The Trouble with Love

❝ you better get your story straight ❞

(unedited)

Stuck now so long,
We just got the start wrong.
No more last place,
You better get your story straight.
You can't stop this.

"Haven't Had Enough" –Marianas Trench

Driving arrangements were a pain in the ass.

Nathan had originally planned it all out- him, Keira, Ashton and I in a car, Jacen, Skylar and Vanessa in the other, with him and Jacen as the designated drivers- then Ashton, control freak he was, decided he wanted to drive and switched everything up.

He put Keira, Nathan and Vanessa in a car, then him, Skylar, Jacen and me in the other. Which, I was okay with. Except it didn't stay that away.

Skylar didn't want to be in the same car as Jacen, since apparently she was mad at him for something he had done in the past week. So she switched into Nathan, Keira and Vanessa's car.

Since I hadn't really wanted to end up alone with Jacen and Ashton, I had asked Vanessa to switch into our car. But Skylar had refused the idea, saying she didn't want to be a third wheel.

Apparently I wasn't in trouble for that, since Jacen and Ashton didn't have anything going on.

Anything romantic, I mean.

Which was how I ended up in a car with Jacen and Ashton. For an hour and a half. Manageable, except for the fact that the air was stiff with tension, even if neither of the guys had talked. At least it gave me time to think, even with how suffocating it felt.

Ashton, damn him, had rang the doorbell before Kaden could had answered my question. I wasn't sure what he had been about to say, but it made sense. Why he wouldn't give up on the Elite's case.

Kaden wasn't one for revenge, really, but family mattered to him.

It wasn't like he had denied it, either. He had simply sighed and closed his eyes. Did that mean Blake and Avril had been killed by someone in the Elite or their families? The people I was spending an entire week with?

"You okay?"

I jumped and glanced over to see Ashton had taken his eyes off the road and was giving me a curious look. "I'm fine," I said. "Eyes on the road."

He rolled his eyes. "I don't think we're in danger of running into someone."

He had a point there. The highway we were on was practically deserted. There was a long stretch of beach on one side of us, and fields or forests on the other. Even Nathan, Keira, Skylar and Vanessa's car wasn't on the same road as us. They had taken a different highway.

Apparently it was a sort of bet they had every year. The highway the others had gone on was a lot shorter, without so many winding turns- but there was more traffic. While ours was half an hour or so longer, it had less people.

The last person we had passed had been twenty or so minutes ago.

"How far are we?" I asked, glancing out at window. The scenery was nice, especially since it was a hot, sunny day, but you could only see so many beaches before they got tiring. Though, I guess the most draining things were what I was thinking about and the quiet tension between Jacen and Ashton.

"Is that your way of asking 'Are we there yet?'" he teased.

I turned back to look at him and raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.

"We're about ten minutes from the town it's located outside of. So, soon," he said. "Sick of us?"

"Maybe..." I trailed off, matching his light tone. It was a welcome break from the suffocating silence that had been present for most of the car ride before.