Page 9

Wade is gone.

She left for only a moment, determined not to hover when that only makes it worse, and now he’s escaped out the window as if she held him hostage.

How could she have failed so completely and so soon? How could every decision she’s made have been consistently wrong? He was safer back at Paradise Falls, where he’d have to scale the gates to get out. She was only fooling herself in assuming she could handle this alone.

Kara doesn’t pause to grab her coat. Barely notices that it’s raining until thunder cracks in the distance as she’s hopping the back fence. She isn’t a tracker by nature, only knows what he taught her when they were kids, and what the army supplemented after that.

She tries to think like him, but that’s difficult when he’s not thinking like himself.

He wouldn’t circle around to the front gate if he were distraught.

In his right mind, he might try to throw her off, but now she figures he’ll follow a straight line from the point of exit and simply keep going.

So that’s what she does, too. Calls out for him a few times before realizing that’s a bad idea.

He’s running from her. He’ll only hear her as a threat.

So she curbs the instinct to yell his name as a plea to whatever god might be left and focuses on moving forward.

Branches lay broken in her path, and footprints in newly forming mud point her in the right direction.

He got far and fast for someone as weak as he is.

They have to be at least half a mile from the house by now.

If she stops for a second, she’s not sure she’ll be able to pick herself up again under the weight of possible failure.

This time, her mistakes could land them back where they started.

With him gone and her unending search beginning anew.

Stupid to come out here, she thinks sadly. She was certain the quiet solitude would be the best environment, but she only offered him an easier way to break free.

‘If he runs, I’ll just follow him until he stops’, she told herself, and while that’s true, she ignored how difficult it might be to catch up to someone with that big a head start.

Her world has narrowed into a single goal, and that leads her into another error.

One she should be far past by now after surviving alone in the woods for so long.

She stops paying attention to her surroundings beyond Wade’s trail and misses the rotter stumbling out from behind a tree, nearly running face-first into a bite.

It startles her and instead of instantly unsheathing her knife, her hands come up to protect her face as she flinches away. It’s a split-second reaction, but enough to give her opponent an advantage.

The rotter is on her so quickly that it has to be fresh. The slower, older models aren’t this strong, but this one has plenty of muscle tissue left and it’s twice her size, looming and heavy while shoving her against a tree and trying to take a chunk from her neck like a fucked up vampire.

Kara kicks it back as best she can and grabs her knife, certain she can dispose of this and get back to what’s really important, when another one appears in her periphery.

She doesn’t have time for this distraction. It’s angered her more than anything else, at least until her blade gets stuck in a hard skull. The other one advances as she struggles to pull her weapon free, and that’s when fear grips her tight.

Instinct has her screaming out Wade’s name. She doesn’t expect him to save her in his current condition, but he’ll always be the one she turns to in her worst moments. That isn’t about to change now.

She can’t die out here. Who’s going to find him if she’s gone?

Who would even know he’s missing again until Luke comes back to check on them?

Silas and his men could stumble across Wade and recapture him, and she can’t let that happen.

Can’t allow herself to be taken out of the equation when she’s all he has and it’s her fucking job to make sure he’s safe.

So she fights what feels like a losing battle, arms burning from pushing the monster away and lungs heaving as she screams for help that won’t come. Manages to unstick the knife and aim for the eye instead, but it turns its head at the last second, then she’s back in the same situation.

‘Go for the eyeball,’ Wade told her that night they spent in her apartment. ‘Skull’s gonna be hard on some of them. Always aim for the eye if you can and it’ll sink right in.’

She can’t even get that right. Frustration festers as she wrestles with the dead, knowing he’s out there alone in the woods. An ungodly scream leaves her throat that both boosts her adrenaline and angers the rotters to try harder.

She’s going to die and fail him again, she realizes, right before the larger one is ripped away hard enough that her knife slips free.

She uses it to end the second threat while Wade smashes the first against a rock on the ground over and over until there’s nothing but a bloody mess against the fallen leaves.

He’s heaving and wild-eyed, covered in speckled blood, like a wolf over a fresh kill.

He saved her, but she can’t go to him like this.

He’s dangerous. Rage flows off him like lava, ready to burn anyone who gets close.

She slips downward with her back against the tree as shock floods her system.

Her ass hits the dirt at the same time he stumbles back from the rotter, landing on his knees on the ground.

They stare at each other for a loaded moment while she fights a cluster of emotions. She should be afraid he’ll come for her next, but instead of hostility, there’s only recognition. He sees her this time.

Hope swirls in her chest and lights her nerves on fire. She’s looking at someone who knows her. It’s hard not to feel like she’s seeing him for the first time, too. Her eyes prickle hot and her lower lip trembles with the effort of keeping still.

“Wade?” she tries, barely able to keep from flinging herself into his arms.

He’s drenched like he’d fallen in the river. There’s a cut across his forehead that mirrors one of hers, and he used the last of his energy to kill her attacker, but he’s here with her now and that’s all that matters. Everything else they can fix…eventually.

At first, his need to be close to her is clear across his face. It overrides all else, and she watches as relief creases his brow over a muted half-sob as he leans in her direction.

She responds by reaching out because, of course, she does.

They’re magnets forced apart. All he has to do to pull her in is exist in the same orbit.

The moment her hand raises with intention, he flinches, breaking the spell and averting his eyes, holding a trembling palm up as if begging her to stop.

It’s like asking her to quit breathing. Her desire to touch him is as ingrained and essential as the next inhale, but she obeys rather than lose him again.

Her heart sinks at the heavy shame in those blue eyes that won’t meet hers, downcast and covered by shaggy bangs but exposed enough to show his struggle.

She’s frozen in indecision while all her options tangle together. She wants to hold him and can’t. Wants to reassure him and doesn’t know how.

“Come back with me, please. Let’s go back to the house?” she says, as if soothing a wild animal with its paw in a trap.

He grants her a few flickering glances before tapping his own ear. “Can’t hear you that well.”

Oh. That explains a lot, she thinks, horrified that whatever they’ve done to him has almost stripped away one of his senses.

Still, it’s the first thing he’s said to her, and she soaks in the sound of his voice, graveled and low, just like she remembers. The best thing she’s ever heard.

She’s reluctant to spook him and get closer, so she does the only thing she can. Gets slowly to her feet and walks a few steps toward the house. Holds out a hand not meant to touch and wiggles her fingers in a come-hither motion, praying he’ll follow.

The rain begins to come down in sheets while he considers her request, fighting some internal battle before finally granting a silent agreement.

They make the long walk back home several feet apart, but he’s walking with her instead of running from her. She’ll count that as a win.

* * *

She doesn’t know how to behave, what to say, or how to say it.

Can’t figure out her next move.

There’s something fundamentally wrong about feeling so awkward around the only person she trusts with her whole heart. She’s constantly calculating and second-guessing herself, and that’s brand new and unwelcome.

They’ve always been in sync right from the start. Long before they were them , they still fit somehow, but now everything they’ve built is shattered. She lacks the blueprints to put it back together.

He followed her to the house. That’s an improvement.

He spoke to her. That’s more progress than she expected today.

He took the towel she carefully handed him and dried himself before sitting across from her on the bed. Considering he had her pinned to the floor two days ago, that’s a leap that feels like a mile.

Kara is focusing on everything that’s going right, otherwise she’ll only see what’s devastatingly wrong.

How he can’t stop shivering and all she wants is to wrap a blanket around him, but he refuses it.

How he still hasn’t looked her in the eye. Not the whole walk back. Not since they reached the safety of the house.

They sit a room’s length apart that may as well be a crater’s worth of space.

She can’t do the one thing she’s imagined since he went missing. Wrap her arms around him, whispering declarations in his ear and promising them a fresh start. She never crafted a plan B or C in all the nights she dreamed of their reunion.

Breaking the silence is a challenge when he may not hear her. She gestures to the spot beside him and he lifts his head enough to give her a nod.