I nod. “I know I shouldn’t think about it, but there’ve been a few times when it’s hit me that if things had worked out differently, Jake and I might have been raised together. We could have been friends.”
“Why?” Xavier asks.
“Because our mothers were friends. His mother was my mother’s nurse. Then she rescued her from her husband and relocated her. My mother didn’t know Jake existed or she would have made sure he was safe, too.”
“I meant why shouldn’t you think about it?” Xavier clarifies.
“Oh. I just… what benefit is there in thinking about it? It’s over. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t change it. So, why spend my time thinking about something horrible?” I ask.
“Because it isn’t all horrible. You are where you are right now because those things didn’t change. If all had fallen into place and you were raised right alongside Jake the way you said, what else would change?” he asks.
“My mother would still be alive. I would probably be an artist right now, rather than going into the FBI. But if it all did work out that way, we wouldn’t have spent as much time in Sherwood with my grandparents, so I wouldn’t be with Sam,” I say.
“And Dean may never have been born,” Xavier says.
“What do you mean?”
“If your mother and Jake’s were close enough friends to have raised you and Jake alongside each other, it would mean they would have stayed here. She never would have rescued Dean’s mother. And your uncle wouldn’t have used her the way he did,” he says.
“I don’t understand, Xavier.”
“Thinking about it reminds you of the good that came from the pain. It hasn’t been in vain, Emma. Do you know why roses have thorns?”
I cringe at the thought of the roses but draw in a breath and shake my head. “Why?”
“To protect the bloom. Without them, it couldn’t exist. Remember the thorns, cherish the petals.”
I’m about to answer him when his eyes snap over to the door. His head tilts to the side and he gets up.
“Xavier?”
Without answering, he crosses to the door. He gets there just as Dean comes into the room.
“What’s he doing?” he frowns.
“I don’t know,” I say. Xavier opens the door and heads out into the night. “But I think we better follow him.”
Chapter Six
By the time I get outside, I can’t see Xavier anymore. That’s particularly concerning to me, considering I know for a fact he can’t find his way out of a large walk-through maze, and now he’s out in unfamiliar woods in the dark.
And when it’s dark in Feathered Nest, it’s dark. A suffocating kind of dark that surrounds you and seems to seep down into your skin. Unless the moon is bright and the sky is cloudless, there’s little chance of seeing ahead of you while walking through the trees.
It’s better now because of the new lights added to the front of the cabin. The first couple of times I was here, the lights on the front and side did little to penetrate the thickest part of the woods beyond the cabin. I rushed down the steps from the porch and into the middle of the open dirt space to look around for him.
“Xavier?” Dean calls out, rushing after me.
The cold is biting, and I realize I didn’t bother to grab a coat. Dean isn’t even wearing shoes. His hair still wet from the shower, he must be freezing.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Dean shakes his head. “I don’t know. But we better find him before he gets too far. It’s too cold out here for him to be wandering around.”
“What the hell?” Sam shouts from the back of the cabin. “What are you doing out there?”
Dean and I look at each other.
“I think we might have found him,” I say.
Xavier comes scrambling around the side of the cabin just as the door flies open and Sam runs out.
“There’s somebody creeping around the back of the cabin,” he says.
He’s holding his service weapon and he has that look in his eyes he gets when he feels as if I might be in danger. I step up closer to the porch and hold up my hands to make him pause.
“It was Xavier,” I say. “Everything’s fine.”
“That was Xavier I saw outside the bedroom window?” Sam demands.
“Yes,” I say.
He shakes his head and tilts it back as if he’s trying to seek out some sort of guidance. “I honestly don’t know if that makes me feel better or not.”
Xavier raises his hand. “I vote yes.”
“Why would it not?” I ask.
“Because he doesn’t do anything for no reason, and if he was creeping around back there, he knows something,” he says. “But he scared the hell out of me and almost got himself shot.”
Xavier’s hand goes up again. “I vote no.”
“Why did you go back there?” Dean asks.
“Go inside,” Xavier says.
“What?”
“Go inside.”
“We’re not leaving you out here,” Dean says.
“Then you stay. Emma, go inside.”
I look at Dean and he shrugs. Going back up on the porch, I rise up on the balls of my feet to kiss Sam, then take his hand to bring him with me into the cabin. I turn around before closing the door.
“Any specific room?” I ask.
“The living room,” Xavier says. “Review your notes. Be her again. See with her eyes.”
Sam’s looking at me strangely when I close the door and walk over to the couch.
“Whose eyes are you borrowing?” he asks.
“Emma Monroe’s,” I say.
He nods and sits down on the couch beside me. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing, but I do what Xavier asked. Taking my computer from where I set it when we first arrived, I open it on the coffee table and scroll through some pages as if I’m going through research.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing but silence. I get the uncomfortable, creepy feeling something is about to happen. I’m just about to lift my head to look when movement flashes across the
