“I assume the rest of that food is just for you?” Price asks.
Henri’s eyes were growing heavy, but they flicker with fire suddenly. “Watch yourself,” he growls. “She saved your miserable life, but I’d be happy to end it if your attitude doesn’t improve.”
* * *
It’s nearly dusk when we finally come upon a deserted homestead. Whether we can afford to stop or not, we have to. I’m worried Henri will collapse soon if we don’t. He is stumbling now, his skin almost ashen.
“We’ll stay here for the night,” I tell them.
Henri looks at me with heavy eyes and nods. “We should sleep in the barn, though. If the Germans come, they’ll search the house first. It will give us a small advantage.”
“You killed people,” says Price. As if I killed good people. As if we aren’t in the middle of a fucking war and I didn’t save him from a work camp and certain death. “They aren’t going to just ignore it. We need to keep moving.”
“Feel free to keep moving,” I reply. “I’d prefer it if you did.” That goes for both of them. Quinn’s unwarranted self-confidence is nearly as annoying as Price’s sense of entitlement. The only smart thing I’ve seen him do yet is steal the German’s canteen.
Henri and I walk into the barn and when he lowers himself into the hay, his whole body seems to sag, his eyes sunken with fatigue. He needs so many things I’m not sure where to start. I turn to Price and Quinn. “Can you see what’s in the house? I need alcohol to clean the wound.”
“Or you need a head start to get away from us,” says Price.
I’m about to reply when Quinn grabs him. “Even I’ve had about enough of your mouth. Come on.”
They leave and I start to pull off Henri’s boots but he reaches for me. “Come here.”
I go to him. “What is it? Are you in pain?”
He tugs me toward him and presses his lips to the top of my head as he pulls me to his chest. “My sweet, insane girl,” he murmurs. “You could have died.”
His eyes close, as if the act of talking is too much for him. I pull away and grab the penicillin from the bag. Henri doesn’t even seem to notice the needle as it enters his skin.
Quinn walks in and throws me a dress. “To bandage the wound,” he says, taking a heavy drink from the bottle in his hand.
“I’ll take the alcohol too,” I tell him, reaching up for it.
He hands it over, nearly emptied. Henri is obviously in pain and the selfish bastard only saved enough for me to clean his wounds, nothing more. “You worthless piece of shit,” I mutter. “You could have left some.”
“Henri, I pictured you with a refined little lady,” Quinn says. “This one has quite the mouth on her.”
Henri gives a quiet laugh, and then flinches. “Yes,” he says, “that was my first impression as well.”
Quinn and Price retreat to the loft and I make Henri lie down on a makeshift bed of hay and the single blanket. Using the dregs of the alcohol, I do my best to clean the wound and dress it with strips of fabric.
“How do you feel?” I whisper.
“Lucky,” he says. “And scared.”
“Scared of what?”
He forces his eyes open and pushes the hair back from my face. “If I die—”
I shake my head. “You’re not going to die. Once the antibiotic kicks in—”
His eyes close. “Sarah,” he says quietly, “you know how this works. If this is when I’m supposed to die, nothing you’re doing will matter. If that happens, swear to me you’ll go with the children and stay gone. A promise you actually keep.”
I curl up beside him and press my nose to his neck. He smells of soap and hay and sweat and the combination reminds me of a thousand other times I spent with him in the barn. “I swear.”
And this time I mean it. Except if he dies, I’m not sure how I will possibly go on.
* * *
The next time my eyes open, it’s daylight, and our bag is gone. So are Quinn and Price.
They have everything we need aside from my knife—our food, Henri’s penicillin, our money. Everything.
They fucked with the wrong girl.
“What is it?” asks Henri, groggy, struggling to open his eyes. Do I dare leave him here while I go back in time to take care of this? What if he’s found while I’m gone? I flinch at the idea, but then again, I can’t defend him here without that bag.
“Nothing,” I reply. “I have to go take care of something.”
Just then I hear whistling. Obnoxious, brash whistling. Quinn walks into the barn and sets the bag down beside me
“Where did you go?” I ask.
“I caught him with your stuff about a quarter mile from here. Bastard offered to split it with me.”
My hands are shaking. Price deserves to die, and it would be so easy. So unbelievably easy, if I time traveled to earlier in the morning.
“What is it?” asks Henri, sitting up and wrapping his arm around me.
“He deserves to die,” I reply between my teeth. “He should die for taking that bag.”
Henri looks at me for a long moment, studying my face. “He’ll likely die anyway,” he says. “He’s got no food, no weapon, no money.”
I pull my knees to my chest, taking deep breaths. “He deserves to die painfully.”
“Little thief,” Henri says against my ear. “We need to go. Killing him doesn’t move us forward.”
And I know he’s right. But the desire still burns in my chest. The Coron in me is getting stronger. It feels like it’s overtaking everything I am.
* * *
After another near-silent day of travel, we find shelter, though the home is in such disrepair it’s hardly better than sleeping in the open. Henri cleans up at the pump, already much better than he was yesterday, and returns without his shirt. Despite his wound, the sight of him like that is as appealing as it ever was—miles of smooth, tan skin, all muscle. My core clenches in response, but right now, he needs a good night’s rest.
“Lie down,” I say. I give him the shot of penicillin and then start putting a clean dressing on his wound. While I work, he asks the questions he was too tired to ask the night before, and I finally tell him about the worthless forgeries Roche provided.
“He’ll pay for that,” Henri says. “As soon as I’m back home.”
Home. My hands still before they resume their work. I’m not sure we can go back to Saint Antoine after what I’ve done. Claudette will never know for certain that I cut off her finger, but she might guess at it, and my sudden disappearance on the heels of Nadeau’s death will be suspicious. At the time it all seemed so necessary, so well-deserved, and it still does, but in both Saint Antoine and Paris, people may now be looking for me. Every bad thing I do seems to have a ripple effect.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
I swallow. “Nothing. I tear one last strip. “I’m nearly done. I think your wound is looking better.”
“Do you remember when you did this before?”
I laugh. “Last night? Yes, I remember it well.”
He presses my hand to his chest and holds it there. “No, not then. In Saint Antoine. When you bandaged my gunshot wound. Do you remember? I wanted you so badly it felt like a fever.”
“You did have a fever,” I reply with a small laugh, tying the last strip around his rib cage.
“That might be,” he says, “but I was hard the whole time.” He wraps a hand around my neck and pulls his lips to mine. A kiss that is clearly meant to lead to more. And God knows I’d like it to, except I don’t want him to tear his wound open again, and Quinn is across the room.
I pull away, wanting him so much it’s painful, and go to the pump to wash up. He’s injured, I say to myself on repeat. He needs to rest. When I return to the house, Henri appears to be asleep. I sneak in quietly and lie down beside him, relieved and disappointed at once. His arm urges me closer. “I need you,” he whispers.
“You should rest,” I argue, b
ut he’s already tugging at my pants.
“I’ll rest when I’m dead,” he says.
He pulls me on top of him. Even wounded and starved as he’s been, his strength amazes me. His hands go to the button of his trousers and he pops it open. “Please, little thief. I’ve dreamed of you every night since I left.”
I pull the trousers down low enough for him to spring clear of them, while his hand slides between my legs. When he finds me bare there, free of my undergarments and ready for him so soon, he groans. “My God, I’ve missed this.”
He lines himself up and grabs my hips. I try to resist, to go slowly and he makes a noise of exasperation.
“Don’t be gentle, Sarah,” he says. His fingers dig into my hips, lifting me, pushing me back down, doing the work for me. “Please. I’ve dreamed of this for too long.”
I take over, trying to maintain some sense of sanity despite the desperate press of his fingers and the fullness inside me. It’s only been two months, but it feels like a lifetime.
“Faster,” he grunts, the boards beneath us squeaking loudly.
“Quinn will know,” I whisper.
“And he’ll know several times more tonight,” he says with a sound that is half laughter and half groan. “Come closer. I want to see your face when you let go.” He pulls me down, pressing his teeth into my shoulder, buried to the hilt, and I stop trying to be gentle. I ride him as if he is here only for my pleasure, to use as I wish, and in seconds I feel it coming, my stomach tightening, my heart hammering.
“Yes,” he hisses. “That’s it.”
I gasp, my head going backward, eyes squeezed shut. His hips lift, chasing mine, and then his hands pull me hard against him as he comes with a low, sustained groan. I collapse on top of him, resting just for a moment before I start to pull away.
He grabs my hips once more. “Stay. Just for a moment. Stay.”
I lean over him, careful to avoid his side, and he presses his lips to my forehead. “My beautiful, insane girl,” he whispers. “Of everything I’ve suffered and witnessed over the past two months, being apart from you was the hardest.”
I listen to his steadily beating heart, torn between two contradictory emotions: so full of love for him I could weep, and so terrified of losing him that I feel violent and desperate in response. I need to tell him what I did. But not now, I think. Just let me enjoy this while I can.
I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until many hours later, when Henri shifts against me, hard as stone. “We’ll perhaps need to find you undergarments tomorrow,” he whispers. “It might help.”
I laugh. “Yes, our first job, before we find food.”
He rolls on top of me, pushing the sweater around my waist. “If you’re awake enough to make jokes,” he says, sliding inside me, “you’re awake enough for this.”
* * *
We rise at first light and begin moving north once more, following the road at a distance. My spine prickles and I look over my shoulder.
“What is it?” Henri asks.
“I…do you think someone could be following us?”
He gives a short laugh. “I think many someones are following us.”
“No,” I whisper. “One person, on foot. Watching us.”
He frowns. “It’s natural to feel that way, under the circumstances. But an armed person would already have acted. An unarmed person would die if he attempted anything.”
I know he’s right, but I still feel it for hours—that unsettling nudge at my back. It reminds me of the time traveler I encountered during those last visits to my own time, her eyes on me as if she was just waiting to strike.
The sensation abates after a few hours, and by the tail end of dusk, when we find another abandoned farm, I’ve almost forgotten it entirely.
We eat another insufficient meal, and then Henri goes to the woods to set traps while I enter the house, scouting for things we can take with us. The closet is full of dresses, but what I want most is the mattress—a week of sleeping on hay and the bare ground has taken its toll. I tug it down the stairs and drag it outside.
“That’s for the best,” says Quinn. He’s leaning against a wall, whittling. A useless endeavor if I’ve ever seen one. “If I have to spend one more night listening to the squeaking boards while you and Henri make whoopie I’m going to put a gun to my head.”
“Now there’s a thought,” I grunt, struggling with the weight. It’s filled with goose down and spectacularly heavy, but he doesn’t offer to help, naturally.
“You really don’t like me, do you?”
I let the mattress fall, suddenly exhausted. Within a day, we’ll have parted ways. Once we reach Clermont-Ferrand, Henri and I head north for Nanterre while Quinn will turn toward the Pyrenees. It can’t come soon enough. “I have no feelings about you either way, aside from the fact that you are one more mouth to feed and one more person to defend while I try to save my husband.”
He raises a brow. “You make me sound like a child who can’t take care of himself. Has it ever occurred to you I might be of some help if there’s a fight?”
“No,” I reply. “I can honestly say that’s never occurred to me. Which reminds me: Henri and I are staying here to rest an extra day, so if you want to head out on your own, feel free.”
We’re near the Occupied Zone, and once inside it, we will need to move fast. I want to be certain Henri is sufficiently recovered before we go, though if his stamina last night was any indication, he’ll be just fine.
Quinn shrugs. “Sure, I can rest,” he says. I roll my eyes as I turn away. I was really hoping we’d get a day here without him.
Henri is just returning from the woods, so I cross the yard to him. He nods at the mattress. “Are we moving in, then?”
“We could use a good night’s sleep.”
His eyes rake over me. “I’d like a soft mattress as much as you, though for very different reasons.”
I shake my head, hiding a smile. We are in a terrible situation—walking across the country, in danger, separated from our family—and yet simply because he’s here, I’m happy.
“What reasons would those be?” I ask.
He pulls me toward him. “Let’s go get the mattress,” he says, “and I’ll show you every one of them.”
* * *
I wake in the middle of the night and stare at the moon through the open beams of the roof. Between the blanket and Henri’s warmth, it’s cozy here. But it eats at me, the things I haven’t told him.
I don’t realize he’s awake until his mouth brushes my temple. “What’s troubling you, Sarah?” he asks. “I can sense it, you know, when you’re keeping things to yourself.”
I roll toward him. He’s going to learn it all eventually. It may as well be now. “Marie wanted me to go see Yvette when I was in Paris, so I did.”
“Yvette?” he asks. “Why?” There is incredulity in his tone, and I don’t blame him. When I say it aloud, it sounds insane to me too.
“She...was sleeping with some high-ranking German and Marie thought she might help us get papers, at least for Cecelia. But she wouldn’t. She got mad when Cece wouldn’t stay with her and called the guards on us both.”
“You killed her?” he asks softly.
I nod, my breath holding as I wait for some sign of disgust or condemnation. Instead he pushes my hair from my face and his palm rests there, against my jaw. “You didn’t think I’d blame you for that, did you?”
“She’s not the only person I killed,” I whisper.
He tugs me even closer. “It won’t matter. There is nothing you can say that will change how I feel. So tell me.”
My hand curls into a fist against his chest as I begin. I tell him about Cece’s illness, Nadeau’s threat, Claudette’s attack...and what I did in response.
Slowly, as I speak, he unfurls my fingers and rests his own hand over mine.
“I should never have left you alone,” he says when I conclude. “I put you in that position, leaving you
the way I did.”
I shake my head. “It’s something inside me, Henri. It grows a little more every time I hurt someone, like a weed. I’m worried it’s going to take over.”
I want him to tell me that’s not the case. I want him to tell me what I feel is normal and will go away. But for the first time, he doesn’t try to reassure me.
“Can you stop?” he asks. It’s an honest question—not a suggestion, not a reprimand. “Can you just let me defend you instead?”
“I’ll try,” I tell him. I wonder if he doubts me as much as I doubt myself.
* * *
I rise in the morning and walk into the house, hoping to get clean clothes before I wash off. And hear a single footstep somewhere behind the kitchen.
“Show yourself,” I announce, reaching for the gun tucked in my waistband. “Or die.”
The steps are light, unhurried, as they approach, and then a child walks into the room. She’s young—maybe eleven or twelve—and wearing clothes I recognize from the room upstairs. Her eyes lift to mine...and I take a shocked step backward. She has the eyes of a time traveler—green eyes, like Henri’s—and then a brilliant, sweet smile lights up her whole face.
“Who are you?” I demand.
Her mouth opens and then closes, uncertain. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you. Am I supposed to tell you?”
I lower the gun. “You must be…Marie’s child?”
She laughs. “Mom, it’s me,” she says in English, without a trace of an accent. “Quinn.”
I blink several times, wondering if I’ve heard her correctly. So much is wrong here. She called me mom. And she is definitely not Cecelia or Charlotte. And if I did have a child, why the hell would I name her Quinn?
“What?” I ask, but already I’m seeing it: I see Henri in her, and also myself. She has his thick hair, his olive skin, his green eyes, but with my bone structure and build. She’s as much a product of the two of us as any child could be.
“How is this possible?” I whisper.
“Well, you showed me all these places when we came last summer and I wanted to see what happened so...” she trails off, and her eyes grow wary. “Are you mad?”
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