by Jones, Isla
Summer gave a short laugh and strode to the door, an air of importance stiffening her spine and tilting her chin up. Now, she was Dr Miles, and Summer no more.
Before she left, she paused at the door and fixed me with a stern look. “I should tell you that Mason worked very hard on that cheesecake after your arrival. I’m told he used the last of our tinned strawberries to make it—strawberries whose fates ended with the floor of the dining hall.”
Shame flooded my cheeks. I pushed myself up against the headboard. My toes curled under the disapproval in her stare. “I’ll say sorry.”
“You’d better,” she said, then smiled. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
In a blink, she was gone and the door shut behind her. I slumped and let out a harsh breath that had brewed deep within me for who knows how long.
It took Summer to show me, but as I sat there, I saw it.
The walls kept me safe. The room kept me clothed, clean, and warm. And the food kept me nourished.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad at the CDC after all.
19.
Walking into that dining hall after what I did the day before was like walking into a courtroom, and I was the one on trial. Only, my crime wasn’t so bad. It was cake-swatting, a misdemeanour.
The eyes that followed me sparked with intrigue, and mere scattered pairs captured glints of judgement.
Summer might be cross with me, but I left my crutch back in my room. I couldn’t limp into the dining hall with it—that would have just been too pathetic, even for me.
Instead, I wandered in and fixed my gaze down at the clean tiles. Without looking at the spread on the table, I could sniff out most of what was there. But even among the fresh fruits and jams and cereals (with real milk), there was one specific, identifiable fragrance that gurgled my stomach and wet my tongue.
Toast.
Oh, I missed toast. More than I’d ever realised. Bread is all good and fine, but when it’s toasted? Divine. I lived off that stuff in LA. Never had there been a time that I didn’t want toast.
I licked my lips and lowered myself, carefully, into the same seat as the day before. Vicki wasn’t at the table. In fact, none of my group were, except Adam two seats over. Some comfort came to me at his distance from the other soldiers. He sat alone, he wasn’t one of them yet, and neither was I.
Any unity between us was gone, though. Adam spared me a sour look before he dug back into his honeyed oats.
I scanned for a plate, then cursed inwardly when I spotted them farther up the table. I’d already sat down. I can’t say why, but the thought of standing up again and drawing attention back to myself riddled my stomach with fluttering moths.
Further up the table, Mason rose from his chair and grabbed a plate. He piled pieces, here and there, onto it before he sauntered down to me.
At the sight of him, my face reddened and my toes flexed in my sneakers.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly. “Um … About that whole thing yesterday, I was … You know, I was tired and—”
My words flopped. I couldn’t string them together in my mind, let alone in my mouth. They came out all tangled.
Still, Mason wore a charming smile as he put the plate in front of me—a gesture that Adam noticed and, though I hadn’t thought it possible, his face turned so sour that I’d half-suspected there to be peeled lemons in his oats.
Mason slid onto the seat next to mine, but didn’t bring it any closer to me.
I was grateful for that.
“My sister told me you made the cheesecake,” I said, eyes on the plate. I scanned the fruits first—I really should have eaten them before anything else—but the buttered, dark toast called to me. “For what it’s worth, it looked good.”
Mason chewed on a smile and fell back in his chair. “I shouldn’t have shoved it in your face like that,” he said. “You’d just woken up, you’ve gone through a rough time out there …”
Like mine, his words failed and he ended with a half-shrug and apologetic look. I might enjoy his company more than I’d thought.
“Please,” he said, jerking his head to the plate. “Don’t be polite about it. We all eat like savages around here.”
On most occasions, I need to be told twice, thrice, a thousand times over and I’ll likely still do whatever I want to. This wasn’t one of those times. I snatched two pieces of toast and chomped on them both as though they made a sandwich together, but without filling.
Mason cleared his throat and shifted closer. His chocolate eyes avoided mine as he said, “When you arrived … when you were dressing …” He bit down on his lips a moment, then met my blank gaze. “I wasn’t looking at you … that way. I just wanted you to know that.”
“I caught you staring at me,” I said, my voice as quiet as his was nervous. “It was pretty obvious.”
Mason nodded, but the hint of pleading still danced in his soft eyes. “I was … It wasn’t the way you think.”
I’d finished all the toast on my plate. The yoghurt pot was next to be devoured. “Then what way was it?”
“It was your scar,” he said and tapped his finger to his shoulder, under where his collarbone started. “It looked like a bullet wound, and it caught my attention I suppose. I’m sorry about that, I didn’t mean for you to feel uncomfortable.”
Mason drew back into his chair.
Before I could lift a second spoonful of yoghurt into my mouth, he added, “You’re a pretty woman, but women aren’t really my … preference.”
My brows shot up. Was I his sudden confidante? When did that happen? Was he a masochist who decided to befriend me after I destroyed a piece of his cheesecake?
I swallowed down the vanilla yoghurt and shrugged. “Oscar’s the same. But that’s sort of obvious.”
Mason’s handsome—yes, now that I know he is gay, I will call him as he is, and that is handsome—grin swept over his face as a light chuckle rumbled his chest. “The first thing he said to me was, Where are my Gucci pants? I told him they’d been burned in the furnace during decontamination. He hasn’t spoken to me since.”
I choked on a spoonful and smiled with my eyes. Not a real, genuine smile. It was my newer smile—the unnatural, stiff one that tightens my face even when a natural one wants to burst through.
“He’ll never forgive you for that,” I told him. “And Oscar likes to think of himself as our group’s our mother hen. He does the cooking and all that, so eventually when he finds out you’re the cook, you’ve got a life-long enemy on your hands.”
Mason laughed, but waved away my words. “I’m not the cook, Jason is.” I had no idea who Jason was and Mason didn’t tell me, either. “I have the feeling Oscar isn’t a worthy adversary. What’s the worst he’ll do? Sprinkle glitter on my bed?”
I pinched my lips. “That’s actually really annoying and hard to get out.” At his arched brow, I added, “I passed out in my bed one night after a festival. Couldn’t get the stuff out of anything—sheets, pillows, even my carpet, all covered in pretty me pink.”
“You’re funny.” Mason didn’t laugh to back up his claim. He studied me with a small smile on his face for a pause, then slapped his hands to his thighs. “I should go, work doesn’t stop for too long down here. Hope to see you back here for dinner.”
“Maybe.”
That was the best I could do. Vicki’s absence meant one thing to me—she’d taken the pills. I wanted to check on her, bring her some breakfast, and wander around some. Today felt like a wandering sort of day. Today felt lighter than the dreary days before it.
Mason left me to my plate of scraps. I filled a mug with lukewarm coffee and drank it halfway before I glanced at Adam. Lava stared back me, almost ready to boil over. How long had he been looking at me like that?
My brows lowered and I held his stare. “What?”
Adam just scoffed and shook his head, his stare dropped to his finished oats. He mumbled something under his breath, though too low for me to hear.
With a sigh, I pushed
myself up from the chair and finished the rest of my coffee. “Have you seen Castle and Leo around today?”
Adam sneered. “Why? You wanna fuck them over again or just fuck them?”
Stunned, my wide eyes stayed on his for a beat. An ick-sound gathered at the back of my throat before I stomped up to the plates and filled one for Vicki.
I went straight to her room.
֍
Her door was unlocked so I let myself in. Cleo was quick to greet me—as was the potent punch of pee.
My nose crinkled.
Cleo had left a few puddle-presents all over. I shut the door and heard a dry, guttural retch from the bathroom.
“Vicki,” I called and set the breakfast plate on the foot of the bed. “I brought you something to eat.”
A heave was the answer that ripped through the ajar door.
I hesitated before I grabbed a towel and cleaned up Cleo’s mess. For me, it was slow, painful work. But Vicki did for me, so I returned the favour. The stink lingered, but the hit of it had dissipated some by the time Vicki emerged.
She leaned against the doorframe and rubbed the dark bags under her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was meaning to do that but—” She gestured to her stomach. Cramps, pains, nausea, digestive issues. I understood.
“You should eat something.” I pushed up from the floor and kicked the towels into the bathroom. “How’s Mac?”
With a groan, she fell onto the bed. “Dr Wong will let me know if anything changes. Lotan came by earlier. He said Mac is out of surgery.”
I sank into my favourite piece of furniture—the armchair—and stretched out my tummy. “So he’s not awake yet?”
“They’ll let me know as soon as he is. For now, he’s too sedated to even know his own name if he wakes up.”
Vicki barely sipped from the juice box I’d brought her when there was a knock on the door. I slid off the chair and gestured for Vicki to stay where she was.
I answered the door to see Lotan on the other side, a tray of breakfast and coffee in his hands. His face fell when he saw me. Lotan was quick to catch himself and pull on a cheery smile, but I kept my brows lowered as I stared back at him.
“Vicki wasn’t at breakfast,” he said. “Thought she might be hungry.”
He shrugged one shoulder and handed me the tray, but his gaze roamed around me. Around. Over my shoulder, the side of my head, above my head. His gaze traced my outline.
“She’s not feeling well,” I said as kindly as I could manage. It doesn’t come naturally to me. “I’ll make sure she gets this.”
After a goofy dip of the head, he backed down the hall until he was out of sight.
I wondered if that oddball knew how deep Vicki’s love ran for Mac. Poor Lotan probably thought Vicki’s feelings for Mac were built from the ruins of the world. The whole ‘last man and woman on earth’ sort of thing. It had taken me a while to see the strength in them as a couple. But when I did, I saw that their love was true and as sweet as it could be with a delta.
I stayed with Vicki for a while before she eventually drifted off to sleep. Cleo had no desire to leave the warm bed and I think she sensed Vicki’s pain. So I left on my own and wandered the halls with my thoughts of ruined feelings and feelings of ruins.
Those broken pieces of me were caught between two men I wasn’t sure I even wanted. In the early days of my time in the group, I developed feelings for Leo—from the ruins of the world.
But Castle ... I got to know him. I bonded with him, shared secrets I held close to me always. Those feelings I harboured for him, while toxic, weren’t built from the ruins, but they were ruined in themselves.
Sometime during my wander, my legs connected with my thoughts and I changed direction. I found myself at Room 10.
Castle’s room.
I’d meant to find the pool, but I faced the door and reached out for the handle.
The door was unlocked. It swung open to a dark room.
Staring into Castle’s darkness, I froze. It lured me in. Called to me. But a part of me tried to drag my feet back to my own room. Castles pull was stronger; I stepped inside and flicked the light on.
He wasn’t there. His unlocked door told me he wasn’t far away. Maybe in Leo’s room. Maybe looking for me—or not. Just because my feelings were built naturally didn’t mean his were too. If he had any for me, that is.
I roamed the room and paused to pick through some of his things. Books were stacked neatly on the desk against the wall, some pens scattered over beige papers and his bed was perfectly made.
The stark contrast took me.
This was him. Organised, strict and tidy.
My room was me. Messy, cluttered and reeked of dog waste. Already, there were dirty mugs and plates scattered over my furniture and smears of toothpaste on my sink. But if I’d packed up all of Castle’s belongings into a box, his room would look bare, as if no one had ever stepped inside let alone lived there.
He lived in me.
As much as I hated that fact, I felt it burst through me in that moment and with it came the familiar burn at my eyes. I blinked back the tears and sat on the edge of his bed.
On the nightstand was a leather-bound book, tied with a leather string and next to some grey pencils.
I shouldn’t have, but I pulled it onto my lap and unfastened the string. My fingers didn’t hesitate, not once. And as I opened the book, I stole a peek into what I’d thought was Castle’s strategy book, but turned out to be something much more intimate than that.
I stole a peek into Castle.
20.
The pages captured my gaze, my soul, and my heart.
All air was hit out of me the moment I opened that book. The pages, thick to the touch, kissed my fingertips with memories from the outside. This journal wasn’t like mine, but it was a journal. While there were no words staining the paper, sketches filled in the blanks
A flutter tickled my heart as I flicked through them.
Castle must’ve found the book at the cabin. Before the cabin, I’d searched through his bag for a flashlight. There had been no journal in his bag then. But the pictures sketched into this journal were of those weeks we’d spent together.
The first sketch snatched me back to the lake. Just the lake, with the edge of the woods hugging it too close. The next was the cabin, sketched in pale greys and a hint of black crayon.
I turned the page.
A grimace twisted my face and I sucked in a breath. Any questions I’d ever had about how Castle had killed Billy were answered on that page. And though the image staring back up at me was so gruesome that I had to look away, I understood why he drew it. Revenge—for the pictures Billy had taken of his victims.
Castle saw beauty in revenge. Or would he think of that as poetic justice?
That night at Toys for Boys marked a shift between us. The drawing was that mark. Billy’s death had brought us closer together. Shame should flood me at the realisation, but I only feel the flutter in my heart travel down to my curling toes.
That mark showed on the next page.
It took some squinting before the lines merged together in my mind and I saw the picture for what it was. Our feet—wrapped in socks, poking out from a blanket with the Jeep’s trunk door as the rough backdrop. The first night we’d slept so closely together. Entwined, like vines. That was the night we kissed.
Then, I made a real appearance in the journal. Not my sock-clad feet, but my face.
I ran my fingers over the pencil stains. Each line that made up my sleeping face was soft, curved, as if drawn from caresses between pencil and paper. That was how he saw me, or at least how he drew me. But even through his secret-artistic gaze, he drew truth.
Drool was sketched onto my chin, tangled hair bunched beneath my head, my mouth was agape and hung to the side, and my cheek scrunched against a pillow.
I’m not a pretty sleeper.
I snuck in more and more with each page I turned, unti
l I became every page. Over half of the books was filled with just me, mostly at ordinary times doing ordinary things.
Me. Reading a magazine. Asleep with Cleo on my arm. Standing on the road, my gun at my side, facing Zoe. Shooting a rifle from a rooftop. Sobbing in the restricted RV. Then memories that flared my body with pain.
Me on the sofa-bed, recovering, knocked out cold by the morphine. And the sketch that dropped my heart to my bum and parted my lips. Leo and I, gazing at each other.
Castle drew something in that shared gaze. He drew love. That’s what he saw in Leo and I, so it’s what he drew.
I felt sick. I swallowed back bile as it all sank in.
Castle thinks I’m in love with Leo.
I tried to replay it all in my mind. After the cargo-fiasco, after everything, we distanced ourselves—because he’d been using me. He’d told me as much, hadn’t he?
I wasn’t sure anymore. The pills muddled my mind, fogged my brain, and scrambled my memories. Nothing but faint outlines and shadows swam under my skull, not unlike the pictures on my lap.
I shut the book and fumbled with the string. Prying into Castle’s mind wasn’t something I was ready for. I’d jumped in too soon. My fingers shook, my hands suddenly clammy, and I couldn’t see through the sting in my eyes.
I wanted to run back to my room. But I didn’t get that chance.
The book was swiped from my hands.
I sucked in a breath and looked up into green, glacier eyes. Icebergs. Cold and sharp on the surface, dark and deadly beneath. Never before had so much outrage twisted his face or blazed behind the icebergs.
I couldn’t look away. His glare glued me to the spot.
Castle was torn. He huffed a breath of disbelief and threaded his fingers through his hair. Then he turned his back on me and—I flinched as he pitched the book at the wall.
Heart racing, I whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have … I stopped, but …”
What could I say? I’d looked at most of the book. And if I’d ever caught him reading my diaries … The mere thought churned my stomach.
With his back to me, Castle kept his fingers threaded through his hair and steadied his torn breaths. I watched his hands slide out of my sight and down his face. The air stayed trapped in my throat as he dropped his hands.