by Kate L. Mary
“Yeah, well, I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but my brother was a moron sometimes.” I twisted my ponytail around my hand and gave Kellan a sad smile. “I do miss that idiot, though.”
“He’d be proud of you.”
“Maybe. I don’t feel like I contribute all that much most of the time.” I shrugged. “I try to kill one zombie by myself and fall on my ass. It’s embarrassing.”
“You do plenty,” Kellan said. “You make the soap now that Maggie’s gone, and you’re in the gardens more than anyone else. You’re even teaching Harper.”
“I have to do those things because you won’t let me take on a bigger role. It’s like you still think I’m that scared twelve-year-old you have to protect, and it’s infuriating.”
His smile didn’t disappear, but it did waver. “Regan, you have no idea how wrong you are. I don’t look at you and see a scared twelve-year-old. Believe me.” The way he paused and pressed his lips together made my heart beat faster. “I see it as my duty to keep you safe. Not to mention the obvious fact that I’d be devastated if something happened to you.”
My heart, which had been thumping wildly, stuttered like the engine of an old car. Kellan had told me he loved me, hugged me, even kissed me—on the forehead, but still—but never before had he said that. Devastated. Like I meant more to him than anyone else. I shouldn’t have been surprised, not after the last three weeks, but I still was.
My heart seemed to have doubled in speed while the room shrank. It also got hotter, not that it had been cool to begin with, and I found myself suddenly sweating buckets.
“Devastated?” I whispered.
Kellan’s smile was strained, and his gaze intense as it held mine. “You have to know that, Regan.”
“Kellan, I—”
“Will you two just go ahead and do it already?” Blake rolled over onto his back. “You’re worse than Ross and Rachel.”
Heat warmed my cheeks, but I managed to laugh. I only knew what he was referring to because we happened to have every season of Friends on DVD, and I’d watched them about a million times. I’d even stolen them from the theater room and taken them to my own condo.
“You do have kind of a Ross vibe.” I waved my hand in front of Kellan’s face, hoping to lighten the mood. “I can see it.”
Kellan rolled his eyes. “Right.”
“You do.” I squinted. “You even resemble him if I scrunch my eyes up like this.”
Kellan shoved me playfully and I giggled.
“You two are ridiculous.” Blake let out a groan and pulled the pillow over his head. “I need to sleep.”
“Don’t puke, okay?” Kellan said.
He got up, our intimate moment forgotten and his focus now on Blake. It was so like Kellan that I couldn’t help but smile, even though my heart felt as achy as Jasper’s knuckles.
While Kellan arranged Blake so he was on his side, I stood and stripped down to nothing but my underwear and tiny tank top before slipping onto the bed. It was late—after midnight, at least—and I was tired.
It wasn’t until Kellan pulled his own pants off that I remembered the lack of beds. Would he sleep with me? The bed wasn’t a twin, but it sure as hell wasn’t a king. We’d be close, our half-naked bodies pressed up against each other as we slept.
My heart beat faster as I watched him pull his shirt over his head, waiting to see what would happen. He moved to the lantern, glancing my way before blowing it out. Darkness fell over the room, and Kellan’s footsteps moved toward me. He didn’t hesitate before slipping onto the bed at my side.
“Is this okay?” he whispered just loud enough for me to hear.
“Yes.” It was all I could get out.
He shifted, trying to get comfortable, and his bare leg brushed against mine. In the three weeks we’d been sleeping in the same bad, we’d never touched. But now, we were so crowded it was impossible to avoid, and the second his skin touched mine, I found I didn’t want to. I wanted Kellan to hold me, to pull me against him and wrap my body in his. To strip me bare and kiss me. Screw the risks. I wanted all of it.
Except I was too terrified to ask.
15
Blake was dragging his feet the next morning, which wasn’t a surprise since he’d gotten totally wasted the previous night. Kellan, on the other hand, was anxious to hit the road. Which was also not a surprise. He loved getting out of the shelter and making a trip to one of the settlements, but he was always anxious to get home, too.
It wasn’t until we’d made it out to the car and were getting ready to climb in that Blake dropped the bomb.
“I’m not going back.” He didn’t look either of us in the eye when he said it, instead choosing to focus his gaze past me like he was studying the area and not trying to avoid the shock and hurt radiating off me. “I’m staying here.”
“What?” I said just as Kellan growled, “Like hell.”
“Kellan,” I snapped, knowing he could get gruff when he didn’t check himself. “You need to chill.” I turned to face Blake. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t go back there.” He tore his gaze away from whatever he’d been staring at and looked back and forth between Kellan and me. Blake’s eyes were red, and not from the hangover. Yes, they were bloodshot and swollen, but they were also swimming with tears. “It’s not forever, but for now I need some space. I know Emma and I weren’t working out, but that doesn’t mean I want to see them together. It’s killing me, man.”
Kellan blew out a long breath as he reached up and ran his hands through his hair. Still dazed from sleeping so close to him last night, I watched the movement as his dark hair feathered through his fingers, suddenly struck by how long it was getting. Longer than ever before.
“Jasper’s going to be pissed,” Kellan said.
“He knows.” Blake looked down. “I talked to him before I left. He told me to take my time and come back whenever I’m ready.”
“Shit,” I muttered when tears suddenly filled my eyes. “This is real? You’re really doing this?”
“I have to.”
Kellan dropped his hands from his head so he could reach out to grab Blake, pulling him against him in an embrace that defied every man hug I’d ever seen. “We’re going to miss you, man.”
Blake patted Kellan on the back three times, and like clockwork, the two separated.
When they had, it was my turn to throw my arms around Blake, only I didn’t pull away after three pats. “This sucks, you know that?”
“I know.” He squeezed me tighter before planting a kiss on the side of my head, and when he let me go, his eyes were even redder. “You two don’t rip each other’s heads off, okay? I want to know you’re going to be there when I’m ready to come back.”
I flushed and looked down, focusing on one of Kellan’s crisscross footprints as I so often did. Blake’s words from the night before played through my head. It wasn’t our heads but our clothes that were currently at risk, and Blake seemed to know it, even if he probably didn’t remember muttering those words.
“I’ll check in on you,” Kellan said.
I looked up, purposefully focusing on Blake. “Are you going to stay here?”
He glanced around, frowning, his gaze lingering longer on the street that led to the house Emma had grown up in. It was only a few blocks away, overrun with weeds and falling apart like nearly every other building in town, but still standing. In the back was the guesthouse he’d been renting from her parents, the one they’d gone back to a few times when they’d needed some time away from everything. That was years ago, though, before their weekly bickering had turned to daily arguments. Before they’d admitted to one another that they weren’t meant to be. Before Cade had confessed his feelings.
“Naw,” Blake finally said when his gaze was once again on me. “Altus never was my home, and I’d rather be by the water. I’ll probably hang out here for a day or two then hitch a ride to Quartz Mountain.”
“It’s prettier there.” I sniffed, trying to hold back the tears. It didn’t work, though, and one slid down my cheek when I blinked.
Blake managed a smile that didn’t look totally devastated. He took a step back, and despite the fact that I had the urge to reach out for him, I turned away and headed for the car. Kellan was already climbing in by the time I made it to the other side, and I looked up one last time before sliding in next to him. Blake had already turned away and was halfway across the town square.
I climbed into the passenger seat, sniffling and feeling like shit. “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”
“Yeah.” Kellan nodded as he shoved the key into the ignition.
For a moment he froze, his hand still on the key while his gaze moved to me, and the intense expression in his brown eyes made the hair on my scalp prickle. Was he thinking about us? About how we’d slept side by side for weeks? About what it would mean if we took that step?
“What?” I said when he didn’t look away.
Kellan shook his head like he was trying to knock away whatever he’d been thinking. “Nothing. Just thinking about how complicated a relationship can be when you’re living in such close quarters.”
Heat flared across my cheeks, and I looked away.
There were literally dozens of things I could say in response, but I chose to remain quiet.
He was right, of course. If we took that step and things went south, we’d find ourselves in the same situation Blake was in. Stuck with one another and totally miserable over it. We’d never be able to go back to the solid friendship we now shared.
The road in front of us wasn’t clear of the dead when Kellan pulled out of the settlement, but it took little effort for him to swerve around the zombies slowly ambling down the street. We stayed quiet as we drove, Kellan tapping the steering wheel to some tune only he could hear while I stared out the window. We passed Val’s, the restaurant and bar my parents used to go to on the occasional Saturday night, and not too far past that sat Happy Donuts, with Ye Old Donuts directly across the street, and the memory of the night before only made my cheeks hotter. Then there was his admission about how devastated he’d be if something happened to me. Devastated. I still couldn’t get over the word.
Kellan glanced at the donut shop as he drove past like he, too, was thinking about the last night. After nine years, I hadn’t thought simply sharing a bed with him could feel so intimate, but it had. Oddly intimate, considering Blake had been passed out on the bed next to us, and the man at my side had been in my life forever.
We neared the other end of town, but before we had reached the remains of what had been Wal-Mart, Kellan slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. A tumbleweed blew across the dust-covered street, nearly getting caught in waist-high weeds before breaking free and rolling into the dilapidated parking lot of Atwoods.
“I remember going there to see the baby chicks and ducks in the spring,” I said, nodding to the crumbling building that had at one time been a popular ranch and farm supply store.
“Me, too.”
Kellan didn’t say anything else right away, and I held my breath, knowing why he had stopped but unsure how I felt about it.
“Do you want to?” he finally asked.
I blew the air out of my lungs slowly, weighing the destruction this trip would bring as I did. “Yeah.”
He nodded like he’d known all along what I would say, and then turned onto Sequoyah Lane.
Two left turns, and we were turning right onto Mockingbird. He drove slowly, and not only because the street was littered with debris and choked with weeds, but because, like me, he was staring at the houses we passed. Houses we’d walked by dozens of times as kids. Houses that had at one time held happy families. Families who’d had hopes and dreams. Families who’d long ago perished.
The street was a U that would eventually take us back to the road we’d just come from, but Kellan didn’t drive that far, instead slowing to a stop when the one-story ranch house came into view. The roof was gone, ripped off years ago, and the posts on the porch had fallen down as well. I could just make out the white, peeling paint of one through the tall weeds that had taken over the front yard. True to their name, the knockout roses had managed to survive not only the apocalypse and neglect that followed, but the drought and severe weather that had pounded them over the last nine years. Their pink and yellow blossoms were the only bright spot in the otherwise desolate yard of the house I’d grown up in.
“Do you ever think about going inside?” I asked Kellan, tearing my gaze from the house so I could look his way.
He was staring out the other window, focused on his childhood home, which sat directly across the street. It had fared better than mine, although not by much. The roof was mostly intact despite the shingles that had been ripped off, but the picture window was broken, the pieces of glass littering the porch even after all these years.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to see what it looks like. Hell, I don’t even want to see this.” He waved to the street with its crumbling buildings and weed-choked yards. “Doesn’t mean I don’t torture myself by coming here every couple years.”
I reached over and put my hand on his leg, drawing his gaze away from the house. “We could have lost everything, Kellan, but we didn’t. We found each other.”
“I was a little shit to you.” He looked down, his gaze on my hand, which was still resting on his knee.
“You were scared. Just like I was.”
When he reached out and took my hand in his, it was as shocking as the confession from the night before. “A day hasn’t passed that I don’t feel guilty about the things I said. I shouldn’t have.”
I swallowed, remembering the angry words he’d thrown at me. The few weeks of us being alone, struggling to survive, were blurry, but the words were as sharp and vivid as if he’d said them yesterday.
“You’re dead weight, Regan, and you’re going to end up getting me killed.”
“I forgive you,” I whispered. “You were a kid. We were both just kids.”
“I was old enough to know better.” He stared at my hand for a moment longer, holding it in his gently, almost like he couldn’t stand the thought of letting go, and when he looked up, the expression in his brown eyes nearly took my breath away. “I was serious what I said last night. I would be devastated if something happened to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I said.
“Good.” Kellan placed my hand back on my own leg then threw the car into gear. “We should get back.”
We left our neighborhood behind, not talking again until we’d reached the outskirts of Altus. That was when my focus was pulled from the past to the dark and menacing clouds gathering in the sky. Yet another storm was rolling in.
“That doesn’t look good,” I said, pointing to them even though Kellan couldn’t have missed them if he’d been blind.
He wrung the steering wheel a few times and leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the distant sky. Just then, a nasty flash of lightning cut across the darkness, far away but bright and powerful. It wasn’t the lightning or dark clouds that made my heart pound harder, though. It was the way the clouds were pulling together and slowly forming a cone.
Kellan pressed his foot hard on the gas, and the car picked up speed. “We need to take shelter.”
I couldn’t agree more.
16
“We’re not going to make it,” I called over the roar of the wind barreling through the car.
The sky in front of us grew darker by the second, and in the distance the occasional burst of lightning lit up the black clouds, while the low rumble of thunder was audible even over the roar of the engine. Even worse, the clouds had started to rotate.
“I know.” Kellan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
The car had no windows—they’d broken in the down position years ago—meaning we were going to get soaked if the clouds did open up. I was less conce
rned about that, though, and more worried about the possibility of more hail or those clouds dropping down and heading right for us. The drought seemed to have officially ended, and in its wake a bout of severe weather had begun that was unlike anything we’d seen since before the apocalypse.
“I’m skipping the first checkpoint and heading to the second,” Kellan yelled before pressing his foot against the gas harder.
We shot forward, throwing dirt into the air as we zoomed across the dusty landscape. My eyes were safe behind my goggles, but in an instant my nose was clogged with dirt, and when I coughed, I sucked even more in. Specks of sand crunched between my teeth when I shut my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I knew if I did, I would only succeed in spitting in my own face.
I swallowed the dirt just as the clouds finally opened up, pummeling us with rain. It was like a thick sheet of water pouring over the car, covering the windshield and slamming in through the open windows until visibility was nearly impossible. Kellan didn’t slow, though. Instead, he seemed to drive faster, and I clung to the door harder, wishing we still had seatbelts in the car.
Thankfully, Kellan didn’t need to see to get us to our destination, and in no time we had skidded to a halt a few feet from the farmhouse. I hadn’t thought I could be any wetter than I was, but the second the car stopped, the rain pounded in through the open window. I sputtered and spit as I shoved the door open, pausing only long enough to grab my bag off the floor before charging for the house. Puddles of water splashed under my feet, and I found myself slipping in the mud, but I made it to the porch without falling, and then I was yanking the door open and stumbling inside.
Kellan rushed in behind me, and for a moment we simply stood side by side, gasping as water dripped off our clothes and pooled on the floor beneath us.
“Shit.” He ran his hand over his head, through his dark hair, and twisted it around his fingers. More water dripped onto the floor. “That storm moved in a lot faster than I expected.”