“Alright, alright. I’m sorry!” Tavis took a few hurried steps backward, chuckling and holding his palms out defensively as he stumbled over the larger rocks scattered about. “I surrender. Just don’t make me drop the bloody sock again.” He held the sock up, still laughing.
I nearly snorted in amusement at Tavis’s sudden change in tune. “You’re pathetic. It’s just water.”
Hearing panting and the crunch of twigs behind me, I turned around to find Cooper running happily toward the water and Jake standing beside one of the pines, holding a piece of grass between his fingertips.
My face heated, and I suddenly felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. “Hey.”
Jake’s gaze traveled from me to Tavis and back as he let the blade of grass fall to the ground. “Hey.”
“Just finishing up with the laundry,” I said, wiping my wet hands on the front of my t-shirt. His eyes fixed on mine as I closed the distance between us. I appreciated the fact that the bright morning sun provided me the opportunity to study Jake’s features. His nose was a little crooked, and long, honey-colored lashes fanned around his amber eyes. And although I could hear Tavis moving around behind me, my attention remained on Jake’s freshly shaven face.
“Your brother wants us to start packing so we’re ready to go after breakfast,” Jake said.
I smiled. “Okay. I should get all my crap together.”
I glanced back at Tavis, who was already putting my canvas bag of wash stuff into the wheelbarrow, along with a stack of the clothes that were already dry and folded on the boulder. “I’ll get it,” Tavis offered. He exchanged a quick glance with Jake, then pushed the wheelbarrow toward camp.
Walking side by side, Jake and I followed behind him.
“Your shirts are clean,” I said awkwardly.
“Shadow’s fed,” he offered in exchange, and treated me to a rare smile.
I grinned. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll get to start riding him soon. He seems to be doing a little better.”
“Yeah, I think so,” Jake said. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to say.
“So, what do two people talk about when one knows nothing and the other knows everything?” I asked, wondering if my nervous babble helped break the tension or only added to it.
Jake offered me a sympathetic smile. “I don’t know everything.” After a brief hesitation, he added, “What do you want to know?”
I thought about it for a moment, wondering which, of all my questions, I wanted to ask Jake the most. “What were you like before the Ending? I mean, what did you like to do for fun and that sort of thing?”
He looked at me with an amused grin.
“I know it’s probably not the question you were expecting, but I figured I’d start with the basics…”
Leaning down, Jake pulled a piece of wild grass from the field, and we continued walking. “For fun?” He shrugged. “I traveled a lot, took a lot of odd jobs, and got into a lot of trouble instead of going to college.” Jake paused, and I could feel a sudden sadness filling him. “I came back when Gabe’s sister passed away from leukemia and decided it was time to get my act together. I needed to be there for Becca.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “At least you still have Becca and Gabe, I guess…” I’d seen enough of Gabe’s memories to know that was sort of a sticky situation.
Jake nodded, and I could tell he was grateful. “I just wish I hadn’t taken so long to do the right thing. I finally found a good, steady job as a mechanic, bought a house, and figured out how to stay out of trouble.”
“Yeah? That’s good.” I had a hard time picturing Jake getting into trouble, but then, I had no idea what I even did before the Ending. “And how was it that you managed to stay out of trouble?”
“Reading…a lot.”
“Oh…”
He gave me a thoughtful, sidelong glance. “‘Oh?’” He smiled. “What were you expecting?”
“I’m not sure, I just didn’t picture you as a reader, I guess.”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t picture you as a gallery assistant.”
“A gallery assistant? I can’t really picture it either.” We ambled along, Tavis a dozen yards ahead of us, rolling the wheelbarrow into camp, and Cooper exploring the sparse woods nearby.
“I wish you could ask me a question, or rather, that I could answer one,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry you have to tell me all of this again.”
“Actually, we’ve never really talked about this sort of stuff before.”
“No? But I thought…”
Jake shrugged. “Pasts don’t matter so much when your whole world is ripped away from you. We just weren’t like that…we didn’t dwell on the past.”
It was hard to miss the longing in his voice. “Oh,” I said.
“Sorry, that probably wasn’t very helpful.”
Since he was closer to me than usual, I had an easier time feeling his emotions. I knew he was sad and hopeful and confused, which I understood and tried not to hold against him. I felt the same way.
“Maybe one day you can tell me more about myself?” I joked, realizing how idiotic that sounded. Too bad it was true.
“Or, maybe…” He stopped walking, and I automatically stopped as well. “Maybe we can just start over.”
I faced him and stared into his eyes, trying to see the truth, not just feel it. “Do you want to?” I was picking up mixed signals from him, and I wasn’t really sure what my own opinion was.
His expression turned skeptical and he searched my eyes for answers I didn’t even know the questions to. “Do you want to?”
I thought about the dreams I kept having and how unsettling they were—how exciting and frightening and…confusing. I nodded once, nervous about what starting over entailed. Then in a bout of self-consciousness, I looked down at my feet. I didn’t want him to see the blush caused by the thought of doing all the things we’d done in my dreams.
“You don’t seem sure,” he said, narrowing his eyes when I glanced back up at him.
“No…I mean, I am.” I think.
“Is it Tavis?” The question seemed to come out of nowhere. “You guys get along well. I’m not sure—”
I shook my head. “It’s not him, not really.” Jake eyed me as I continued, “We get along great, don’t get me wrong. It’s easy being around him. He’s easy to talk to, and there’s no history to navigate, there’s no pressure…” Peering up at Jake, I tried to act more certain than I was, but failed miserably. “Who I used to be…she’s just a lot to live up to,” I admitted.
Jake’s eyes lingered on mine before he scanned the small patch of field separating us from the others. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me,” he finally said.
I smiled up at him. “I know, and I don’t, I just…” I had no idea what I was trying to say to him. “Things aren’t complicated with him.”
I couldn’t help but feel the slight sting my words caused Jake, but I had to tell him the truth, if for no other reason than to remind us both that whatever had been between us before was gone now. It was going to be a lot of hard work to get back a semblance of what we once had—hard work I wasn’t willing to turn my nose up at, but hard work I also wasn’t sure either of us was ready for.
But it didn’t mean we couldn’t try.
8
DANI
MARCH 29, 1AE
Cahone, Colorado
It was late afternoon, and I was sitting beside our burgeoning campfire, staring into the flames and generally despising myself while I built the fire up for Sarah. I prodded the burning logs with a stick to rearrange them before adding a few more hunks of freshly gathered firewood.
I was becoming a horrible person, possibly the worst person I’d ever met. Okay, maybe not the worst person—I was no Mandy, no General Herodson, no Clara, no Dr. Wesley—but lately, I’d felt like I was on my way. I certainly wasn’t a good person, not anymore. I was a horrible friend, a deceiving girlfriend, and a chil
d-killer. But of my mounting flaws, it was all of the lying that had started to erode my soul.
I hadn’t been lying because I enjoyed the taste of deceit on my tongue, or because I felt a thrill hurting others; I’d been lying to protect the people I loved…to protect myself. But the problem with telling so many lies was this: it’s so easy for one little lie to spawn a dozen more, which in turn birth their own litters of little lies. And when the first lie, lie zero, is a whopper, the horde of untruths and not-saids grows much, much faster. My core lie was as big as they get.
I was lying to Jason about his mom, Dr. Wesley. After Camille’s revelation, I’d made a promise to myself to never tell him that she was alive and relatively well—considering—and that she was living in the Colony, loving companion to the man who’d orchestrated the destruction of human civilization. I would never tell him that I knew why she left him, Zoe, and their dad over twenty years ago, that General Herodson had threatened to kill her children if she didn’t give him everything he wanted, do every single thing he requested of her, and that she’d come to love her captor. I would never tell him that she was the person who created the virus that killed almost everyone, including their dad.
And I would never show him the letter she’d written, the one addressed to him and Zoe that supposedly explained everything; it was stuffed in the bottom of my left saddlebag in the manila envelope with the rest of the garbage she’d given to Zoe, directly beneath my emergency stash of tampons. Jason would never look there.
Maybe if that was the only lie—or set of lies—I was maintaining, I would’ve been able to deal with the guilt. But there were the other lies, ones that had nothing to do with Dr. Wesley. They, too, were lies of omission. I’d yet to tell Jason that I kissed two men while I was in the Colony, one to steal his gun and keys, and one—Gabe—simply because I wanted to. For some reason, “the General took control of my mind and made me do it,” sounded like the lamest possible excuse, regardless of it being the absolute truth. There was definitely a reason I was avoiding Gabe. Awkward…
On the other side of the fire, Sarah was sitting at the folding table, staying warm while she chopped vegetables for the rabbit stew that was going to be tonight’s fresh offering.
I poked the burning logs again, simply for the sake of stabbing something with the stick. Letting out a heavy breath, I looked around camp.
The tents were set up in a rough ring around the fire, the carts and wagon in a half-circle on one side, blocking some of the dusty wind, and the horses munching on whatever roughage they could find in the sparse fields of wild grasses on either side of the tiny creek we’d plopped down beside. Everyone was busy—down in the creek’s ravine washing clothes or dishes, filtering safe drinking water, gathering firewood, or hunting and foraging to bulk up our fast-depleting food supply.
“I still can’t get over the fact that we have a covered wagon—a legitimate covered wagon,” Sarah said. “I feel like a pioneer woman every time I climb up onto the thing!” She shook her head, her curly brown ponytail bobbing.
Biggs strolled over to the campfire, carrying a fresh load of firewood. “Hey, babe!” He quickened his step as he neared, stopping by Sarah’s prep table to drop a quick kiss on her cheek on his way to the dwindling pile of sticks and branches beside the fire. He offered me a nod as he set down his burden, then returned to Sarah. His hand darted out, and he snagged a carrot nugget the size of my thumb off of Sarah’s chopping board.
“Hey! You thief!” Sarah laughed, making a shooing motion.
Chuckling while he crunched, Biggs moved around the table to stand behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder and his palms on her belly. “How’s the little guy today?”
“She is fine. Kicking a bit more, but Harper said that was normal…or as normal as we can say…” Doubt weaved through Sarah’s words, despite what I figured was a valiant effort to remain positive.
Biggs kissed her neck, then started murmuring reassurances against her skin.
I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them, from such a genuine display of affection…of love. A yearning ache sprouted in my chest, sending out tendrils that spread envy and loneliness throughout my body. Before I’d been abducted by the Colony, Jason had shown just as much affection toward me as these parents-to-be, but after…with each passing day, I could feel him drift further away from me. Soon, I’d be just another member of the group to him. Just another survivor.
“Hey,” someone whispered near my ear, and I started. I felt hands on my shoulders and looked back to find Ky studying me, his eyes pinched with concern and possibly a little bit of pain. “It’s just me,” he said as he crouched beside me, partially blocking my view of the oblivious, adorable couple. “Thought you heard me coming.”
I met his eyes, then looked into the flames and shook my head. “Guess I zoned out.”
There was a long stretch of silence between us. Eventually, Ky took a deep breath. “You feel like shit.”
I snorted quietly and scrubbed my good hand over my face before meeting his eyes again. “Listen, Ky—I’m a mess…I know it, and I’m sorry, I really am, and I know it’s not easy for you when I’m all crazy like this, and I really appreciate whatever insightful words you’re planning on sharing,” I said in a rush. “But this isn’t one of those times when talking about my feelings is going to make all the bad ones disappear, so…”
He turned his face to the fire, staring into the flames like they might hold some hidden secret. “I like you, D. I like you a lot, you know that.” He shot me a sideways glance, then returned to staring into the crackling flames. “But if you don’t figure out a way to deal with whatever’s eating at you, and I mean this in the least dicky way possible, I’m not going to be able to be around you at all.”
I exhaled heavily. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised.
“You’re my friend, D, and in case you haven’t noticed, those are”—he squinted—“a little hard to come by these days. I don’t want to cut you out of my life…”
“I—I—” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Ky.” Laughing bitterly, I sent out a halfhearted wish for the universe to send someone like Clara my way, someone who could erase certain unwanted memories and droplets of corrosive knowledge from my mind.
Ky flashed a weak version of his usual mischievous grin. “And now for those insightful words you mentioned…” Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and held his hands out to the flames. “Sometimes the people who seem the strongest, who seem the most in control of their shit…sometimes they have to be that way on the outside because what’s inside them is so wild, so extreme, so far beyond too much, that if it was ever unleashed, they’d never be in control again.”
I swallowed hard, cleared my throat, and poked the burning logs…again. “I’m assuming you’re talking about Jason…”
Ky nodded.
“So what are you saying? That Jason’s dealing with too much on the inside, and that’s making him push everyone away?”
“He’s not pushing everyone away.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Just me. Awesome…” A chilling thought gave rise to a wash of goose bumps. Did that mean that Jason knew about the lies? Had Zoe told him? Or had Mase or Camille let it slip?
Ky lifted one shoulder, offering me a small smile.
“How do you know any of this? Or…have you felt something from him?”
Ky laughed dryly. “Hell no. He keeps me cut off from feeling his shit permanently. And thank God, ’cause I have a feeling that whatever’s going on inside him right now…well, let’s just say I wouldn’t enjoy having a front-row seat on that joyride. I’ve got enough to deal with from you, Zoe, and Jake…not to mention everyone else.”
This time when he looked at me, his dark brown eyes were so focused and intense that I held my breath. “But I’ve been friends with Jason for over a decade, and I know him well enough to tell when he’s working through something. And right
now, he’s working through something big, and I know it has to do with you, because you’re the only woman—the only person—who’s ever gotten so deep under his skin.”
He clapped a hand on my knee. “So, since the only thing that ever seems to unplug your emotionally constipated relationship is to talk things out and then run off and do whatever it is you crazy kids do, I’d suggest you sit down for a chat as soon as possible. If not for my sake, at least fix this for Zoe, because she doesn’t seem to be able to block anything, and you know the poor girl’s got to be drowning under the weight of all these crazy emotions, hers included.”
All I could do for five breaths, ten breaths, was stare at Ky. He was right. He was so very, very right. Saying nothing, I looked across the fire at the table where Sarah had been sitting, but both she and Biggs were gone.
Ky gave my knee a squeeze before standing. “Look…I saw him and Sanchez on the other side of the carts, inventorying ammo or some shit like that. You should take the evening off, talk to him, fix whatever’s wrong, or don’t fix it, I don’t care…just do something, ’cause this headache is killing me.”
Internally, I resisted, and that made me realize how big of a baby I was being. Ky was right; Jason and I needed to talk. And my resistance to do just that made me reevaluate some of my assumptions about what was happening to our relationship. Maybe Jason wasn’t the only one pulling away, building walls; maybe I was doing it, too. Maybe it was the secrets…leeching the vitality out of our relationship. Maybe Jason could feel the strain just as much as I could. Maybe he thought my feelings had changed, just like I thought his had. So many maybes…
There was only one way to know for sure, only one way to fix things. I stood, patted Ky’s arm, and said, “Thanks…really.” Then I started across camp toward the carts.
Jason and Sanchez weren’t inventorying ammo. They weren’t doing anything, so far as I could tell. They were sitting on a fallen log, apparently deep in conversation. Sanchez had one of her legs pulled up and her chin popped on her knee, facing Jason, while he had his elbow planted on his thigh and was resting the side of his face in his hand.
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 95