Love Restrained

chapter seventeen

XVII

Hayden slowly opened her eyes, her vision was a little blurry and her head hurt. She sat, looking around. She was in the cabin and didn't recall getting there.

Some flashbacks of the previous night were now coming to mind. The doomcoming. Travis and Natalie. The girls acting weird. Shauna holding a knife to Travis' neck. Her argument with Nat in the woods. Their kiss. Natalie.

She looked around for any signs of the girl but the only person she found there was Jackie, who was just sitting in a chair with blank expression on her face, completely lost in her own thoughts. Hayden cleared her throat to catch the girl's attention, but she didn't react.

"Um, where's everybody?" she asked her directly.

"I don't know." Jackie told her in a monotonous tone, not even bothering to look in her direction.

Hayden decided to get up and look for the others. They were probably outside, eating whatever they had last and calling it breakfast.

When she got outside nobody was there. Not a single soul. So she went around the cabin to see if maybe they were trying some new breakfast spot today but there was just Travis. Not exactly who she wanted to find but at least it was something.

"Hey, have you seen the others?" She approached him.

He didn't respond. He was holding a cloth and pressing it against his neck and Hayden noticed there was a cut and it was probably hurting because he was whimpering as he touched it.

"Are you alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He turned to face her.

"Well, last night-"

"I'm fine. No, actually, I'm better than fine." He obviously didn't want to talk about it.  "I'm gonna go look for Javi."

"He's not here?" Hayden was getting worried with nobody being around.

Travis left her without saying anything, clearly upset about what happened last night but not in the mood for talking either, so she just let him go.

"Hayden!" Natalie's voice echoed through the air

Hayden turned back to see the bleached hair girl coming her way, making her feel a big relief. The girl had the rifle with her, like she was about to go hunting.

"Oh my God. Are you okay?" Nat analyzed her face.

Hayden noticed how it seemed like the girl was going for a hug but hesitated. It was obvious that they had things to discuss. They haven't talked about what happened, and Hayden was starting to get confused about what was real and what wasn't, given that she had a lot to drink. But she knew that the kiss was real, she just wished that what occurred after wasn't.

"Um, yeah..." Hayden responded. "Where were you?" She asked, looking at the rifle.

"I found this laying on the ground." Nat answered, making Hayden frown. That was weird.

"Well, maybe we'll be lucky today if we give it a try..." Did she really just suggest going for a hunt? She wasn't sure what to say.

"Yeah... sure"  Natalie made a weird face.

Both girls went into the woods together in silence. Neither of them knew where to start, but both of them knew they had to talk about it at some point.

Hayden was scared of that conversation. She wanted to talk with Nat, but at the same time she just wanted to let it go and pretend it never happened. Maybe Nat didn't remember, maybe she was just drunk. Hayden didn't know if it meant something or not. So she stayed quiet and Nat was the one to break the silence.