After Today (The After Series Book 1)

by Jacqueline Hayley

  Mackenzie sidled under his arm as they kept walking, Jake purposefully shortening his strides to match hers. He didn’t love the idea of leaving Mackenzie at Chloe’s and going back to his own house alone, but he also didn’t want to fight those three banshees for custody of her.

  He sighed. Sharing the love of his life with the rest of the world sucked balls.

  Chapter Nine

  “Why do I have an ugly-ass gnome in bed with me?”

  “Kat, go back to sleep,” Mackenzie mumbled, pulling a pillow over her head.

  “You don’t understand, we have a gnome in bed with us.”

  With an energy Mackenzie couldn’t fathom, Kat sat up in the double bed they were sharing and waved the offending object in the air. Her movement jostled the mattress and instant nausea had Mackenzie moaning.

  “What?” Kat pulled the pillow away from Mackenzie, exposing her to the morning light. “I can’t hear you when you’re under that thing.”

  “I said go. Back. To. Sleep.”

  “But I’m awake.”

  “Make yourself unawake.”

  Mackenzie knew she was fighting a losing battle. One of Kat’s less loveable quirks was that no matter how debaucherously she’d behaved the previous evening, she awoke ridiculously chirpy.

  “I’m never drinking again,” Mac vowed, dragging herself into a sitting position and leaning against the headboard.

  “Are you going to be sick?” Kat asked brightly.

  Mackenzie answered with a murderous expression.

  “I tell you what, you tell me what’s going on between you and Jake, and I’ll get some water and Tylenol.” Kat wiggled her eyebrows mischievously.

  “What?”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Mackenzie Lyons. I saw the finger sucking that went on last night.”

  “The what?” But hazy images were assaulting her memory, and she half considered making a run for the bathroom. “Maybe I am going to be sick.”

  “Sit still and spill your guts, and then I’ll get you water and drugs,” Kat singsonged.

  “You’re evil.”

  “And you’re keeping secrets. Spill.”

  “We… we’ve been intimate,” Mac confessed in a rush, throwing hands over her heated face and peeping at Kat through her fingers.

  “Been intimate? What are you, some eighteenth-century damsel?” Kat was choking with laughter. “I think what you meant to say was that you were fucking.”

  “It was really good fucking.”

  “Does Chloe know you have the hots for her little brother?”

  “It’s not like that! And can you not refer to him as a ‘little brother?’”

  “It helps that he towers over all of us and is built like a beautiful Greek god,” Kat mused.

  “Kat! Stop. Do you think Chloe saw?”

  “Sometimes the hardest thing to see is what’s right in front of you.”

  “Stop pretending you’re wise,” Mackenzie grumbled, “and go get me water.”

  As Kat bounced out of the room, Mackenzie gingerly lay back down, hoping slow movements would ease the roiling in her stomach.

  The guilt of keeping this from her best friend wasn’t helping matters.

  “Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck.”

  Having soaked herself into sobriety in the shower, Mackenzie decided she was capable of starting the day. Entering the kitchen, she did a double take at Kat.

  “Wait, what? Are you cutting that coffee with whiskey?” She watched as Kat poured a generous amount of alcohol into her caffeine. “Not that I’m judging. But if that’s the new normal, I’m in.”

  “Jesus, Kat. Seriously?” asked Rachel, refilling the percolator with water. “Even the smell of that whiskey makes me want to barf.”

  “I’m on cafeteria duty this morning. I need it,” Kat insisted, recapping the whiskey bottle and stirring her mug. “I don’t cook. I hate cooking. And now Mayor Dickhead has me cooking for the whole freakin’ town.”

  “So, we’re not having breakfast here?” Mackenzie asked, looking at Chloe for clarification.

  “People are pretty much eating in their homes until they run out of food, and then having meals at the middle school cafeteria. And because the council has taken control of all the businesses on Main Street, we have to rely on rations they dole out,” she explained.

  “But this has only been going on a few days. Surely most people haven’t run out of food in their own homes yet?” Mackenzie said.

  “We had a thirty-hour blackout the day before yesterday, which spoiled pretty much everything in fridges and freezers.” Kat took a sip of her coffee. “The supermarket has a backup generator, so everything there was fine, but here? We’re living on cereal with no milk, pasta and a couple of random cans of food.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Townsend orchestrated the electrical failure, so we’d have to rely on him more,” Chloe added dolefully.

  “So how do we get rations?” Mackenzie grabbed a mug for herself.

  “The council puts up a chore list and you have to report to some kind of duty, which is monitored by a councilman. At the end of the duty, they give you a tag, which you redeem for rations,” Chloe answered.

  “A tag?”

  “Get this, it’s a cattle tag. Like, one of those things they put in a cow’s ear to identify it,” said Rachel sardonically. “Todd Berryman is a councilor, and he’s got a cattle stud, so I’m assuming that’s where they got them from.”

  Mackenzie was digesting this information when Jake and Dex appeared at the glass door leading from the kitchen onto Chloe and Ashton’s outdoor deck.

  “Hi, ladies,” he announced as he opened the door and they entered. “How are we feeling this morning?”

  Mackenzie’s persistent weight of guilt multiplied—she hadn’t even noticed Dex wasn’t with her, let alone wondered where he might be. Now she wasn’t just keeping secrets from her best friend, she was neglecting her dog, too.

  “Stop being so sober and non-hungover,” Chloe demanded. “And you could knock before you enter, you know.”

  “It’s a glass door, Chlo. You saw me there. And, by the way, it wasn’t locked. Tell me you locked up last night?”

  A sheepish expression was her only answer.

  Mackenzie bent to smother Dex’s head in kisses, wishing she was alone with Jake and could smother him in kisses.

  “Can you pour me a coffee, Rach?” Jake pulled out a chair at the table and sat down next to Mackenzie. “Morning gorgeous,” he whispered, his warm breath making her catch her own.

  Mackenzie narrowed her eyes at the dramatic waggling of Kat’s eyebrows and concentrated on breathing evenly, ignoring Jake.

  So much for him playing it cool in front of Chloe.

  She was lusting over her best friend’s little brother. What was wrong with her?

  She jumped guiltily when Chloe accidentally dropped a mug, bursting into tears.

  “Chlo! What’s wrong?”

  “I feel like shit. And I can’t find my favorite mug. And it’s killing me that I don’t know where Ash is.” Chloe snuffled.

  “Wherever Ash is, he’s trying to get home to you,” Jake reassured.

  “He’s right,” Rachel interjected. “That man is mad over you.”

  Chloe didn’t wipe the tears that were sliding down her cheeks, and Mackenzie jumped up to hug her. “He’ll get back to you, Chlo.”

  “Okay, enough of that. We need to get going.” Chloe sniffed, pushing Mackenzie gently away. “You all need to report to your duties so you can get rations to share with me, because I’m not doing mine today.”

  “Got something better to do?” asked Jake.

  “Anything would be better than crèche duty with Vivienne. But yes, I do. I want to check in on Grams. And remember that community garden she helps take care of? I think it’s just inside the Safe Zone, and I’m hoping no one else has thought to check out the vegetables.”

  “Oh, you know what? It would also be good to see if ther
e are any seeds there. We should probably try to plant some vegetables ourselves,” said Mackenzie. That sounded like an apocalypse-survivalist thing to do. “How is Grams?” She suddenly realized she hadn’t seen Jake and Chloe’s grandmother at the town meeting. “She wasn’t there last night, was she?”

  “Not that I saw,” he agreed. “But maybe with everything that’s going on, they just forgot to let the residents at the lodge know about the meeting.”

  “It doesn’t seem like Townsend has forgotten much at all,” said Mackenzie. “Doesn’t all this seem just a little too organized? How has the council implemented all these changes in such a short amount of time?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Kat bounced in her seat. “Oh, I know! Maggie was telling me last night. Apparently, there’s a group of men on the council who used to meet at The Strumpet, and instead of playing fantasy football, they had this weird version of ‘How I Would Run the World.’ Like, they’d come up with strategies of how they’d run the town in the case of an apocalypse. Kind of like, now…”

  “That’s…. psychopathic, right? Who plays fantasy apocalypse?” Mackenzie’s question was met with silence, which was eventually broken by Chloe.

  “You guys better leave now. No cars, remember?”

  “We’re walking?” The pounding in Mackenzie’s head intensified.

  “Yep, Townsend has put a ban on using gas, and he has crews going from home to home, siphoning everything they can get,” Chloe said.

  Jake stood in alarm, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. “Have you drained your car and hidden the gas?”

  “Calm down, Jakey. Quinn sorted it for us yesterday. We’ve got four jerricans hidden.” Kat grinned.

  “Meet at the school later?” Chloe asked as they traipsed outside.

  “Yep. And as a lunch lady, you don’t need a tag to get fed!” Kat laughed, walking ahead with Rachel.

  Jake fell into step beside her, and Mackenzie watched as Chloe turned and walked in the opposite direction, stalling until Chloe rounded a corner.

  “I should warn you now, I’m not good at keeping secrets,” Jake said, bending his head forward to catch her eye. He ran a thumb over her bottom lip and a corresponding warmth flashed straight between her legs.

  The husky depth of his voice had her wanting to turn around and head straight back to bed. With him. She was light-headed with lust and excitement and, maybe, a little too much caffeine.

  “Hurry up, you two!” Kat called from ahead, jolting Mackenzie from her daze.

  With a grin, Jake linked his fingers through hers and tugged her forward. His palm was broad and calloused, and her hand felt tiny within his. He was strong and confident, and she was almost sad she hadn’t noticed him growing into this man. She’d been present, but still missed the transition. How was it that, mere days ago, he’d been an unremarkable part of her life, and now… now.

  Now, she was a mess of confusion.

  Mac thought she’d been in love with Peter. But it’d never taken her breath away to think of him. Made her heart stutter to be near him. And it was almost alarming to think of how easily he’d slipped from her life.

  Whatever this feeling was for Jake, it was equal parts excitement and bone-deep contentment. It felt right.

  Her steps faltered. It did feel right. So, was it really so wrong? Maybe they could give whatever this was a chance.

  Noticing him watching her, she blushed.

  “Sleepover at yours tonight?” she asked, unexpectedly coy.

  “If I can wait that long.” He smirked.

  Jake looked up from the census form he was being made to fill in, struggling to concentrate. He’d never been great at this kind of shit at school and now, with Mackenzie sitting at the next table over, there wasn’t a chance in hell he could focus.

  Not when her soft curls were falling over her shoulder, and her brow was furrowing in an adorably cute way as she chewed on the end of the pen she was holding.

  Jesus. Get your shit together, man.

  She wanted to spend the night with him, but as they’d approached town hall, she’d also reminded him about keeping their relationship a secret. Which was making him crazy because he wanted to shout from the rooftop that Mackenzie Lyons was giving him a chance.

  Shaking his head, he returned his attention to the document in front of him. Why the hell they had to fill out a census was beyond him. Sanford was like any other small town. Everyone knew everyone else—it wasn’t like anyone was going to gain new information from him ticking a box about his age and occupation.

  Who thought of getting residents to fill out this kind of data when the world was falling apart? How had the council evacuated half the town, established an armed perimeter and put together job lists for the survivors in just a couple of days?

  Playing fantasy apocalypse over a couple of beers couldn’t have equipped the council to pull this off, surely.

  He glanced over at John Jefferies. Jefferies was the owner of the local car dealership and a longtime town councilor. Now, he was standing at the door to the room they’d been ushered into, looking for all the world like a guard. Complete with an AR-15 self-loading rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Hey! Jefferies,” Jake called, leaning back nonchalantly in his chair. “What’s with the gun?”

  “What’s it to you, kid?”

  “Just seems strange, that’s all. We’re supposedly in a safe zone, so why do you need to be armed?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  There was open belligerence in Jefferies’ response, and a flash of warning prickled down Jake’s spine. Eyes sharpening, he straightened. Since when did one of the most upstanding members of the town act like an asshole?

  “You asked me if I was carrying when I came in. If I had been, would that have been a problem?” Jake asked in a deceptively mild voice.

  It didn’t deceive Mackenzie, who’d raised her head and was watching their interaction with concern. Catching his eye, she raised her eyebrows, silently asking what the hell he was doing.

  What the fuck was he doing? He’d never been one to question authority. He’d never had reason. But right now? He found it concerning as hell that the town council was militarizing itself.

  “All residents have been ordered to hand in weapons, so yeah, it would’ve been a problem,” Jefferies said, walking over and planting his feet, stance wide, in front of Jake.

  Jake resisted the urge to rise to his own feet. “But it’s okay for the guy who owns the used car lot to carry?”

  “Careful, son. Now’s not the time to piss me off. Finish the census and get to whatever job you’ve been assigned for the day.”

  Jake contemplated his response. Did he push this further or wait and watch? Before he could decide, Jefferies was called away, closing the door with a click behind him.

  “What was that about?” Mackenzie said. “I don’t think antagonizing the man with the gun is a smart option.”

  “I have faith in Townsend’s contingency plan. Hell, I voted for the man. But Jefferies’ attitude is something else altogether.”

  “You voted for Townsend over Rachel’s mom?”

  Maree Davenport, Rachel’s mother, had been a prominent councilwoman for many years, and her discontent with Mayor Townsend was legendary, their tussles focusing on Maree’s progressive attitude and Townsend’s stubborn desire to remain in the last century.

  “I’m not against Maree’s ideas. I just think Townsend is a better leader. He gets things done,” Jake said. “We had no warning this virus was even in the country, and then within a day, all hell broke loose. We saw how crazy things are out there. But here in Sanford? Townsend has things locked down tight.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. He’s acting like a dictator.”

  “Maybe. But he’s keeping us safe.”

  Mackenzie went back to chewing on the end of her pen.

  “You two finished?” asked Jefferies, stalking back into the room. “Because
you’ve got guard duty, and I need to show you the route before the current shift ends.”

  “Um, I haven’t ever held a gun before,” Mackenzie ventured, surprised she was being given the option of guard duty, but not unhappy about it.

  “Not you. You report to the kitchen.”

  Mackenzie raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say I didn’t want guard duty. Just that I’d need to be taught how to handle—”

  “Men do guard duty. Get going to the kitchen before I reassign you to the laundry.”

  “What? So the women are being pushed into the domestic roles, without taking into consideration what other skills they may have?” she questioned hotly.

  Eyes narrowing, Jefferies swiped up Mackenzie’s census form. “And what skills are you suggesting”—he glanced down at the paper—“an environmental lawyer has to offer us right now?”

  “Skills can be taught,” she responded evenly. “And my background gives me an insight into how a pandemic will affect the environment. Affect our community.”

  “I don’t need a degree to tell you the effect is a shitload of dead people.” Jefferies sneered.

  Jake’s stomach clenched at the thought of Mackenzie carrying a rifle and patrolling their town. No way in hell did he want her in that kind of danger. However, as much as he believed Townsend was doing the right thing in protecting their community, he wasn’t going to stand for someone speaking to Mackenzie that way.

  That said, the firearm Jefferies carried had Jake at a distinct disadvantage and, for the first time, he understood the need other men felt to carry. A weapon gave power.

  “It’s fine, Jake, I’ll go to the kitchen,” Mackenzie murmured, and he realized that while he’d been silently fuming, she’d stood up and walked to his side. “We need information about how all this is working,” she added for his ears only.

  “Good girl,” Jefferies said. “And you, son, come with me.”

  “Do I get an AR-15?”

  “When your shift starts.”

  Slipping from the room, Mackenzie seemed to take all the available oxygen with her. With a tight chest, Jake wondered why, in a “safe” town, he was decidedly uneasy about her safety.