Two Hearts: The Hunt [Slowly Editing]

Chapter Thirty-Eight (Part II)

A/N- Yes, it's short; yes, I know you waited a long time. I'm sorry. The next update will be in a week, I promise, and it'll be long and really, really good ;)

I hope you guys still love me? xx

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Adrianna's POV

Caleb's bedroom was a door among doors; it was located in a lit, completely wooden hallway that was two turns to the left away from the upstairs catwalk. We walked there in silence, Caleb stalking hastily beside me, his hand still clinging to mine. Once we reached an ordinary maple door, he turned the knob and clicked the yellow lights on, brightening up the room with the same warmth that filled the area downstairs.

His room was a large rectangular area with bare wooden walls, a bed on the right side and a high wardrobe chest leaning against the wall opposite. A large window with an arced top was on the same wall as his bed, hovering just above the wooden headboard. All of the furniture occupying the room matched the cheerful brown color of the floors and walls and roof. A deep blue oval rug took up the space in the center of the floor, just in front of the full-sized bed. It matched the comforter set layered over his mattress.

"Wow," I remarked, "this place looks so clean. Are you sure it's your room? Because after what I saw at your apartment..."

"My mom would kill me if this place was a mess," he replied. His voice and eyes were unreadable.

Caleb retrieved my bags for me while I wandered around his room, picking up random things like the picture of him with his friends that stood propped on the night stand beside his bed, and the dirty baseball that sat on one of the tiered shelves on the wall. On the other side of that same wall was another set of shelves settled one above the other. Instead of holding miscellaneous, boyish objects, it carried rows and rows of books. I ran my fingers over the ridged spines. Some of them were informational books like dictionaries, encyclopedias-even a few educational textbooks were there, like Calculus and American History. Most of the books, however, were novels of all different sorts: scary ghost-related books, action books about guns and cars, paranormal books about demons and warlocks, and even sad tales about cancer.

I was a bit surprised at this. I didn't make Caleb out to be much of a reader.

I was in the middle of examining the mess of clothes and random objects stuffed into his wardrobe chest-so this is how boys clean up, I thought-when the sound of the bedroom door alerted me that someone was coming inside.

Caleb gently placed all of my bags onto the floor-there was even one balanced on his head because there wasn't any space on his shoulders to hang it from, and his hands were already fully-occupied with stacks of zippered duffel bags. I smiled at how ridiculous and sweet it was of him to go through all that work just to bring my bags upstairs in one shot.

We didn't really speak much to each other-a fact that I blamed him for, because he was the one who answered my attempts at conversation with short, clipped replies that threatened to drive me mad. It was awkward and extremely uncomfortable, mainly because I wasn't sure what to attribute his quietness to. Was he mad at me? Mad at his dad? At Joel? Maybe he was just silent because he was lost in thought, perhaps worried about what was to come. I knew I was.

There came a point, though, where talking became absolutely necessary. I had just come out of the bathroom that stood between the two shelves on either side of the wall. My body was clad in my skimpy pajamas and my feet were bare of any shoes and socks. Caleb had been setting up his bed on the blue rug at the foot of the large four-poster mattress, adding extra blankets and pillows for comfort. He had on a pair of plaid boxer shorts and a white wife-beater tank top.