It’s not right, I think, but the voice is a feeble murmur and hardly convincing. Gideon lied to me and now he’s gone. I may never see him again.
The heat builds between us, and Logan’s lips travel my neck and chest. He’s eager to fuck me, and I want him, too. I slide my hand down his pants and grip his penis, a good seven inches, and surprisingly thick.
“Fuck,” he says in my ear. “I want you so bad.”
“I bet you’d fuck any chick right now.”
“Possibly.” He kisses me again, thrusting into me. “But you’re hot. Even all banged up.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment . . . ?”
He lifts up my shirt and dips, taking my left nipple in his mouth. “I wanna bang you up some more.”
He raises up again to kiss me, and starts to slip a hand down my pants, when something lands on the bed beside me—Missy’s bear. When Logan sees it, he stops, tugs my shirt into place, and kisses me one last time before turning around. “Morning, Missy. Look who’s here.”
When she sees me, her eyes light up, and she jumps from her bed. But when she gets closer and sees I’m injured, she takes a step back, looks to Logan.
“She got in an accident, but she’s fine,” Logan says.
Missy makes the rest of the trip across the room to me and kneels, wearing a half-smile of concern.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell her. “It’s good to see you.”
She grins, takes my hand, then gives a slight head tilt in Logan’s direction. She touches her lips, points to me, then him.
“Hey, mind your own business, little señorita,” Logan teases.
“He was . . . doctoring me,” I say, unable to wipe the grin from my face when she giggles and shakes her head.
I hold out my arms, and she moves into them, careful not to put weight on me. I give her a good squeeze, then run my fingers through her tangled hair. “When I’m feeling a little better, I’ll do your hair, okay?”
She nods, and her smile shimmers in her eyes like buried treasure. Having something to look forward to is another priceless commodity these days. And for once in my life, I have enough of that to give to someone. I may have failed a lot of people in my life, but I can make up for it now. I get to.
The positivity must be another byproduct of the Molly, though, because the part of me who’s Ophelia calls bullshit on Grace’s flagrant optimism. Those are promises the weak tell themselves to summon artificial strength . . . Still, the positive outlook can’t hurt. Who knows? Maybe I’ll self-fulfill my own prophecy and find true happiness one day. Maybe they aren’t the only ones who need things to look forward to.
Twenty-Seven
After a baby wipes bath in the storage closet adjacent to the breakroom, I redress, careful not to rub against my bandaged wounds. I emerge from the dark, dank closet, feeling ten times better than I did before I tore through half a pack of Huggies wipes.
In the breakroom, Logan serves Missy a can of ravioli—a mid-morning breakfast, but really, one of two tiny meals she’ll have today. She scarfs so fast, I’m afraid she might choke.
“Slow down, girl,” Logan says. “Only eat half.”
She tries to stick out her bottom lip in a pout, but her mouth is so full, she drops part of her bite back in the can.
“Can you sit? Try to eat?” Logan offers me his hand.
“Yeah.”
When he helps me up, he pulls himself closer, sliding an arm around me to give me unneeded assistance in sitting up. His fingertips brush the skin of my hip before he moves away. “You good?”
“I’m okay. My head’s a little swimmy.”
“That’s the dope.” When he says it, his gaze falls to the brown bottle on the table next to our used syringes. He rises from my side to collect them, moving them to a cabinet above the sink. “Actually, fuck it.” He takes the bottle and one syringe back down, and in seconds has his second shot fixed up for himself. He makes brief eye contact with Missy, considering the lesson, before he shrugs and positions the needle.
And as she watches, I know the lesson she’s learning, because Aislynn taught me the same one. Maybe I should be worried for her, but instead, I’m hopeful. Almost everyone is dead. But when they were alive, I was dead. Now, I’m alive. The methods of my survival amidst my own inner apocalypse prepared me to survive anything and to keep going, no matter how dark it gets. I hope that’s the lesson Missy learns, too.
When Logan melts into the rush, he fumbles to put the syringe back in the cabinet. “Hungry?” he asks me.
“I could maybe eat.”
“Well, come on.” He waves an arm before stumbling to my side to offer me his hand again. “Let’s go shopping.”
He helps me stand on wobbly legs, then holds me close to steady me and himself. “We’ll be back,” he tells Missy, then he guides me out through the doorway.
When we get to the canned food aisle, he’s fidgety beside me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and when I look up at him, he moves into me, hands around my waist, holding me close. For a split second, as I gaze into his hungry eyes, I want to tell him I can’t do this . . . As much as Logan turns me on, I still love Gideon. And if he’s alive, we’ll be together again one day . . . I hope.
“Logan, I—”
He interrupts me with a kiss, and it catches me off guard. Soft and slow, patient, though I know his body thirsts for mine.
“I know,” he says when he backs away. “But I hope you change your mind one day.”
When he says the words with a wink, I move into him, returning the kiss with my own gesture of relief, and celebration. I love Gideon, but we’re here now, and one kiss can’t hurt.
I move away, twisting my promise ring around on my finger. “I love him.”
“Love is a chemical.” He glances at the sparkling symbol of my and Gideon’s unification, gives my neck a soft peck, then a lick that sends chill bumps crawling on my skin. “It’s an illusion,” he continues. “Besides . . . the rules of the game have changed.” Logan’s hands travel the curves of my hips and waist, then to my ass, where he squeezes, pressing me hard against his bulge. “No one said you had to stop loving him.”
I want him so bad, I can hardly stand it. If he were to ask me, I’m not sure I could say no. I cast a silent spell for water to douse our blaze, but the flame grows higher as he caresses me, waiting for my invitation, as he said he would. I trace a finger along his collarbone, the cursive words there that speak the truth. All we have is today—now. We may all be dead tomorrow. Seize the day.
I take his face in my hands and pull him into me, giving him every ounce of passion I have inside. The guilt will come later, I know that, but now, in this moment with Logan, there’s nothing I want more than to experience pleasure at his whim, to make him feel good, too. He deserves that—we all do. I’m halfway aware of my ridiculous justification, but he’s right, the rules have changed, and I’m learning how to play this new game. Survival, and living it, above all else.
I stroke his rock hard length, and he’s putty in my hands. I drop to my knees and take a taste of him, thick and throbbing, and it makes me want to fuck him even more.
“Goddamn,” Logan says, gripping my head and thrusting into my mouth. I play with his balls while I suck him off, and just when I think he’s about to come, he pulls out and guides me to the floor. He grins, taking my pants off and tossing them aside. “I have a promise to keep.”
And no matter how much my inner virgin screams No, Grace, don’t do this, I don’t have it in me to say no. Gideon’s gone. I’m a mess. People want to kill me. And Logan is as sexy as hell.
Bring it on.
His lean abs flex and ripple as he removes his jeans and black T-shirt. The tile floor beneath me is cold, but the heat inside me makes me sweat against it. He climbs onto me, one hand on his dick, and I spread open wide.
Gideon who?
My body responds to Logan’s entrance into it with rolls of electricity. He cups the back of
my head and thrusts deep inside of me, and I cry out with pleasure.
“That’s music to my ears,” he whispers.
“What about Missy?”
He rises up on both arms. “What about her? She’s got a can of Ravioli, she’s all set.” He raises my legs in the air and rests them on his shoulders, then proceeds to fuck the shit out of me. I feel everything from his life, his few months here, the end of the world—all of it—behind the act, as if fucking my brains out is the tonic he’s been searching for in all those bottles and spray paint cans.
My body begins to tingle and my muscles tighten around his penis. “I’m gonna come.”
“Hell yeah, you are. I am, too. Right inside of that beautiful, sexy pussy.”
I erupt in orgasm, and he pounds me harder, until he stops, grips my hips to thrust so deep, and I feel the throbbing of his release inside of me . . .
Fuck.
Twenty-Eight
Ophelia may be a thing of the past, but many of her flaws, I’m discovering now, belong to Grace, as well. I never saw myself as a whore, though I’ve always felt dirty. I was a victim, then I was nothing—just nothing—for a long time. And maybe it’s the end of the world that did it, or my stay at Riverbend, or my complete mental breakdowns, but it’s like I can’t get enough now. Maybe I was a whore all along, just waiting for the right environment to flourish.
Logan dresses himself, then kisses my exposed skin as I dress it up in leather again. That was so hot . . . But if I could go back in time twenty minutes and kick my own ass, I would. Applying a chastity belt would also be beneficial, since I can’t seem to keep my legs closed.
“You’re bleeding a little, by the way,” Logan says, head down. “Did I hurt you, or ...?” He peers up at me.
“No. I . . . had a miscarriage while we were at the church.”
“Oh, shit. Damn, I’m so sorry. Are you . . . okay?”
“Yeah.” I fidget with the zipper on my thigh. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.” Logan guides my gaze from the floor with a soft finger at my chin. “Is it something else, then?”
I revert my eyes to the stained tile.
“You feel guilty, don’t you?” And at my silent reply, he adds, “Don’t. That won’t do you any good.”
“Can’t help it,” I mumble.
He slips his strong arms around my waist. “I thought you enjoyed that.”
“I did.” I gaze into his deep blue pools and shiver, reliving his warmth and wetness. “Very much.”
“I did, too. Very much. So let’s just leave it at that for now.”
“Okay,” I say after a few seconds’ thought. “I’ll do my best.”
He turns to face the canned food shelf, then plucks a can of chunky chicken noodle soup from it. “How’s this look?”
“Good, I think. We’ll see what my stomach says.”
“Want me to heat it up for you?”
“Really?”
“Uh, yeah? I can do a lot of things. Heating food is the least of your worries, I promise.”
“I like the sound of that.”
He grabs a sleeve of saltines from an open box on the shelf, and I watch the musical procession of muscles ripple over his shoulder, upper back, and ribcage. “That’s the last of those.” He swats the box aside. “Good thing we’re leaving soon.”
“Yeah.” My stomach churns. Of course, I’m going to the Tunnels to wait for Gideon . . . but the thought of him showing up fills me with both hope, and dread. I’m certainly not making things any easier by starting a physical relationship with Logan. But that’s what I do; what I’ve always done. I complicate things. Screw up good things by being weak. If things are bad now, just wait—I’m destined to make them ten times worse.
When we get to the back room, Missy is curled up on her bed with her bear. Her closed eyes twitch, and it’s obvious she’s pretending to sleep. Logan picks up the ravioli can by her side, then shows it to me—licked clean, like he said. He knows her well.
I chuckle, and he sets the can down, then pauses, before diving in to tickle her. She squeals and fights to free herself from his grasp as he pokes at her ribs, and in that instant, I see a vision of pre-Apocalypse Missy and Logan, carefree, safe, and cared for in a blue-and-green world.
But the colors fade to gray and brown when Logan regains his seriousness, inspecting the can. “I thought I said half?”
She frowns into her lap.
“Hey.” He taps her knee. “It’s okay, but we have to work on self-control when it comes to food, otherwise it’ll be gone in days, then we’ll have to go out there”—he points toward the front of the building—“to get more. Understand?”
She nods, though still sad to be in trouble.
“Not mad at you, little sister. Just teaching you how to survive.” From another cabinet, he pulls out his food-heating contraption, places it into the metal sink. He fidgets with it for a few seconds, then removes a can opener from a drawer to open my can of soup. Once it’s opened, he sets the can on the heat surface, then turns to face us. “Give it about fifteen.” He crosses his arms over his chest with a sheepish glance to me, before stuffing his hands down in his pockets. “So what now?”
I contemplate how to best present the information I have, and come up with no best way. The truth is the only way, and the truth is not easy. The truth is: Yeah, we fucked, but I’ll do whatever it takes to find Gideon. I can’t deny my feelings for him, no matter how screwed things are and how they got this way.
“There’s this place,” I begin, “called the Tunnels. We have to go there.”
“Why? What is it?”
I start with Gideon’s note at Wipeouts, then tell him about Fletcher—the dude we met at Wipeouts who told us we should go there. Something about being an attractive couple . . .
Logan crosses his arms again and stares off into space for a while before I recognize the shift to curiosity in his face. But then there’s something else: jealousy?
I’m surprised by arms around me, and Missy’s there, at my side. Her tears tell me she’s terrified of going outside of these walls. At once, I’m overcome with sorrow—not for me, but for her. She’s been through just as much as I have, if not more, in her short years on this planet.
“Missy, we have to,” Logan says. “We’re almost out of food. We have another few days, at best. And Grace says she knows a place we can go. A place we’ll be safe.” He glances up at me. “And we have no choice but to trust her. We’re all out of options at the moment.”
“We’re going to be okay.” I wrap Missy up in my arms and hold her tight for a long time, rocking us, and when I gaze down at her, her lips part and there’s a draw of breath, as if she were about to speak. But she closes her mouth again, cheeks flushed red.
“You’ve been through a lot,” I tell her. “But any time you’re ready to talk, you’re safe with us.” I brush her arm. “For now, how about I do your hair?”
She glances up from her lap, wide-eyed, and nods again.
I turn to Logan. “You, too.”
“Huh?”
“Well . . . if we’re traveling, it’ll help to have dark hair. You’ll blend in better with the night.”
“I wonder . . .” Logan mumbles to himself, then spins around and crouches before a bottom cabinet. He removes the radio he’d been working on before we left. After a few moments of messing with it, he switches a dial and there’s static. “We may be able to catch some sort of transmission from the Tunnels, if it’s a large community. They have to be communicating somehow.” He twists the dial back and forth—which appears to be an old, circular light switch—and the static goes in and out, changing pitch and frequency.
Logan takes a drag off his cigarette. “I messed with it for a bit and didn’t hear anything, though, so . . . we might have to be closer.”
I go to Missy’s bed and sit next to her. “So . . . I was thinking it’s about time to teach you how to operate a weapon. After I do your hair?”
She peeks up from her lap, as if to say Really?
“Yep. I think it’s time. What do you think, Logan?”
“I think it’s a fantastic idea. Missy will make a great warrior.”
He knows as well as I do—as well as I have ever since Eve—that the only way to fight darkness sometimes is with darkness itself . . . though this time, I see the light masquerading as darkness. If I can teach Missy how to be a ruthless killer, then her chances of survival go up, and that’s my ultimate goal: to never let anyone I care about die under my watch. Same as Gideon, preparing me to run, helping me grow stronger, physically. I have to prepare Missy to defend herself in case she’s ever left alone in this world, like I was. I survived, and so will she.
You can’t break someone who’s already broken. This, I know to be true.
Twenty-Nine
Logan takes my can of soup and dumps half of it into a bowl. He sticks in a plastic spoon and brings it to me, unlit cigarette held between his lips. “Eat up.”
At first, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to eat, but when that first bite of salty chicken noodle soup hits my tongue, I’d trade all the Molly left in that bottle for more.
“This is fucking amazing,” I say with my mouth full.
“Take it slow so you don’t waste it. I’m sure it’s better the first time around.”
“Hm.” I take another bite. “I bet it would be nearly as good the second time around.”
“Nasty.”
“I’m not joking, taste this.”
He comes over to me to nibble off my spoon, and when he does a double take, I offer him another bite.
“No, I’m okay, you go for it. But you’re right. That shit is damned good.”
While I eat, I set out three different black hair dyes for Logan and Missy to choose from.
Logan holds up one of the boxes. “Black Sapphire. Blue-black? What say you, Missy-girl?”
She shrugs.
“Okay, that’ll work.” I set the other two boxes back on the shelf and inspect the box of black sapphire. Evie would’ve liked it, too. Blue-black was her usual choice of hair color.
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