Free Abandon by Stephanie Dorman Page B

dismissed her towards their bedroom leaving Annalise, Kevin, Jake and Jenna to come up with a plan.  After hours of debate, some of it fairly heated, the decision had been to stick with the original plan.  They would stay at the house until they heard something else.  In a week or two they would make another trip to Cumberland to see if there was any movement from the government if the power didn’t come back on.  
    Looking back on the conversation, there was something that seemed not quite right about the whole story though.  When Cort had been talking about the officer they encountered, he seemed to be holding something back.  His eyes had darted away from everyone at the table, and his voice had almost cracked.  There was something, maybe just a suspicion that he wasn’t telling the group and Annalise filed that information away in the recesses of her mind to ask him about later.  
    That night, Katy finally emerged from the bedroom and they told her the plan they had come up with.  She seemed to go along with it, and in the past two days everyone in the house had fallen into a comfortable routine.  They scouted every two hours, and they took turns cooking and cleaning.  For the most part, everyone managed to give other people space during the day, which Annalise deemed a necessity.  If they didn’t, they would probably be at each others throats by the end of a week.  That was one of the reasons why Annalise was out on the dock at seven-o-clock in the morning.  She needed time to think about what her next move was, independent of the group.  
    It wasn’t that she was thinking about leaving - quite the opposite actually.  In the past two days she had found a peace out here that she rarely felt in her life.  She just needed to evaluate and control her feelings for Cort, which was a task easier said than done.  Everything about being out here with him screamed and tugged at her emotions.  She wanted him, and she wanted him by her side.  It frustrated her that since the first morning, when they had talked at the sliding glass doors, she hadn’t had any alone time with Cort.  In fact, she didn’t think anyone in the group had over the past two days.  Katy had been attached at his hip like a parasite.
    Rationally she could understand why Katy was attached to him.  Katy had been scared by whatever happened on that trip that Cort wasn’t telling them.  She was scared, and alone.  Sure, there were other people, but Katy didn’t know them like Annalise did.  She was an outsider.  The only person who was really making an effort to get to know Katy was Kevin, and that was largely because that was the type of person he was.  He was nice to everyone.  Cort was the only person here Katy actually knew, and she was clinging to him.  Logically she could understand that, in fact she could actually relate because it wasn’t like Jake, Kevin or Jenna were her best friends either.  
    That’s one of the reasons why this situation was so hard.  Logically, she understood Katy, but emotionally all she felt was jealousy and anger.  Every time she saw Katy run her fingers through his hair, or hold his hand while they sat in the living room, Annalise would feel rage swell inside her heart.  Katy should have never come.  It should be her holding Cort’s hand, and her running her fingers through his hair.  This was their survival plan, and Katy was the interloper who managed to steal her place when she wasn’t looking.
    The worst part was at night though.  Her and Cort had ended up getting rooms right across from each other, and she spent the last two nights staring at her door and thinking about the fact that they were tangled up in the sheets together.  Her treacherous brain worked feverishly to imagine that every creak, cough, or noise that came from the room was Cort and Katy in the throes of passion.  Every night when she finally managed to fall asleep the thoughts assailed her in her dreams, turning