Bitter Heart √

Fifty

I saw him clenching and unclenching his jaw. I still kept silent.

"He told me to light the match," Caden said, "and I did."

I inhaled sharply, looking back at the house in front of us. I blinked and felt my eyes prickling at the corners. It all felt impossibly hard to believe. Why hadn't anyone else known about this? So many rumours about Caden Miller and none of them were about this.

"I...hadn't known that he'd doused the house with gasoline." He said. "I hadn't known about it until I lit the match. There was this loud crash. And fire."

I felt horrible.

"It was everywhere, Sky." He added, his voice lowering down to a whisper. I could've heard the helplessness in his voice, but it still felt so far away. "I tried to save them. I had to get inside. But the doors were locked."

"Why would he do that?" I whispered, and my voice came out a bit raspy.

Caden took his time to reply, letting the silence fill around us.

"Something against our parents." He replied, his eyes finding mine once again. "Blake has always been the best at holding grudges."

It felt unreal, whatever that he had just told me. But I could see it right in front of me--the remains of a house which was once alive.

"Your sister was in there," I said. Rena had been in there.

"She was." He said. "Even Blake hadn't known about that."

Everything made sense now.

"He blames you."

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. All I could see of him was the back of his head and his dark black hair.

"I should've known what he was planning." He gritted out. "I should've stopped him."

My eyes widened. "You can't possibly think it was your fault, Caden," I said. "How were you supposed to know that? Blake must've been planning that all along."

"I lit the flames, Sky." He pointed out, still not looking at me. And I wished that he would. Look at me, I mean. Because even if I told him a thousand times that it wasn't his fault, it wouldn't exactly matter. His whole family had died in that fire. It wasn't a tiny blame.

Caden was misunderstood. Blamed for something he never meant to do. And I had a part in that too--in thinking that he was the bad guy. I felt horrible.

I looked back at him, feeling the small lump growing a bit too painfully in my throat. I didn't know what I was doing until I placed my hand over his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"I'm...so sorry, Caden," I whispered.

He pulled my hand closer towards him, and it was just a soft whisper when he replied,

"Don't be."

•••••

Caden had been staying there for all those days he'd been missing out on school--the house that had been abandoned for years now since that incident happened.

"You should've told me," I said for the fiftieth time, looking around the empty house. It was much warmer here than it was outside. The walls were covered in black marks--burnt marks, just like in those pictures that I had seen on the web earlier.

"I did try telling you last night." He spoke up from behind me. "And then you ran away."

He was right.