The Ending Series: The Complete Series

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  At my flippant teasing, Zoe rolled her eyes in irritation.

  “Okay, sorry…didn’t mean to pry,” I said, feeling a little hurt.

  “No, it’s not you. I haven’t had the privilege yet…unfortunately. There’s been too much going on, and we haven’t really had the opportunity. Well, not unless we want an audience—close quarters, if you know what I mean.”

  I thought back on the two months of close quarters Jason and I had been sharing with our companions—and how little that had stopped us—and blushed profusely. “Um…yeah. I know what you mean. Right…”

  Zoe shook her head in disbelief, or possibly disgust, and tried to hide her amusement as she said, “Normally I’d say, ‘spill’…but, I really don’t wanna know.”

  “Yeah, probably not,” I said, and my face heated even more. Unintentionally, I remembered the time Jason had pulled me away from the group during a lunch stop. He’d practically dragged me into some nearby woods, braced my hands against a tree trunk, yanked down my pants, and—

  “Could you stop thinking about having sex with my brother, please!” Zoe squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block the images I was unintentionally shoving into her brain.

  I grimaced again. “Well…not really, no. SORRY! I know this must be so weird for you, and I’ll try not to think about it, I swear, but—”

  “I get it! Just…stop there, please.” Obviously trying to hide her discomfort, Zoe picked up the two cups she’d finished preparing for Jake and her brother, and carried them to where they sat by the massive fire.

  I still didn’t really know how Zoe felt about my relationship with Jason, but I was certain she didn’t appreciate being bombarded with my memories of our time together. I wished I knew how to keep them contained. “Zo, I’m—”

  “Oh!” I gasped as the connection between us instantly disappeared. Turning to Jason, I scowled. “Hey! You said you wouldn’t do that anymore!”

  Zoe, handing a glass of whiskey to Jake, watched us curiously from the other side of the fire.

  “And you said you wouldn’t use it to carry on long, private conversations when it wasn’t necessary. You know what happens…,” Jason said, trailing off when he realized he might be revealing too much to people we barely knew.

  “Well, there are some things I wanted to know that aren’t polite to ask when everyone can hear, thank you very much!” I snapped, but my irritation was deflating rapidly. I was already worn out from using my telepathy to find Zoe and her people, and Jason didn’t want me to end up shivering and passing out again.

  “Dani…,” Jason warned.

  “I know, I know,” I grumbled, pouting.

  Shoving Jason’s drink at him, Zoe interrupted, “Wait, you passed out from using your telepathy?”

  I looked at Zoe suspiciously. “How’d you know—are you in my head!? Zo! Get out!”

  “You were just in my head!”

  “That was completely different. I couldn’t see your memories! You could be keeping all kinds of secrets, but I can’t just scoop them out of your brain. Like with the—”

  “Secrets?” Zoe asked, her dark eyebrows drawn down in confusion. Abruptly, she shifted her gaze to glare at her brother. “Is that you? Are you—seriously? You’re blocking me? Really?” She wagged her pointer finger at Jason and me. Narrowing her eyes, she said, “You’re not telling me something.” Hands on her hips, she fixed her penetrating stare on me and waited for a response.

  I shrank back, huddling into myself. I hadn’t seen this side of Zoe for years. She was one of the strongest, most determined people I knew. She could be downright terrifying when she wanted something, and at the moment, she definitely wanted something—information.

  Jason cleared his throat and nudged me with his shoulder.

  “I need another drink. Care to join me?” I asked Zoe with fake perkiness. Inside, my stomach roiled uncomfortably.

  We trudged over to the array of alcoholic beverages, and Zoe started concocting something with a half-dozen ingredients. “Um…I was just gonna have more of this,” I said holding up my nearly-empty, red plastic cup of wine.

  “This one’s for me,” she said, holding up the drink shaker. She handed me the bottle of Pinot Grigio so I could refill my cup, and continued on with her task.

  Sighing, I blurted, “Zo, I know about the box—your dad’s box. Jason has it.” When her eyes snapped up excitedly, I added, “He hasn’t opened it.” I paused, studying her expression. “He said you’ve been obsessed with it for, like, ever. Why didn’t you tell me about it? Why’d you keep it a secret?” My voice sounded small, lost.

  Zoe’s eyebrows drew down in confusion, wrinkling the skin between them. Slowly, understanding smoothed her expression. “It wasn’t a secret. Well…not really,” she said, hesitating. “It’s embarrassing, D. I mean, what would I have said, ‘my dad has a secret box, and I want to know what’s in it so badly I’ve stayed up thinking about it almost every night since I can remember?’ It’s sort of ridiculous, don’t you think? I don’t understand why he hid it from us.” She paused again. “What if there’s something really horrible in there?” she asked quietly.

  I was taken aback, more than a little ashamed of my inability to put myself in her shoes. Not that they’d fit, but still…

  Zoe mixed her super complicated drink in the shaker and stared at the surface of the flat boulder.

  I suddenly felt like a really crappy friend. “Zo…I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I just kept wondering why you’d hide it from me. Maybe like how you wondered why your dad hid whatever’s in the box. I thought maybe you didn’t really trust me, not completely. I thought…I don’t know. I thought stupid things, and I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, D. It’s not personal, I promise. I thought about telling you…but I guess I was sort of scared. I still am—like knowing what’s inside somehow changes everything—even though none of that really matters anymore. Jason’s the only family I have left.”

  Seeing the raw emotion painting her face, tears welled in my eyes for the second time that day. “Zo…I’m…I’m just so…so…,” I said, but I started crying before I could finish the sentence.

  “Why are you crying?” Zoe asked. I hadn’t realized she’d come around to my side of the rock until I felt her arms wrap around me. Resting her chin on my shoulder, she teased, “All this crying is excessive—even for you, D.”

  Laughing despite my sniffles, I replied, “Oh my God, I know. It’s getting ridiculous. I’m like a hormonal pregnant woman.” As Zoe stiffened behind me, I hastily added, “Which I’m not. Absolutely, definitely not. No way. Yikes!”

  As if on cue, we burst into peals of laughter, nearly collapsing on the ground.

  “Oh. My. God. It feels so good to laugh,” Zoe said, attempting to catch her breath while she held herself up with one hand on the boulder’s surface.

  “Ah! I know!” I agreed. My face was tired and twitchy from smiling so hard, and I felt like I’d done about five thousand crunches. “My stomach hurts!”

  “You need another drink!” Zoe returned to her side of the bar and refilled the cup I’d unconsciously drained during the emotional conversation. Noticing she was starting to make another complex drink for herself, I didn’t feel so bad about downing my previous one.

  “So…” I took a sip of the crisp wine and wiped the residue of my tears from under my eyes. “What’d you think of MG? You said you just heard his voice? You didn’t actually see him?”

  “No, his voice just sort of appeared as I was having a delicious dream about making out with Jake. It was awkward, to say the least. Once I realized who he was and what he was doing, I tried not to freak out. I felt really vulnerable having him in my head, but it was also sort of interesting. It was surreal to be aware but asleep at the same time.”

  “I know, right!”

  “He sounds hot though.”

  “I know, right!” I agreed with a giggle.

  “Ladies,” Ky
cut in. Leading Sanchez and Ben, he sidled up to the bar and plucked a few clear shot glasses from a stack. Setting them down, he filled each to the brim with top-shelf tequila and handed one to his brother and one to the gorgeous, exotic woman at his side.

  “Bottoms up,” Ky said. They clinked their shot glasses together and gulped down the deceptively fiery liquid, all three taking the burn like real men. But it was very obvious that Sanchez was a woman. Ky quickly refilled the shot glasses, and they headed back toward the fire.

  “That’s not a very pretty face, D. Do you smell something foul or what?” Zoe asked, and I realized my facial features had twisted into an undoubtedly ugly sneer.

  “Something like that,” I said. “What’s the deal with her and Jason anyway?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but they obviously know each other from before.”

  Feeling an odd mix of hope and dread, like when opening a college acceptance letter, I asked, “Well, have you, um, seen anything? Were they…involved? I mean, she seemed really happy to see him, and he seemed sort of happy, too…I guess.”

  “At the time I thought it was just a weird dream, but I saw a memory a while ago. They were together, but not romantically—at least, not that I could tell. They were with a group of friends…at a bar maybe?” Zoe shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Glancing at me mischievously, she smirked. “Do you want me to find out for you?”

  “You mean, like, brain spy?” I thought about the offer—really thought about it—and shook my head. It was unbelievably enticing, and I felt bad that Zoe had to deal with the temptation to delve into people’s minds, to discover their secrets, every second of every day. “No. I don’t really want to know anyway,” I lied. And I knew Zoe knew; she could read me like her favorite, dog-eared, well-worn book—Bob Ross’s biography.

  “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind,” she said, then leaned across the bar and conspiratorially added, “I don’t think you have to worry anyway; Jason hasn’t taken his eyes off you all night, and Sanchez and Harper have been going at it for years.”

  “What?” I squealed, then covered my mouth and bounced up and down on my toes. “Oh wow,” I giggled. “That’s so freaking juicy!”

  Zoe allowed a moderately wicked laugh to escape her lips as she rounded the boulder, drink in hand, and linked her arm with mine. “Come on, I’m cold.”

  Reaching back for my cup of wine, I exhaled with relief and let my best friend pull me back to the fire. We’re okay.

  “You know what I said about Harper’s visions?” she whispered near my ear as we slowly walked back to our designated seats next to our respective men. “I think he had one when he hugged you earlier…his face looked really worried, and I could feel how upset he was.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised by her words…and by the way she bypassed both of our empty spots.

  “Yeah. I wonder if we can get the details out of him.”

  She led me to a vacant bench that was so rickety I was surprised it didn’t collapse when we sat down. No wonder nobody’s sitting here. Chris and Harper shared the adjacent hay bale and were locked in conversation.

  “So you do agree with the H1N1/09 theory…that only those who’d been infected with that virus had the antibodies to survive this later version,” Chris stated.

  “Well, not exactly,” Harper said, frowning. “I still don’t think it all adds up.”

  “So you disagree?”

  He shrugged and took a sip of Scotch. “I’m really not sure. Are you positive that those people on your base knew about the Virus and everything before the initial outbreak?”

  “The more I think about it,” Chris said, “the more sure I am. I watched them prep the special yellow-banded uniforms before the first infections were reported.”

  “If you’re right…”

  “I know. Surviving the Virus might be just the beginning. If I am right, then somebody orchestrated this whole thing—all the death, the insanity, and the Abilities. But why? And how?” Chris tore her gaze from the handsome medic and studied the towering flames. “I hope I’m wrong,” she said quietly.

  Zoe and I exchanged worried glances, and I figured she’d abandoned her mission to weasel info about Harper’s vision out of him.

  The remainder of the evening passed too-quickly, filled with developing friendships and decreasingly tentative conversations. I was pleasantly surprised by how well our two groups blended together, finding camaraderie in the shared experience of surviving in the Virus-ravaged world.

  Late in the night, I stood alone before the fire, the benches and hay bales abandoned. The others were all either acquiring another beverage or relieving themselves of the ones they’d already consumed. I shed my jacket, overwhelmed by the heat of the towering fire, and stared into the hypnotizing dance of flames and air and embers.

  Without a word, Jason came up behind me, almost touching but not quite. “You look like some sort of fire spirit,” he whispered, his lips mere inches from my ear. “Watching you like that—savage and glowing—damn, Red, I want to bury myself inside you…right now.”

  I leaned back into him, closing the miniscule distance between our bodies, and was pleased by his obvious state of arousal.

  “I set up our tent a little ways away from the barn. I thought we’d need the privacy,” he said, slipping his arm around my middle.

  “Really? I wonder why?” I asked, feigning confusion.

  He grazed his lips along the side of my neck and whispered, “You know why.”

  Twisting in his hold so I could see his face, I said, “I’m not sure…you may need to remind me.”

  Jason’s answering grin was wolfish and hungry. He immediately led me away from the fire and into the woods beyond the barn where everyone else would be sleeping. As we hurried along, I could barely contain the anticipation humming through me.

  ~~~~~

  Wiggling into sweatpants was difficult considering that all of my muscles—and possibly some of my bones—had recently been turned into quivering gelatin.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Jason as he sat up on top of the sleeping bags and reached for his boxer briefs.

  “Coming with you.”

  “No. Don’t. I’m just peeing. I’ll be, like, a minute.” Seeing the concern still creasing his brow, I added, “I’ll be fine, really. I’m a big girl.”

  “Anyone could be out there,” he said, but remained seated. “At least wait until my Ability works again.”

  “Oh,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “I’m not holding it just because you turn into a super null every time we have sex.” He scowled, and I smiled.

  As I unzipped the tent’s door, I assured him again, “I’ll be fine.”

  51

  ZOE

  Loosening my hair from its braid, I idly combed through it. I couldn’t shake the heavy uncertainty I’d hoped to shed once I saw Dani. It still tugged at me, gnawing on my consciousness.

  The sound of the barn door sliding open and then shut was followed by Jake’s footsteps. As he changed into sweats, I crawled into the sleeping bags, devouring the sight of him in the candlelight.

  His brow furrowed slightly at my whimper. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Perfect,” I admitted as I wiggled further into the sleeping bag, imagining the warm pressure of his body against mine. “Just admiring the view.” Picking up on the husky tone of my voice, the corners of his mouth pulled up in a smile. “There are definitely perks to getting into bed first,” I added.

  “Yeah? Like what, hogging the sleeping bags?” he teased.

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about.”

  Pulling the hem of his sweatshirt down, Jake crouched down and appraised the space beside me.

  “What’s wrong?” I lifted myself up, resting on my elbows.

  Glancing at me, he said, “It’s interesting how someone your size needs so much space.” He gestured between me and the stall’s wall a couple feet from me. “And I onl
y get this.” He looked down at the small space to my right. “Between you hogging the bed and your scattered clothes all over the place…I’m wondering if I should find somewhere else to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” I said, scooting over a smidge.

  As Jake crawled into the sleeping bags beside me, I curled into his sheltering arms. My thoughts were shadowed by the night’s festivities, and I expelled an exhausted sigh. Why am I anxious? Dani and Jason are here. They’re safe. Although I’d been ecstatic only minutes earlier, I still felt…wrong.

  “What’s wrong?” Jake whispered.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Why do you ask?”

  “You keep sighing.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t noticed. I rolled over, facing his inquisitive, warm, brown eyes. They scoured my face. “I think I’m sort of in shock, actually.”

  The events of the evening replayed in my head. “It’s so strange to have everyone here. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like there’s nothing to worry about anymore, and I feel a sort of emptiness…or something.” And that was exactly what it felt like—a hole I didn’t know how to fill. I no longer had to fret about how and when I’d reach Dani and Jason. They were finally with me.

  Brushing a loose ribbon of hair from my eyes, Jake stroked my cheek. Involuntarily, I thought of Dani and Jason together, and the hole I felt immediately filled with concern.

  “I don’t know what to do about my brother.”

  “You mean him and Dani,” Jake said. When I nodded, his eyes focused on me intently. “You don’t think they should be together?”

  I grunted, my emotions a mix of excitement for Dani and distrust in my brother, and rolled onto my back. “It’s not that. I’m just worried about…you don’t understand. Cam just died, and my brother’s a heartbreaker. He always has been. And Dani’s been in love with him her entire life…” I paused, imagining her devastation when Jason eventually decided to move on.