Safe Haven

Chapter Twenty-Three - Oliver

"Yeah. Me too." I mumbled, distantly.

Cameron honestly gave me whiplash. One minute he was threatening to kill me, the next he was crying in my arms because I died, and then the next he was telling me he may have had a lover back home? I didn't know whether to feel jealous or not.

Well, for starters, I definitely did feel jealous, that I needed to be clear with myself on.

Something about Cameron's eyes made me feel weird inside, and I'd come to grips with reality that that 'something' was surely my attraction towards him. Or at least the "nice" him. The vulnerable him. The Cameron that told me he was having bad dreams. The Cameron that genuinely apologized for hurting my nose.

Maybe not the Cameron that told me he might have loved his roommate in the real world.

Well, maybe even that Cameron.

It was just that Cameron didn't seem to consistently feel the same. He was hot and cold with me, sometimes lukewarm but not usually. Sometimes, he made me feel like he was going to reach out and kiss me the way he was staring at my lips, but then... he made me feel like he was more probably going to slap me. And Ben and Matilda were unbearably cute. It was as if, while I was dead, they'd just made out with each other. Their hands laced together like they were grounding one another, and when the terrain got dangerous, Ben made sure Matilda was safely transported past it, and when they were talking, they looked at each other like no one else existed. They were like a romance novel. A cheesy, fast paced, opposite-of-slow-burn romance novel.

"You two aren't killing each other?" Ben asked, turning around to look at Cameron and I with a knowing grin. He was totally instigating something between us, but I couldn't tell if that something was supposed to be a real fight or a fake fight born of mutual fondness.

"I figured Oliver already died once. I'll give him a little break," Cameron quipped. He adjusted his shirt as he uncrossed his arms and gave me a look I couldn't read.

"Oh, how kind of you," I said back sarcastically. See, this was the type of fighting I saw bordering on flirtatious, and it honestly just ended up making me more confused. Especially when Cameron rolled his eyes in a way that screamed annoyance rather than affection. Did he really actually hate me? If so, why did he go through such great pain to save me? I wasn't sure I bought the "hero" excuse.

"Sorry I even asked," Ben chuckled, turning back around and attending once more to Matilda.

Silence again.

A long, awkward silence that made me feel like I was on a first date or something. The silence extended into the night, as Ben had decided that for the sake of us reaching the town in a timely manner, we would just keep walking even when it got dark. So even when I could barely see my own two feet in front of me, we kept going. My eyes adjusted after a bit, and thanks to the help of the moonlight and stars – which we didn't have the liberty of in the forest – I was able to avoid falling clumsily.

When we neared the town, lights from streetlamps made it even easier to see, and the feeling of civilization came over me. We came up on a paved road, one that looked as though it was traveled on by cars, maybe not many cars, but cars, nonetheless. In the quiet, we could hear loud music and cheering from one of the buildings, which were a series of connected shops that gave off Western town vibes. A brightly lit building was bursting with life, light pouring out from the windows and music and laughter mingling with the cool night air. When we got close enough, I could see a sign on the front which read "The Thirsty Pony Saloon." Immediately, Ben made a beeline for it.

"I'm going to go in there and get help. Stay out here," he instructed, letting go of Matilda's hand and leaving the three of us on the front porch of the saloon. When he opened the door, the volume of the celebration happening inside increased ten-fold. It spilled out onto the aged wood of the porch like bubbles spilling over a filled bathtub. It seemed that the entire town was in the saloon, as surely there weren't that many people in such a small village.