Page 24 of Dyana (Love in the Apocalypse #3)

Chapter ten

Dyana

I hadn’t realized when I said they could stay that it meant Jack, Bryce, and Evan would become extra flirty, but that’s precisely what’s happened over the past two weeks.

All three men went out of their way to touch and tease me constantly.

Wherever I went, one of them, if not all, came with me.

I had to admit, it was nice having help around the tower.

Cora’s men were always willing to lend a hand, even if Isaac did so begrudgingly, but I always felt like a burden when they did.

With the guys, it felt like we were a team.

Thanks to Evan’s ambitious remodel, things around the tower were starting to look better.

They had even gone as far as to spend a few days ferrying furniture up the mountain.

I was now the proud owner of a luxurious king-sized bed.

I suspected the larger bed served a purpose beyond a comfortable place for me to sleep.

I felt ridiculous going to sleep every night in the giant bed with them still on the floor in sleeping bags, but I couldn’t bring myself to invite them to my bed.

“Knock, knock,” Cora said as she stepped inside with Johnny.

“There’s my favorite little man,” I crooned as I plucked him from her arms. “Should you be hiking up here in your state?” I asked her, concerned as she lowered herself into a chair, out of breath.

She seemed to be showing more and more every day.

Far faster than she did with Johnny. Either she was further along than we thought, or she had more than one baby in there.

I poured her a glass of water and handed it to her.

“I’m fine,” Cora assured me as she took the glass and drank half of it. “It’s looking good in here,” she said, looking around. “How are things going with you guys?”

“Good,” I admitted. “It would be so easy to fall into the fantasy. Pretend that everything is normal when it isn’t.”

“Have you slept together yet?”

“No!” I blurted. “Jesus, Cora.”

“What? It’s a legitimate question. You are living with three virile men who are over the moon in love with you and watch you like they could eat you up in a few big bites. I’ll never understand how the hell you’ve managed to keep them out of your bed.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Not really,” Cora argued. “What’s holding you back?”

“Fear,” I answered honestly. “Sex became... a way for me to get what I wanted. To get ahead. And that’s not how I want it to be with them, but I’m afraid I’m not capable of the level of intimacy they want from me.

Sex is easy, it’s all the things that are supposed to come with it that complicate matters, or should if you aren’t broken. ”

Cora sighed as she regarded me sadly. “I wish you would give yourself more grace and stop beating yourself up for the things you needed to do to survive.”

“Cora, I almost killed you guys for your house. My sole intent was to take your home from you at any cost. I didn’t care who died. I didn’t care if I had to kill all of you, as long as I had your house. That’s not a good person.”

“But that isn’t who you are anymore,” Cora replied. “Furthermore, that wasn’t who you were then; it was what you had to do to survive. Now that you’re safe, you let that all go. You have to stop punishing yourself, Dyana. You deserve happiness just as much as the rest of us.”

How ridiculous was it that I was actively trying to convince Cora that I was a piece of shit?

And why did I have such a hard time believing that I wasn’t?

I looked down at Johnny in my arms to distract myself from my thoughts.

I couldn’t change what I’ve done, but I tried every day to be better than I was the day before. Maybe that was enough.

“I think you should talk to them about how you feel,” Cora suggested. “Tell them your story. Help them understand. And then, when they don’t leave, maybe you can start to see yourself through their eyes.”

I looked at her in horror. “I’m not telling them shit.”

“You are so fucking stubborn sometimes,” Cora snapped. We had known each other long enough now that I wasn’t bothered by her attitude.

“I’m trying, ok? I let them stay. I’m letting them change a bunch of shit.” I was making progress, even if it wasn’t much.

“Ok, you’re right. I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy, and it frustrates the hell out of me to watch you avoid it.” Cora stood and wandered over to the open window. “Speaking of changes, what’s going on here?”

I joined her to inspect the cable anchored into the tower.

“That would be Evan’s latest project. He said that if zombies surround us, we’re under attack, or if there’s a forest fire, we’re sitting ducks up here.

His solution is an escape zipline. Something we can clip onto and ride down to your place. ”

“That sounds fun!” Cora responded.

“I guess,” I chuckled. “Hopefully, we’ll never have to use it.”

“You know they’re talking about finally building a coop, too, right?

Derrick is determined, after your last sighting, that we will catch them this time.

He’s driving Remi crazy, but Evan, Bryce, and Jack are all about it too, which spurs Derrick on.

It’s rather humorous. You should come down more often and hang out with us. ”

Over the past year, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with Cora, but most of that time was spent while her men were away or busy.

I tried not to hang out with them because I knew they didn’t like me much, and if it had been up to them, I would have died the night Cora spared my life.

They tolerated me because they loved Cora and made it their life’s goal to give her everything she wanted.

“And before you give me some excuse, nobody hates you, Dyana. Stop exiling yourself and fucking live your life. You only get one. Don’t waste it.” Cora took Johnny back and hugged me. “I’m going to get him down for a nap. Think about what I said.”

I had thought about what Cora said, and for the past week, I had been trying to be more present.

To be more receptive to their tentative advances and stop avoiding group gatherings.

That was why I was down at Cora’s to help build the chicken coop.

It had taken the guys several trips to bring all of the materials we needed up the mountain, but with seven of them, it hadn’t taken nearly as much time as it could have.

By now, I was pretty sure we had cleared out the small hardware store in town.

“Aren’t chicken coops usually red?” Bryce asked as Cora and I stepped back to look at our progress so far.

“It can be whatever color we want it to be,” I replied. We had chosen a deep purple color, and I was loving the look.

“But purple?”

“We’re gonna have fancy chickens,” Cora replied.

When the paint had dried, we made all of the guys dip their hands in black paint, and all of us, including Johnny, with some help from his dads, put our handprints on the coop.

“Now that’s cute as shit,” I said when we were done.

“Now we just need the chickens,” Derrick said. He looked at me and Jack. “You’re sure you can trap them?”

“They aren’t roosting too far into the forest, but with the overgrowth, they’re well hidden,” Jack replied.

“I’ve been putting down the chicken feed, and they’ve already started gathering in that spot.

It shouldn’t take much more to coax them further out of hiding, and they have no reason to fear the traps, so it shouldn’t be a problem. ”

Our plan was for the four of us to stay in town for a few days while we trapped the chickens.

As much as Derrick wanted to be part of the trapping process, he wasn’t willing to stay away from Cora overnight.

The feed store had the traps we would need, and we had already brought all the chicken feed, except for one bag, back to the house.

We were as ready as we could be to bring chickens home.

I was apprehensive about staying in town with them.

As silly as it sounded, considering we lived together in the tower, it felt.

.. like we were going away together. It could be because we planned to stay at Jack’s old house since it was closer to the park.

I had nearly as many memories in his house as I had in mine, and while I was getting used to having Jack around again, the unexpected trips down memory lane were exhausting.

“Don’t worry, Derrick. We’ll get your chickens,” I assured him.

We decided to go down before it got dark instead of waiting until morning, so that we could set up the traps bright and early the next morning.

With any luck, it would only take us a day to catch all the chickens.

Memories flooded me as I stepped into Jack’s house.

It didn’t look the same. His parents had moved away when we started college.

Even so, it wasn’t hard to imagine their furniture as I looked around.

“I feel like an asshole for never asking, but did you ever find your parents after the outbreak?” I asked Jack.

He shook his head. “We tried to get there, but their retirement community was overrun by zombies. I had to assume they had turned because it was too risky to go over the gate.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied.

He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world now, right?”

“My parents tried to do a murder suicide. Dad didn’t know he was supposed to shoot Mom in the head, so that’s how I found them. Dad was dead, and Mom was a zombie I had to put down,” I replied. “Finding them isn’t always better.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Bryce agreed. “I ended up killing my parents because I found my two brothers and sister’s dead bodies locked in their bedroom. They had starved to death before the apocalypse started.”

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “That’s terrible! They deserved to die.”

“My parents lived in Florida, so we didn’t try to find them,” Evan said. “I think about them sometimes, but there wasn’t anything I could do, so I try not to dwell on it.”