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Olivia hasn’t felt this good in weeks.

The dizziness is gone, along with the urge to pass out.

Only after she found relief did her denial no longer mask how miserable she was.

Feeling less alone helps, too. Her doubts about Cole have been consistent and nagging, as she waited for him to have a change of heart, but hearing his one-sided conversation with Lucy did a lot to squash that fear.

‘ Not trusting anyone new with you.’ He said to her, with no trace of his usual gruff facade.

This baby isn’t his, but he saved her life and she looks at him like she knows him.

Part of her wonders if it’s a bad thing. If they stay together long enough, Lucy may grow attached only to be crushed when he leaves. Olivia knows he will someday.

This isn’t permanent, fake marriage or not.

Still, she thought he’d leave them in an alley, assuming he’d make the same choices as her dead husband, but it’s clear she’s wrong about that much. He’s only doing his best to hide a soft heart. She hopes he might learn to trust her one day and reveal the side of himself that Lucy has seen.

“When can she eat real food?” Cole asks, from the small sofa by the window he’s sprawled out on, shoving Cheetos in his mouth.

“I think at six months. Not sure. Why?”

“Trying to remember what foods I liked as a kid. Couldn’t stand bananas, but liked broccoli well enough. Wonder what she’ll like.”

“I had banana cravings the whole time I was pregnant, so maybe she’ll hate them too since she had them so often,” Olivia muses.

“And junk food…a kid’s first taste of ice cream has to be funny.”

“If we even have ice cream anymore. Need freezers for that.”

“Solar power for a freezer should be one of the first things we get set up at the farm. Can’t imagine a world without ice cream,” he replies wistfully.

She smirks. “Find some cows, too?”

“Hell yeah.”

Their conversation about running a post-apocalyptic dairy enterprise is cut off by a commotion outside, and he rushes to lock the door after glancing out the window.

“Bunch of new people. Might have come for the junkie, Waylon.” He flicks the safety off his weapon as gunfire erupts below and footsteps filter through the halls.

Someone’s horrified ‘ what the hell did you do!’ is the only clear sentence above the muffled racket.

Cole flips the lock to peek around the door frame and just like that, she doesn’t give a shit who’s hurt out there, only cares that he might join them and end up on the wrong end of a bullet.

“Please leave it,” she whispers. “They can handle it. Please.”

“One of the grannies is hurt. Stay here. Don’t move.”

He’s gone before she can object. If she could reach out and drag him back by the shirt collar, she would.

He left them. Granted, it’s to help someone else, but that doesn’t do much to quell her fears.

She is selfish at the moment. Not confident enough in her ability to protect both herself and Lucy, and they need him for the foreseeable future.

Anything that might compromise that isn’t something she’s willing to entertain.

Then, a twinkle of worry in the back of her mind reminds her she’s growing fond of him and it isn’t only about wanting protection anymore. She might miss him. What a bunch of nonsense that is, she thinks with a sigh. She’s so fucking desperate that she’s latched onto this man like a leech already.

When curiosity gets the best of her, she leaves Lucy sleeping in the middle of the bed and cracks the door an inch, peering down the hall to watch the scene unfold.

Cole and one of the leaders have their guns trained on a stranger while a nurse tries to keep one of the residents from bleeding out on the white tile floor.

“I didn’t see her,” the new man pleads. “I swear it. If you woulda told me the truth—”

“Only truth I see is that you got a hard-on for shooting old people if it gets you what you want,” Cole shouts. “Is all this worth those drugs? Need a fix that bad?”

“You don’t know what it’s like… there’s nothing left out there. We can’t go much longer.”

“Yeah, everyone needs something these days, don’t they? Get in line.”

When it’s confirmed the resident didn’t make it, there is arguing and cursing between the standoff and sobbing in the background.

The sickening crack of a knife through a skull forces a rippled flinch through Olivia’s body. Andrew put down the one who passed like a rotter, but a bullet isn’t a bite. She’s having a hard time wrapping her head around why he’d bother.

In the end, their attackers are outnumbered by a small margin and escorted out with a handful of the drugs they came for.

“They’ll come back,” Cole tells Andrew. “You can’t let them go like that.”

“What’s the alternative? Shoot all three of them in the head point blank?”

Cole raises a brow with a half-shrug. “I’m not saying that. I’m also not not saying that. Everything’s different now and you got people to protect.”

“Gave ‘em something to hold them over. They know we don’t have much more. Maybe they’ll move on now.”

“Even if they do, they won’t be the last.”

“We’ll deal with that when or if it happens. One day at a time, right?”

The one who brought all this to the care home’s doorstep has apparently defected and stayed behind. He pipes in with a regretful reassurance. “They won’t come back, I promise. We all had plans to keep going north. They aren’t looking for me anymore. They’ll move on.”

Cole only offers him a glare, holsters his weapon, and stalks down the hall with a rumble that gets louder once he spies Olivia in the doorway to their room. “I told you to stay in here. Something coulda happened. Got bullets flying all over the damn place.”

“And I told you not to leave,” she counters. They’re a foot apart, locked in a stand-off she refuses to back down from.

Her instinct is to shrink away from conflict. Do anything to keep him happy, like she told herself she would when they first met, but she forces herself not to cower or beg forgiveness. Cole only gets angry when he’s worried and the odds of her catching a backhand are slim to none.

She can’t spend however much of her life she has left, fearing the next blow, so she stands firm and matches his irritation with her own. If this is all an act and he really will hit her, she should find out now, when there are people to help, rather than later when there won’t be.

This time, he didn’t yell at her like he did in the diner. He kept his word that he wouldn’t repeat that performance.

“They needed me out there,” he replies.

“We need you here.” Her words soften at the edges, and that’s when he deflates.

His shoulders slump as he moves past her to check on Lucy, where she’s still sound asleep. “I’m trying to keep you both safe. I need you to help me out with that. You could have caught a bullet if it got worse before they left.”

“You think they’re coming back?”

“Not sure. Weren’t happy about not getting all the drugs, but the traitor who stayed behind says they’ll move on.”

“They’re outnumbered. They know that.”

“For now,” he replies.

“Thanks for what you did back there.” Andrew appears in the doorway, cutting into their conversation.

Cole tips his head in a quick nod. “Sorry, you lost someone in all that.”

“Me too. Thought it would be the virus we had to worry about but looks like it’s other people who’ll get us instead. Don’t know if this will turn bad again. Like you said, they won’t be the last. Y’all are welcome to stay as long as you need, but if you wanna skip out, I don’t blame you.”

“Have you heard anything about the safe zone?” Olivia asks.

“More like the shit zone. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt that says oh shit, I almost died.”

Cole scowls. “So that’s fucked now, too? Nothing left?”

“Last I heard, only the dead live there now. Good thing you ended up here, if that’s where you were going.”

They’ll have to leave. This place isn’t safe long term, but for now, she’s desperate to stay. If she’s forced to run for her life all over again so soon, she isn’t sure she can keep bouncing back. Thankfully, Cole doesn’t make a choice without her. That’s something she’s still getting used to.

She stops Andrew before he can leave, wanting to get one thing straight without waiting another moment.

“I need you to know that we ran into some trouble before you found us. That’s what this is from.

” She gestures to her faded split lip and browning circles ringing her arm.

“Cole wouldn’t hurt me. No one said anything, but I know what the assumption would be. I should have said something sooner.”

“We were coming to that conclusion ourselves. Cole doesn’t fit the description. Not the way he’s been carrying on talking all sweet to that baby.”

“Jesus,” Cole groans. “Everyone and their grandma’s been snooping. I haven’t been carrying on .”

“Sorry, man, better get used to it. You got a daughter now. This is what happens. Turns you soft in all the good ways.”

This is the problem with being a fake family.

People think it’s real and then a weird twist forms in her stomach, teasing the possibility of what-if.

She has to remind herself that she doesn’t know him well yet.

It’s too soon to let her mind conjure up scenarios where none of their relationship is fake .

He isn’t interested, anyway.

Not a chance in hell.

Cole falters for a reply, choosing to change the subject. “About the one who didn’t make it. Why’d you stab her in the head like a rotter? She wasn’t bit.”

“People pass here frequently from natural causes. When the second resident came back after a heart attack and tried to eat someone, we started making sure, just in case.”

Olivia squints, putting the pieces of a grim puzzle together. “But that would mean—”

“That death is all that’s needed to turn, and a bite only gets you there faster. That’s what we think, at least.”

“Heard that rumor floating around,” Cole replies. “But it wasn’t confirmed before the news cut off.”