Poisoned Blood ↠ Edward Cullen ✓

10 ; epitaph

 [ i have to apologize profusely. i am sorry that i haven't been the most attentive with this story and any of my stories as of recently. mostly because of mental illness, but i hope this chapter helps repay some of that debt i've accumulated with my absence. love you lots ]

The drive from the Cullen home back to Caden's was silent. With nothing but Caden's breathing and Edward's brief humming with the radio playing. The silence was relaxing, soothing to the heavy beating in Caden's chest at the thought of watching the Cullen's play baseball.

His aunt's car was missing from the driveway whenever they pulled up. It was expected, given that his aunt has been griping about how her boss had placed her on the night shift for the last few weeks. A feat his aunt hated because she was always left alone in a large building.

It wasn't because she was afraid, his Aunt Helena was an undaunted woman, but because she didn't like doing the jobs of others just because they were lazy. His aunt's boss didn't seem to care regardless of her reasoning, because he knew that Caden's aunt needed the money and wouldn't dare say no to him and risk loosing her job and main source of income.

"Are you waiting here?" Caden asked, clicking off his seatbelt and sparing Edward a glance in the driver's side. 

In the seat, Edward was slightly hesitant, nostrils flared inelegantly. Caden paused, raising an eyebrow in question. It lasted for a minute, Edward's strange behavior, before he was shaking his head and looking at Caden. 

"Sorry, I thought I smelt something." Edward explained, and then he was asking with a teasing grin, "Do you need me to help you change?"

"Only if there's a dress code for playing baseball with your boyfriend's family," Caden said, and before he could think over what he said, it was already in the air between them. A two syllable word with a lot of weight. 

For his credit, Edward only paused for a moment. Then, his petal pink lips were twisted into a faint smirk, "Boyfriend?"

A brief thread of insecurity was plucked in Caden's chest. So, naturally he snuffed it out with indifference. "You know what I mean. I was just asking-"

"There is no dress code to playing baseball with your boyfriend's family," Edward interrupted, giving Caden a brief one-over, but he kept his words calm. Edward's voice was a soothing balm over the sting Caden had made up in his head. "Perhaps just dress in thick material. Keep yourself warm."

Nodding, Caden removed himself from the Volvo and headed into his house. He closed the door softly behind himself, not fully latching the door into the groove, but gently pressing it against the frame. He thumped up the stairs, briefly aware that Edward had to be listening to everything that he was doing.

Creep. Caden thought playfully, and he heard Edward's vibrato tuned laugh in his head. 

Sliding open his closet door, Caden grabbed the thermal's folded on the top shelf over where the clothing items were hanging. He grabbed the dark green thermal first, comparing it against his skin for a moment and threw it on the bed behind him. He then closed his closet door, deciding that his jeans were good enough, Caden removed the shirt he was wearing.

Grabbing the green thermal, Caden got a wicked thought. He turned towards the mirror in his bedroom, studying with intent the plains of his body. He wasn't much, surely not as muscled or as chiseled as Emmett and Jasper, but he wasn't meek either. 

He would describe himself as lean, toned in places that mattered. His shoulders were broad, and Caden had heard on sparing occasions where he had been shirtless that this was his best feature. Caden didn't have any freckles on his body, except for the few that dusted his cheeks very minisculely in the summer.