He looked up at me from under thick lashes. The lantern light softened his features and blurred the hard lines of his face. “I’m sorry that I kidnapped you, Reagan.”
I swallowed against the hope that came unbidden. “Does that mean you’ll let me go?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“But you will let me go,” I prodded. “Eventually, you will let me go.”
He didn’t say anything. He stared into my eyes and stayed silent. I didn’t know whether to take that as a good sign or a bad sign, so I squashed the hope but chose to believe that he would let us go one day.
Maybe that didn’t make sense; but it turned my emotional response into a clinical fact that would comfort me without playing havoc on my heart.
“Where are we?” I asked him after his prolonged silence.
“My dad’s hunting cabin.”
“What’s with the steel shades. Has he always been prepared for the Apocalypse?” I was almost amused by this place. It really was the perfect set up for a Zombie take-over.
“He’s always been prepared for the worst. And he’s always had enemies. The cabin has been a hideout for a lot of years.”
“So am I right to assume it’s not close to the Colony?”
He smirked at me but didn’t answer. Evasive bastard.
“What about your intentions with me, Kane? What’s the goal here? Stockholm Syndrome? BFF’s? I don’t understand what your game plan is.”
His smile became more genuine, “You don’t have to understand it, Reagan. You just have to know that you’re a part of it.”
Chills crawled down my spine and I shivered against his words.
Kane sat back in his chair and cross his ankle over his knee. “When I was a little kid, my dad used to bring me here every time he came up to hunt. Sometimes he would bring his buddies, sometimes he would bring my mom and Tyler and sometimes it would just be us. It didn’t matter who we came with, though, because he always made the trip about him and me. Even if it were us and a bunch of his buddies, he would always carve out time with me to work on my hunting skills. It was very important to him that I knew how to kill and that I knew how to kill properly. He taught me to be efficient and precise, so that my prey wouldn’t even know they were being hunted. He wanted my kill shot to be so accurate that they wouldn’t suffer for a second. He invested a lot of time into honing my skill.”
Realizing there was a point to this, I settled back and let myself listen to the hypnotic tone of his southern accent and the easy way he told a story.
“One time, in high school, after months and months of begging, my dad let me bring a bunch of my own friends up here for a weekend unsupervised. He didn’t really trust hunting without an adult and he probably shouldn’t have. A bunch of teenagers out here with all kinds of guns and beer… I mean, it was an accidental death waiting to happen. But we tried to be smart about it. At least as much as our intellectually-stunted brains would let us be.”
I held my breath as he sank deeper into his story. I didn’t really know where he was going with this but his tone and wistfulness made me nervous. Beer, plus teenage boys, plus guns screamed disaster waiting to happen.
“We were out here for three days living it up. Rebellious, immature, drunk the whole time. But we did find some time to hunt to. And when we went out with weapons, we were smart enough to leave the beer behind. On the third morning we were here, I went out alone. The rest of the guys were passed out inside or still drunk from the night before; but I had gotten up early and wanted to take the opportunity to do some real hunting. While we had been out a few times already, we’d never been able to be quiet enough to find anything good. I had the whole forest to myself that morning and knew if I didn’t come home with something good, my dad would never let us use this place again.
“See, it had been a test. He’d finally agreed to let us use this place when he realized he could test me with it. He knew there would be alcohol. He knew none of the other guys’ parents knew that we were planning to actually hunt while we were up here. And he knew there would be loaded guns. I asked him about this trip a year ago, wondering what he had been thinking to let a bunch of seventeen-year-olds put them in harm’s way like we had. He told me he had wanted to see which of us made it home. He knew the chances of someone dying out here were high, but he figured if someone did die, then lesson learned. The rest of us would learn from that mistake and never let it happen again.”
“What?” I gasped.
He smiled sadly and stared at his shoe. “That was years before the infection. Seven years ago, actually.” He paused for a moment and I could see that he was lost to his memories. Eventually, he cleared his throat and continued. “That’s how he’s always been. I can’t remember a time in my life where he hasn’t treated every situation like it’s life or death. He has always believed that the strong will survive no matter what and the weak should be cut down. That was the first thing I can remember him teaching me and he has layered my life with those lessons for as long as I can remember.” He paused again to gather his thoughts and continued, “Anyway, so I was out there in the woods right at dawn. The forest was still dark because the sun hadn’t penetrated through the leaves yet, the air was really cool and there was this fog all around me. The fog made it hard to see anything and I knew that my chances of killing something weren’t great, but I felt this pressure to impress my dad. I kept thinking, if I could come home with one buck or even a pheasant, he would be proud of me. He would know that I could handle my shit.
“So after a while of wandering around, I found a stand to hide out in and wait it out. Before long, I saw something moving in the trees in front of me. I could tell it was an animal and that it was a big one, so immediately, I assumed buck. I refocused and made sure that I was ready. And then I waited some more. Pretty soon this beautiful doe came waltzing into the clearing right in front of me. I had been so still that she didn’t even notice me. I watched her for a long time, transfixed by her regal beauty. She was all grace and elegance, the queen of the forest. Her gate was sure but delicate, her neck long and slender. I thought, in those still moments, I had never seen anything more beautiful. You know? I’d never really been a firsthand observer to something so… primitive. All the other times I’d been hunting had been with my dad and everything revolved around the kill. And there I was, all by myself, for the first time in maybe my whole life where I could actually appreciate that silence, and this deer stood before me as like this sign from God.” He laughed a little self-deprecatingly at himself and glanced at me with the right amount of insecurity and embarrassment to warm my heart against my will.
He cleared his throat and went on, “I know it sounds stupid, but honestly, I was moved. I was probably still drunk from the night before and what did I know? I mean I was only seventeen… but… I couldn’t help it. She made me feel something I had never felt before. There I was with my rifle in hand and this gorgeous doe in front of me. The beauty of the moment passed and I knew I had to kill her. I knew this was my one shot to bring something home to show my dad.” I sucked in a breath and waited for him to deliver the punch line to this story. “Just as I got ready to pull the trigger, her fawn stumbled out of the tree line after her. He was this new little thing and walked right up to her and held up his nose. She reached down and slid her muzzle along his face and nudged him over to start his meal. I swore for a second I was in the middle of some cartoon; it didn’t seem possible that I could witness a moment like that. It took all the wind out of my sails and I couldn’t do it after that. I couldn’t make myself hurt something so innocent.” He dropped his foot to the floor and leaned forward again. His elbows went back to his knees and he let his fingers brush purposefully over my knee. And even though there was an afghan in the way and my sweatpants, I felt his touch all the way to my bone.
“So did you find something else?” I asked before I could stop myself. “What did you take home to your dad?”
“Nothing
,” he admitted. “I didn’t kill anything that day.”
“Was your dad disappointed?” My voice was a whisper of expectation.
Kane nodded and gave me that same under-his-lashes look that made my traitor heart beat faster. “He never let me up here again. He never invited me on another hunting trip ever again. He said I had embarrassed him and myself. He told me that beauty was something to be owned, not observed. That if I couldn’t take what was rightfully mine when given the chance, I didn’t deserve the chance to try.” Kane’s expression hardened while his eyes took on a new kind of intensity. “When I told him I wanted to bring you here, it was the first time he said yes in the last seven years. Do you understand why he said yes?”
He waited expectantly for me to answer while I replayed his story in my head about a hundred times on fast forward. Beauty was something to be owned.
That’s what the Allen men believed.
That’s what I was doing here.
This was symbolic for Kane from the last time his dad had trusted him. Kane had a point to prove. And I finally understood the timeline I had to work with.
Kane would keep me here until I was his. Until he owned me.
After that, I couldn’t say what would happen to me nor did I really want to find out.
But now I knew what I was working with.
“Do you really believe all that, Kane? Do you believe that beauty is something you can own?” I ignored his question because the answer was obvious.
He answered slowly and I could tell that he was as lost in thought as I was. “I used to.” He slid to the edge of his chair and his knees pressed into mine. “But now I know that it is not so much of a tangible thing that can be held in my hands. When I was seventeen years old I saw something that moved me and it changed my life. It made me understand that I should appreciate even the simple things in life. It made me look up and outside of myself and see the unique wonders of this world. But it also turned me into a disappointment in my father’s eyes. Beauty saved me in one way and ruined me in another. I know that you can’t own beauty because it isn’t something that can be held in your hands. But I also believe that you can possess it. You can keep it with you and around you. That it can become a part of you. There are some beautiful things that belong with you but in order to keep them, sometimes you have to do ugly things or you’ll miss your opportunity.”
Beauty saved me in one way and ruined me in another.
Those words resonated with me in a way I felt absolutely terrified of.
A sadness I couldn’t explain settled on my shoulders; I sagged from the weight of it. I leaned forward so I could capture all of his attention. “That’s not true, Kane. That’s your father, that’s not you. He believes a lot of things that aren’t true. And I can see that he started teaching them to you at a very young age. But you don’t have to believe those things anymore. You’re a grownup. You get to decide what’s truth and what’s not.”
He let out a nervous breath and took off his glasses. He closed the distance between us so that his forehead rested against mine. “You think I’m wrong.”
“I know that you’re wrong.”
I let him keep the connection between us but I had no idea why. I should have pulled away. I should have gotten up and walked away.
“You’re a beautiful thing, Reagan.”
I shook my head against his. “No, I’m a beautiful person, Kane. I’m not something you can possess or own. I’m a person that has to be free or I will suffocate and die.”
He pulled back so that he could look directly into my eyes. Intensity and emotion glittered in his silver depths and he watched me with something close to fascination. “Do you know that even now I know I did the right thing by that doe. I know it was right that I didn’t kill her.” I stayed silent, sensing that he wasn’t finished. “I don’t feel regret or disappointment. Even though it pissed my father off.” His hands covered mine and pulled them into his lap. “But you’re right that you’re not just a beautiful thing. I would feel more than regret if I lost you, more than disappointment. I did the right thing with the deer, but I don’t know what the right thing is when it comes to you.”
His confession tugged at my heart and I felt the pain from the front of my chest to my very spine. It pierced through me completely.
He went on, more intense than ever. “See, with the deer, I felt like that act of violence would kill me… would destroy me. But with you, it’s the opposite. Everything I do to make you mine feels like redemption… feels like… salvation.”
“I’m not an animal, Kane. You can’t compare me to the deer.” My voice was nothing but a broken whisper.
“Don’t miss the point, Reagan,” he pleaded with me sweetly. “I know you’re not the deer. I’ve never regretted my inaction with the deer but every moment I’m not with you feels like remorse and misery and all the ugliness left in this world. I couldn’t take it anymore. You are the beautiful thing in front of me while I stand still as death. You are the moment in my life that is moving my soul, creating some cataclysmic reaction inside of me that threatens to shatter my entire world because of the force of you. You are the hope in my despair. The light in my darkness. You are air when I am drowning. Goodness when I am nothing but evil. You are the change that will save me.”
My bottom lip trembled and I held my breath to keep from crying. Kane hadn’t been a real person in my head for a long time. Instead, he’d been a monster, something evil and untouchable. Something that I would fight in my nightmares and avoid in my real life. He was this dartboard in my head that I would throw knives at or this imaginary goal I had in which I would kill him a thousand different ways so I could be rid of the headache.
He was my fear and my insecurity.
He was my ugly thing in the same way that I was his beautiful.
Until now.
Until this moment when he exposed all his broken soul to me and asked me to fix him.
That was not fair. This was not playing fair.
I jumped up to my feet and he followed just as quickly. We bumped into each other and I teetered backwards. His hands caught me around my waist and held me still.
“Now you know why you’re here,” he whispered to me. His lips were just a centimeter from mine and I felt his breath as it blew across my mouth.
“I still want to go home,” I told him with a shaking voice. “I know why you brought me here, but I don’t belong. I can’t be any of those things for you.”
His fingers gripped me tighter and dug into my sides. “You already are those things for me.”
“Let me go, Kane,” I pleaded. I didn’t know if I meant immediately or emotionally, or both.
“I’ll let you go tonight, Reagan.”
But he didn’t. Not right away. He pulled me tighter against him so that my front pressed into his. I felt his body heat in every part of me, the firmness of all his muscles, the shape and contour of his towering body as he leaned over me. His head dropped and I knew he would kiss me.
He had woven an elegant web of everything he could think of to trap me and it was working. He was pulling me deeper into the tangle of his complexity and even though I fought to get free, the binding he had around my body and soul was becoming stronger… more permanent.
I turned my head at the last second and his kiss landed on the corner of my mouth. He groaned with frustration but let his lips linger for several moments before trailing three kisses over my jawline. Eventually he stepped back and followed through by letting me go.
I sprinted forward into the same room that I had woken up in this morning. The metal shades were already closed and there was a low-lit lantern on my nightstand. I went to shut the door behind me, but he was leaned in the doorframe, making my escape impossible.
“I’m sleeping in the living room tonight,” he told me.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so eventually I said, “Okay.”
“Remember that there is no vehicle to escape in. We are all
trapped here for the time being. If you manage to leave your room tonight, you will not be able to get into Page’s without waking me. You have no weapons. This forest is full of Feeders. Do you understand the extent of what you are up against?”
“Yes.” I didn’t really. I mean, I did. But I knew eventually that all those obstacles would not stop me. However, I desperately needed space from him right now and the quickest way to accomplish that was to get him out of my room.
His eyes narrowed at my easy admission but eventually he took a step back. “Goodnight, Reagan.”
“Goodnight, Kane.”
He closed the door behind him and I heard the lock click on the outside. I started to crawl into bed but realized I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet. I could never go to the dentist again and I didn’t know how long toothpaste stores would last, so I took nightly brushing very seriously. I walked back to the door and knocked softly on it to be let out.
Not a moment went by before Kane had opened the door and stood looming in the doorway. I hadn’t expected him to be waiting for me.
I hadn’t expected him to think I would change my mind about his almost kiss or that if I knocked on the door that was somehow a sign that I wanted him.
My mouth dropped open to tell him about my teeth when he closed the distance between us with the most hopeful expression on his face. He cupped my jaw with the sweetest tenderness and crashed his mouth to mine in the very next second.
To say I was taken by surprise would be the understatement of the Apocalypse.
His lips were soft and insistent as they worked against mine. My hands dangled limply at my sides and my brain spun out of control.
If he had been the arrogant asshole I knew he could be, I would have pushed him away immediately. But instead of cocky and demanding, he was gentle and… worshipful. I could feel his fast pulse and frantically beating heart as his chest pressed into mine. His hands trembled as he held my face to him. His lips moved reverently against my mouth. The very vulnerability of him paralyzed me.
Love and Decay, Season Two Omnibus: Episodes 1-12 Page 31