by Tracey Ward
He nods in understanding, looking away. “Ryan’s parents were eaten too. Kevin killed them for him. He didn’t think Ryan could handle it.”
“That was… thoughtful.”
“He was a good guy.”
We fall into a very strange silence. I’m digesting the conversation we just had, trying to follow the breadcrumbs back to the beginning to figure out how we got here while Trent waits patiently next to me. Finally I give up and break down.
“What am I supposed to talk about?”
“Whatever’s bugging you,” he answers vaguely.
“I hate that people die.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it. I hate that people die. That’s what’s bugging me.”
“No it’s not.”
I press my fingers against my eyes to keep my brain from exploding out my face. “Really, Trent? You came in here hassling me about this and now you’re going to tell me how I feel?”
“I’m not telling you how you feel. I’m telling you that that’s not what’s making you act like this.”
“Like what?”
“Do you really want me to say it, or will I get hit for saying it even though you asked me to?”
I drop my hands. “You’ll get hit. Don’t say it.”
“So you do realize it?”
“Of course I realize it. I hate it, but I can’t help it.”
“It’s how you deal with things. No one is surprised.”
I look at him skeptically. “So people expect me to be awful and that makes it okay?”
“No, but no one expects you to change overnight, either. Definitely not Ryan. He’s hurting too. He understands.”
“Are you hurting?” I ask, genuinely curious if this odd bird’s feathers can be ruffled. I can’t picture it. He just told me he killed his dad as though he were telling me about retiring his favorite shoes. After that it’s hard to imagine him torn up about anything.
“He was a nice man,” he says noncommittally. “I’m sorry to see him die. I wasn’t close to him, though—not like you and Ryan were—and that’s what’s making you act like this. It’s not that you hate that people die. You hate that people close to you die.”
I stare at him as he stares back at me, waiting for me to do something—cry, admit he’s right, knit him a sweat. I don’t know what he’s waiting for but he’s better at it than I am.
Finally I sigh, looking away. “You’re right.”
“A little louder please. My hearing is terrible.”
I shake my head. “Your hearing is ungodly good and don’t push it. I said it once, you heard me.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
I groan. “Ah come on! I owned up to it, now I have to do something about it?”
“If you want to keep being around people and not act like a B-I-T—”
I reach over to clamp my hand over his mouth. “Nah nah nah,” I warn him. “I can spell just fine so stow it. That will not be one of our lessons, thank you.”
He smiles against my hand. I lower it so I can see it and when I do, I smile back.
“You’re different than I thought you were,” I tell him.
“How so?”
“I used to think you were a sociopath.”
He laughs lightly, not looking the least bit offended. “You’re exactly what I thought you were.”
“A stone cold bi—”
“A perfect fit for Ryan.”
I blink, surprised. “That’s shockingly romantic to hear from you.”
“Even sociopaths have feelings. You’re rough around the edges but you’re what he needs.”
“What does he need?”
“I have no idea,” he says emphatically. “But whatever it is, you have it. I don’t know why he loves you because I obviously don’t see it. I don’t feel it. I don’t get it. But there’s something about you that Ryan does see. It’s something he understands that no one else can. Not the way he does. You’re not special, Joss.”
“Awesome. Hurtful. Thank you.”
“Neither is Ryan. But the two of you together, that’s different. You guys make something unique, something you’d never be able to have with anyone else.” He looks at me sideways. “So maybe don’t run away from it just because you’re scared.”
“I’m scared he’s going to die,” I whisper nervously, afraid to say it out loud.
“He is going to die. That’s a stupid thing to be afraid of.”
“Jeez, Trent,” I complain.
“What? It’s true. He’ll die, I’ll die, you’ll die. You pointed that out to me not too long ago, remember? No one lives forever. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise. If you’re so convinced he’s going to die tomorrow, shouldn’t you enjoy the time you have with him today?”
That hits home so hard I feel tears sting my eyes. I don’t understand it right away. I have no idea why I react so violently to what he said—not until it sinks in for a second. Then it hits me like a freight train.
Crenshaw.
Leave tomorrow for the cowards. Today you must be fearless.
The last lesson he forced on me. His last, most desperate effort to change my world.
“Dammit!” I shout, standing reluctantly.
Stupid Crenshaw. Stupid Trent!
“Where is he?” I ask him.
“In one of the houses two blocks from here. Back toward town.”
“Do you know the address?”
“2220 Sandy Drive.”
“Thank you!” I shout, already heading for the door.
“What are you going to do?” he calls after me.
“I’m gonna be a man and tell a guy I love him!”
When I come out of the tent, I’m instantly drenched. The rain is coming down harder now. The ground is wet under my feet as it quickly turns to mud, and when I start to run, I worry I’ll slip and fall on my face.
I run so hard it hurts. I want to tear my muscles. I want to claw my way out of this skin, out of this world, out of my mind until I find a bigger and better place where I’m not so scared all the time. So scared and so angry I can hardly see straight. And I’m not when I’m with him. At least not as much. He’s that place, that solace. The hideaway I need where I’m not alone for the first time in forever, and maybe that’s the thing about Ryan that makes me love him like I do. The thing not everyone else can see. There’s a place just for me with him. One that makes me better. A place where I want to be for the rest of my life, no matter how long that is.
So I run. I run and I fall, but I get up and I run again.
I burst through the door of the small, dark house, and I fall headlong into everything that’s haunted me for months. That’s terrorized me. That’s made me doubt and wonder. I run straight into its depths, my breath on my lips as I gag on the words. It’s not as scary as I thought it would be.
It’s so much worse.
Ryan stands when I come crashing through the door. Bray is there with him and they look at me with sad, worried faces that make me cringe inside: it’s more emotion, more feelings I don’t know what to do with—and now the one that sent me running here is screaming in my veins so loud my head hurts.
I breathe heavily, trying to calm myself down.
“Bray,” I say sternly, my eyes on Ryan, “find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”
“Seriously? It’s pouring out there,” he complains.
“Bray,” Ryan says firmly. “Get out.”
He’s angry, but he goes. He walks right past me out the door without a word or glance. He closes the door silently behind him, but I still know it when he’s gone. I can feel it, like the air is moving around me differently. It’s burning my skin and giving me goose bumps. I feel like I’m vibrating but I’m standing stock still, my eyes still glued on Ryan’s. His face—his golden, glowing face—is shadowed by pain. I’m not good at reading people, but this feeling I know. It’s this feeling I’ve avoided for so many years, but now it’s caught up with me and it’s
brought so much more with it. So many things that I don’t know how to handle.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
His lips tighten until they’re white and I worry for a second that he’ll cry. I’m worried I won’t be able to handle it.
“I’m okay,” he finally replies softly, his voice steady. “Are you okay?”
“I talked to Trent.”
His eyes widen. “How’d that go?”
I grin weakly. “I’m here. I’m going to try very hard to be nice.”
He chuckles softly before sitting down in a chair behind him. I don’t know why but I wish he’d stay standing. I don’t feel like I can sit. I don’t feel like I can be still or silent or at ease. I have an overwhelming feeling that there’s so much to do and no time to do it. My head and my heart and my body are all talking at once and I can’t make out a word of it. I don’t even know if I speak the language.
“I’m going to miss him,” I say, trying to purge this squirming thing inside of me.
Ryan nods. “Yeah, me too.”
“He wasn’t really crazy, was he?”
“I don’t know.” He smiles sadly. “I think he was when he wanted to be.”
“I think he was hiding, like me.”
“Whoa.”
“What? You don’t think so?”
“No,” he says, his face still covered in surprise. “I think you’re dead on. It’s just a really insightful thing to say.”
“I’m going to try to not be insulted by that reaction.”
“Well, you’re not exactly—”
“Insightful, I know. I didn’t say you were wrong.”
We fall into a silence that doesn’t feel as awkward as it is. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know. It’s a one-sided feeling of anxiety and dread that he’s blissfully unaware of. One that’s tearing through me like acid in my gut, eating me from the inside out. How he doesn’t see it on my face is beyond me. Maybe he’s too spent. Maybe now isn’t the time after all.
“You seem all right,” he says suddenly.
It’s surprising how wrong he is.
“I am,” I lie.
“When you kicked Bray out I was ready for anything. You being all right wasn’t what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Crying.”
“Ha,” I chuckle nervously. “Not if I can help it.”
“Why then?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kick Bray out?”
I look away, unable to face him. My heart is racing in my chest so hard it hurts. It’s so loud he has to hear it. He has to know. If only he could know it and I wouldn’t have to say it. I wouldn’t have to be afraid of him. Of us.
“Joss?”
I ignore him, focusing on my breathing. I can do this. I want to do this. I need to do it because I need him and it doesn’t make me weak or stupid. It makes me human. It makes me alive.
“Joss, look at me.”
I shake my head faintly, closing my eyes tightly. I hear him stand up. I feel it in the air the way I felt Bray leave, my skin hypersensitive and wild. He comes to stand in front of me and I’m so grateful when he doesn’t touch me. I’m tense from top to bottom. I’m trembling, shivering, shaking: a convulsing mess as though I’m having a seizure. Maybe I am. Maybe my body is going into shock from the crushing weight of this moment. From the heavy heft of his eyes settled on me.
My hands move on their own, guiding themselves smoothly over his body because my eyes have tapped out—they’ve taken themselves out of the equation. And this thing that I’m doing—that I’m trying to work through—it’s going to have to happen in the dark—in the unknown and the unseen—and it’s sick that I’m steady there. I’m best where the nightmares live. I’m comfortable here.
“No way,” he says deeply, his hands stopping mine. He holds them in his own firmly. “We’re not doing this. You can’t even look at me. There’s no way that’s happening like this.”
“Don’t you want to?” I rasp, my eyes still closed.
He takes a tight, deep breath. I lean forward to lay my head against his chest. I follow it when he blows the breath out, resting my head against him in the safety of his heartbeat. I can feel it pounding against my skin through his thin T-shirt. Erratic. Uncontrolled.
I know how it feels.
“Yeah,” he admits roughly. “More than you know. But not like this. Not with you upset.”
“I told you I’m all right.”
“Joss, you can’t even look at me.”
A hot tear escapes my eye and slides down my cheek. I shake my head back and forth as I try to open my eyes. I try to look at him and see him and know it’s all right. That this is Ryan. That this is right. I know I want this, I want him, but I’m a hot mess and I’m screwing it up. I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do any of this, not like a normal girl. I’ve never been normal and I never will be and I’m so much baggage and crazy that I can’t believe there’s enough room in this house for all of me to be in here at once. I’m shocked by every second that passes when my emotions don’t blow the walls of this place.
My tear drips off my cheek. I manage to open my eyes in time to see it land below me. It drops right onto Ryan’s naked foot.
Immediately he knows.
“And it’s definitely not going to happen when you’re crying,” he says softly.
His arms release my hands and go to wrap around me. He’s going to pull me into an embrace, tell me everything is all right, and he’ll fall asleep chastely beside me, snuggling in next to me and all my issues. It will go on night after night until infinity or we die and he’ll never say a word. He’ll never ask for more. But if I ever want the chance to let him in and watch him chase away my demons the way his laugh lights up a room, I need to man the hell up and offer what he’ll never demand.
I push back from him before he can embrace me, my eyes finding his. He looks so worried it hurts. It almost lets me chicken out and bail on this entirely. It could be an awkward moment we both remember forever but never talk about. It could be the setting of the status quo. The beginning of our ending, riding this even plane until the end of our existence. Never more, never less.
Or it could be what Crenshaw said. The Beginning of Everything.
“I’m not crying because I’m sad,” I say shakily. “I’m crying because I love you and I’m going to give you all of me.”
He stares at me, stunned. I’ve seen Ryan in a lot of dire situations, facing a lot of overwhelming odds and obstacles, but I have never seen him so at a loss before. As the silence drags out between us, I worry I’ve broken him.
“Joss,” he says gruffly, pausing to clear his throat.
Terrified of what he’ll say, words begin to spill rapidly from my mouth. “I know it won’t be your first time, but it is for me so don’t ever tell me. Never let me know for sure. I never want to know a name or a hint or hair color. Warn Trent, too, because he’ll spill it and I’ll kill him and I’ll get mad at you an—”
“I love you,” he cuts in quietly. My mouth clamps shut, making him grin slightly. He lifts his hand to run it along the side of my neck, back into my hair. “I’ve never said that before. You’re my first time.”
I can’t handle this feeling. It’s too full, too big, too much. It’s him, it’s Ryan, and it’s everything in me until I’m bursting at the seams, and while I couldn’t look at him before, now I can’t look away. Not to save my life. Not even to save his. I don’t know what happens to me. It’s nothing I expected and I can tell from his reaction that he wasn’t expecting it either. But when autopilot engages, when my survival kicks in, it’s best to just stay out of its way and enjoy the ride.
I grab onto his shirt, fisting it in my hands and pulling him toward me. The last thing I see is his grin spreading into a smile before his mouth is on mine. Then I’m gone. Lost. All I know from that point is the cold of the room on my rapidly exposed skin, the heat of his body close to mine, the s
ound of his breath always so close, so desperate, echoing mine. I know fear, joy, want, a pinch of pain and a world of heat that starts in my stomach and burns through my veins until I can hardly breathe and I’m clinging to him as he clings to me, his heartbeat racing against my chest and sending me soaring over the night sky into nothing. I gasp his name, hear him whisper mine, then it’s silence and stillness.
It’s dark in the room. Nearly pitch black. Pure shadow and nothing, but it’s all around me, surrounding me on all sides while I lay there with Ryan—with Helios. Burned by the sun, igniting the dark like a star on the velvet black. Unreachable. Untouchable. He’s done this to me. For me. The dark, the empty, the lonely has been pushed from me until it’s enveloped this room and left me nothing but a bright ball of energy, life, and light.
Shaking.
Afraid.
Awake.
Chapter Twenty Three
The Garden Gate.
That’s what Westbrook calls his mansion. His fortress. His castle on the water.
It’s a reference to the Pearly Gates and the Garden of Heaven, but it’s also a nod to the guy who designed and built the place. Apparently he’s taken over the home of a man who was once an electronics and computer expert—Bill Gates. The name means nothing to me, but the older crowd recognizes it: Ali, Alvarez, Todd. It makes me a little happy that Trent didn’t know who he was either. We learned something together, and isn’t that a fresh and new experience?
We got information on the building and the security around it from a few people that survived the destruction of the southern Colony. The Vashons watched last night as people spilled over the walls, desperate to get out and away from the zombies. I listened with Ryan as a lot of them landed on their own mines spread out along the shore, and we didn’t sleep a wink. The few Colonists that survived were very eager to talk. Whatever it took to be kept safe from the absolute hell we unleashed on them.
“I feel like this has gotten away from us,” I confessed as we laid together staring up at the ceiling of the dark, decaying house. “I thought we were freeing people, but what happened with this Colony… It’s not how I saw it going down.”
“It’s more brutal than I expected,” he admitted.