head as a pillow. Facing the wall, I turned my back on the others, unable to look at them. I was afraid they would see the agony and defeat that was slowly crushing my soul. I stared unseeingly at the night as the others settled in around me. I hated nights the most, when I was alone, when I was stuck with just my thoughts and my heartache . When I was trapped with the realization that I may never see Cade again, never touch him, never kiss him , never have the chance to tell him that I loved him too .
I had always held out some hope that I would find him , held out some hope that one day we would be reunited . It was what had kept me going for the past couple of weeks. After what I ’ d seen today nearly all of that hope was gone. How did we defeat these things , how would I ever get him back from them even if I did miraculously find him alive ? They were everywhere , they were far more powerful than us, and now they had revealed that their monsters could even look like us , not just them .
How c ould I ever get him back?
For the first time I let myself accept the fact that I c ouldn’t , that I probably wouldn’t . Agony tore through me; I curled up in a tighter ball as I pressed my fist against my mouth. I bit on my knuckles in order to keep my scream s and sobs of anguish suppressed . I couldn’t breathe, could barely see, I couldn’t stand the hurt that was consuming me. I wasn’t survive I could survive this bone wrenching agony. Though tears burned my eyes, I did not shed them, they would not fall.
Cade had once told me that he was the only person I trusted enough to f a ll apart in front of, and he was right. When h e ’ d been with me he’d made me strong enough to allow myself to let go of my tight self control . I ’ d trusted him enough to let him see my weakness, my cowardice, my fear, my inner self , and he had loved me for it anyway. He had stripped my soul bare, had made me fall in love with him, and he had left me. He’d sacrificed himself for me when I would have preferred that he hadn’t. He’d left me in this hideous world, one that I was tired of, one that I hated. If it wasn’t for my siblings I wasn’t sure I would continue on, that I would keep fighting. There wasn’t much left to fight for.
I hated my thoughts, hated the weakness they revealed about myself. Most people would want to keep fighting, everyone else in this building did. But I was a coward; I was weak, broken, and barely able to breathe throughout the increasingly long days and nights. Everyone around me was a fighter, a survivor. I was proud of them all. That pride did not extend to myself. I would not leave my siblings, but it was a constant battle to go on for them. If something ever happened to them…
No, it couldn’t. It simply couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to survive that too.
I could only try to survive the loss of Cade now. I would not fall apart, I would not cry . I would not give into my weakness, not now, not ever again. There was no point in crying. I still had Abby, Aiden, Bret, Molly, and as much as Jenna and I didn’t always get along , she was a part of our group. She was a connection to a past life forever lost to us all.
I would not fall apart. I had suffered losses before . I had watched my father die; I had lost my mother. I would endure this, I would continue to breathe, I would continue to walk, and I would continue to eat. I would wake up every day , and I would go to sleep every night , and I would continue to go on living without Cade, even though I was dead inside.