Page 54

She shrugs, grabbing one of the cans of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ripping the lid off to sniff it. “Wanna try it? Best time is when we’re high.”

“I could eat. Like what? You said it wasn’t like that with him.”

“Oh. Um…I dunno. It was easy. Fun for a little while. He wasn’t shy about showing that he liked me, and I was lonely and sad and…is that a spider?”

He follows her gaze up to the ceiling. “Looks like a blood splatter.”

“Oh. Good. Better than a spider.”

His heart sinks. Why the fuck did he ask that? He doesn’t want to hear about how much fun she had with some other guy. The last thing he wants now is to picture it.

“But fun doesn’t make a solid relationship,” she continues matter-of-factly, dipping her finger into the can to lick off the contents. “He only knew what I showed him.”

“And yet he developed such a fucking fixation on you. Not that I blame him.” He mimics her attempt at trying the food, only to find it doesn’t taste half bad.

“There was a very brief point right about a year after the turn when I just didn’t want to be alone.

That’s all it was. Felt like I failed you.

It didn’t matter to him that I couldn’t love him back that way.

I knew it wasn’t fair, but he made it seem like he accepted it.

He deserves better, anyway. Someone who feels the same. ”

He catches her gaze until she looks up from the joint to meet his eyes. “You never failed me.”

“Felt like I did.”

“You never gave up, though. Why?”

She shrugs, inhaling another puff that she holds in her lungs for a beat before exhaling. “I didn’t want to face a life without you in it. There was never any other option. I would find you or die trying.”

“I’m real glad you didn’t die trying.”

“Me too, because here you are,” a smile lifts her lips. “You and Cole were always made of rubber. I bet he’s still out there, too. Probably has a whole new family by now.”

“That one never had an ounce of game. Everything he learned, he got from me. If he found a girl in the apocalypse, she’d have to be the one making all the moves.”

“Do you think about him much now?”

Wade sighs, “All the time. Keep trying to remember what plan we had, but it’s a gaping hole in my brain.

Don’t even remember being with him before I came to your apartment.

Barely remember the start of the outbreak at all.

Only fragments. Only bits and pieces from after Silas grabbed me.

Fuck, I hope Cole’s okay now. Really hope he forgot about me after all this time. ”

She scoops a handful of questionably preserved bread to eat off her fingers. “No one who knows you can forget about you.”

He looks away, red coloring his cheeks even though she hardly said anything scandalous. “You think too highly of me.”

“Or you don’t think highly enough of yourself…wow, I wonder how many boards are in the floor. Can you count them?”

Her train of thought is jumbled. But who is he to say they shouldn’t count the floorboards? “Thirty-one.”

“You did that in your head right now? You didn’t even use your fingers.”

“Weed makes me math better.”

“No shit. Useful.”

“Do you remember that New Year’s Eve we spent together?”

She grins. “When we almost made out on your sofa?”

“That’s the one.”

She coughs, blinking at him with a fond smile only a good memory can bring.” We were both so drunk. You kept going on about elephants. Whole conversation about elephant migrations and then the ball starts to drop on TV and you got so quiet.”

“Because all I could think about was kissing you at midnight.”

“You did kiss me at midnight.”

She isn’t wrong. They don’t count that moment as a real kiss. Never have. It’s a thing people do, only a tradition. Find the closest person and plant one on them at midnight but somehow it felt like so much more when their lips touched for all of zero point two seconds.

“Yeah, and then I got scared,” he groans. He remembers how hard his heart pounded until he feared she could hear it. How disappointed she looked when he backed away so quickly from such a chaste peck.

“Of me?”

“Of losing us.”

She shakes her head, her hooded eyes meeting his. “I made some weird elephant joke as a distraction and stole your beer can, and then you tackled me to get it back.”

“I wanted more than to get my beer back. I wanted—”

“I would have let you.”

She holds his gaze a moment too long, and he gulps at that revelation.

“Anyway, what about you?” she asks absently, fiddling with a pen from a side table.

“What about me what?”

“We know why my brief relationship failed. I’m too fucked in the head and emotionally unavailable. But you…before the world got sucked into a meat grinder, you went through a girlfriend a month at least. Why didn’t any of those work out?”

“Told you already.”

“It wasn’t meant to be, blah, blah, blah, whatevercakes. I know what you said back then, but I’m asking for the real answer. Come on, spill it.”

Maybe it’s the pot that gives him the courage to hold her stare for a long moment, drop his tone an octave, and let the vulnerable side of his heart peek through the armor that’s afraid to lose her. “You know why.”

It never worked out with anyone else because he’s always been in love with Kara. Plain and simple. He couldn’t give his heart to another woman.

“Oh. Because of me and you?”

He nods.

“Shit. I knew it. I knew they all hated me. I tried to be kind to them, I did, but I only came between you and—”

Fuck, she’s either willfully ignorant to his true feelings, or just as terrified as he is to lose what they have.

“Ima need you to stop being obsessed with why it never worked out with anyone else, okay? It didn’t because it never could have.

I was already in love with….” He’s not high enough to finish that sentence.

Not even when she’s watching him like she can’t wait to hear what comes next.

Instead, he saves himself from unintentional sabotage by letting the drugs help him reach for something random.

“Hey, what do you think is beyond space?”

She squints, happy to follow him on this pointless journey. “Nothing, because space is forever.”

“Nothing’s forever. Gotta be something past the edge of it, and then something else after that, and so on. Can’t just be infinite space, that doesn’t make sense.”

She opens her mouth before closing it again with an audible click and a frustrated look. “If we’re talking about what comes after, then we gotta talk about what came before.”

“Like what made space?”

“Let’s assume the big bang is how it went down, but what….made the bang go bang? What shoved everything together and formed it all? And how?”

“Whatever that is has to be what comes after.”

“Exactly. Thanks for not suggesting it’s magical, or that god did it.

If there is a god out there, he or she has abandoned us, and I don’t want to think about that.

Plus, then I have to assume hell is real too, and that’s a rabbit hole that leads to agonizing over where I’ll go after my eventual demise. ”

“Not to hell,” he scoffs. “If there even is such a thing. Maybe we’re already in it. What are you talking about, anyway?”

“You don’t know me. I’ve done—”

“You keep saying that, and I still don’t know the things you’ve done. Whatever you think gets you a one-way trip down there, I’m telling you that’s not true.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

“Because you got the biggest heart,” he says simply, as if it’s common sense.

“You care about everyone, even when it hurts. Always trying to sacrifice for the people you love. I dunno if I believe in God. Never did before and don’t have much reason to now.

Could go either way, though, I guess? And if it’s true, then there’s no chance you’re not heading right up to those clouds. ”

“You think too highly of me, Wade,” she says sadly, throwing his words back at him.

“And I’ll keep doing that. Can we stop talking about dying, though? Depressing.”

She gifts him a shy nod. “Okay. Want to play a game?”

“Hmm?”

She shifts, crossing her legs and sitting in front of him so they face each other. “It’s easy. No weird yoga positions required. First one to break loses.”

“Staring contest? What are you, twelve?”

“Don’t be a spoilsport.”

“Alright, fine. Let’s do this.”

“I’ll warn you, I never lose at this game.”

“Never lose at any game ‘cause you’re a cheating cheater who cheats,” he teases.

“I am not! I’ve never cheated once in my life.” Her words are offended, but her smile is wide enough to show him those pretty white teeth. “Focus. Count of three, right in the eyes. Don’t break.”

Before he knows it, he’s locked in an awkward stare that flares a shiver up his spine.

Why did he agree to this? It’s uncomfortable and weird, and he has to struggle to keep from looking away.

He’s had a hard time looking anyone in the eye for the last six years.

Doing so would have gotten him a fist to the face or some other punishment.

He’s made progress recently, but that flushes right down the drain when faced with the unrelenting stare of someone he’s trying to hide from.

Not all of himself, just the part that loves her so deeply it’s rooted at the very base of his soul.

The longer she looks, the more likely she’ll notice, but he’s not a quitter. He won’t give in yet. He fights so hard to remain still that the beginnings of tremors shake his fingertips where they rest against his knees.

At first, he can see the desire to win written all over her face. Then something changes right around the time he begins to feel a sweat break out across his forehead, and her expression softens, even though her eyes never waver.

“It’s okay,” she says, covering his hands with her own. “We don’t have to hide from each other, right?”

“Right.”

“I want you to see me.”

He sees a clear mile past the usual barriers, straight into the depths of those eyes he finds so strikingly beautiful.

That awkwardness they started with begins to fade as they crest a peak and begin coasting down the other side until he can’t remember how it ever could have been anything but comfortable to be right here looking at her.

Maybe it’s the drugs, but all he wants is to touch her. The usual padlock he’d have secured on that urge is nowhere to be found.

He swallows hard, slipping one hand from hers to caress lightly across her wrist up to the elbow, curving there before continuing the journey past the slope of her shoulder to trace the muted constellations dotted across her collarbone.

It’s a good thing he’s spent so many years imagining the map his fingers follow because he doesn’t have to look to chart the course.

He knows where he’s going, knows every inch of her he’s been allowed to see.

When she tilts her head to offer him more, that stare becoming hooded but not broken…

.he takes the invitation up the span of her neck and across the angle of her chin.

Pink lips part in his periphery, and her breath hitches when he touches her like she touched him the other night, his thumb brushing light and soft against her warm lower lip.

Something has shifted between them since then.

He felt it during that dance but second-guessed it by morning. Now, it’s far too obvious to ignore.

He loses the game when he glances down at her mouth.

She only encourages him with a barely perceptible nod, as if knowing exactly what he wants and granting permission to take it.

Then a crack of thunder shakes the motel, triggering dual flinches and eliciting a muffled curse from her and an apology from him as they bow their heads, looking away.

“We should go to sleep,” she says, sadly. “Get a head start tomorrow up that mountain.”

“Okay.”

He aims for the bed across the room, fighting disappointment, while she goes for the one by the door, but she catches his hand before he can get far enough away. “I don’t want to sleep alone, Wade.”

The bed is small, but he could never deny her. Follows her lead and joins her in that tiny space where she boldly curls carefully against his side, resting her head on his chest.

“I sleep better when I’m close to you,” she whispers.

He may have lost the contest earlier and even failed to kiss the girl, but it still feels like he won.