So I count to a hundred and then I open my mouth and a history of bruises comes out.
I tell him about how my father made a room small just by being in it. How he wasn’t the kind of man who hurt you and cried after, apologized after, made promises to stop that he’d never keep after. He was a machine. I tell Rhys about how my father would check us over obsessively to make sure no bruises showed, stood me and Lily beside each other in our underwear sometimes so he could take inventory of every mark. How quickly he realized hurting Lily was hurting me, how many times she stood between us … how the first time he got me so badly I saw stars, I had to crawl up to my room alone, the worst it had ever been and she wasn’t there and then I am telling him about how she never told me she felt trapped, that I wish she’d just told me but maybe telling me wouldn’t have made it better. Maybe the only way our story can end is varying degrees of sad. And that I miss her, that I need her, and this kind of missing, this kind of need, the kind of emptiness it leaves behind is worse than waking up one day and finding the whole world has collapsed in on itself, that I was over long before it was.
I tell him about how Grace and Trace kill me sometimes, for having each other, and that’s what surviving is, I think. Having something. And I think of how clever Rhys is, how he asked me one thing to get me to tell him everything else. Or maybe I knew what he was doing and I wanted to say it out loud because …
Maybe I needed to say it out loud.
He keeps his eyes off me until I tell him, “I wouldn’t have let you die out there. I know you think I would have, but I wouldn’t have.”
“But you went out there to die.”
“I wouldn’t have let you die. When I saw them coming for you, I ran to you, to save you,” I say. “I wouldn’t have left you like that. Not like she did to me.” I swallow hard. “She always said I’d die without her and she left anyway.”
“But you didn’t die,” he says.
“I did,” I say. “I’m just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.”
It’s silent. I wait for him to take his turn, but he doesn’t. He moves close to me, close enough to bring his hand to my face. He hesitates. At first, I think he’ll tell me he’s sorry or he understands but these are useless sentiments and he knows they’d be wasted on me. Instead, his thumb traces my mouth, lingering on my lower lip. He presses the skin of it wonderingly. His touch is so gentle that my body’s first inclination is to shy from it because it doesn’t understand. He leans in. We’re an inch apart and his breath is on my face. My heart is beating so loud I’m afraid he can hear it but my voice is even when I ask him what he thinks he’s doing. It stops him where he is and I am so aware of how much space there is in the narrow gap between our lips.
“So it’s okay for you,” he says.
“If you told me not to, I wouldn’t have.”
His eyes search mine. “So tell me not to and I won’t.”
I try to find the words but they’re not there.
I kiss him hard instead. We’re closer than I realize and he stumbles a little but he recovers and then we’re all over each other, so frantic that just as I register his hands in one place—in my hair—they’re somewhere else. Rhys pulls me against him and I can’t breathe, I don’t want to breathe. He hisses and pulls back, brings his hand to his mouth.
“You bit me,” he murmurs.
“Sorry.”
He presses his fingers against his lip, checking for blood. There’s none.
“It’s okay. Let’s just go slower with this,” he says.
So we do, much slower. Too slow, I think. I don’t know how I’ll do this. He kisses me softly, carefully, asking permission each time. He draws me out until I’m in the same nice moment with him and we move to the cot and I want to tell him I’ve never done this before, that he has been my first everything so far, when his hand slips between my legs and touches me in a way I have never been touched by anyone else before. My breath catches in my throat. I tense in all the wrong places, but that doesn’t mean I want him to stop. I just don’t know how to let this happen. He kisses my neck and I think about how we almost died out there, we almost died out there together but we didn’t and now his hand is between my legs.
I watch Rhys watch me. He watches the way my body responds to him. I lean my head back and close my eyes and every thought I’ve had in this place dissolves until all that’s left feels electric and light. His mouth finds its way back to my mouth, to my neck. I tangle my hands in his hair and he likes that. Somehow, I know he does just like I know I like how he is touching me even though it makes me nervous, even though it makes me want to turn myself inside out.
Because it’s the opposite of everything. It’s …
He presses his forehead against my shoulder. Our breathing is uneven.
“Christ—”
A voice behind us. I know it’s Trace. I don’t have to look to know it’s Trace. Rhys doesn’t let it deter him. He kisses me once more and it’s tender and sweet. He moves his hand out from under my dress and its absence is immediate.
He kisses me again and then he gets off the cot but I stay still.
“Is this for real?” Trace asks.
Rhys pulls him out of the room and then I’m alone, trying to understand everything that just happened but I can’t. I bring my hand to my face and my skin is hot.
Trace told everyone.
Grace keeps throwing me talk to me glances. I ignore them until she finally gets the hint that I don’t want to talk about it. I mean, I do want to talk about it—just not with her. I want to talk about it with Lily.
I want to ask her why she got to be with other people.
I want to know why I listened to her when she told me I had to wait for all these things until after we were out of that house, away from our father.
She must have really thought I’d mess it up, that I’d say the wrong thing to the wrong person, give everything away for a kiss and maybe I would have, if it was all going to turn out like this anyway.
I should have.
We settle in for the night. Rhys is next to me. Trace is next to me.
I wait until it seems like everyone is asleep and then I turn to Rhys. He reaches out to me. I stare at his open hand and then I touch my fingertips to his. He grabs them, holds them tightly. I close my eyes and imagine myself with him on the cot in the nurse’s room until I feel the ghost of his touch all over me, until I feel like I’m ready to climb on top of him and make it happen all over again—and then take it further. When I open my eyes, his are closed. His grip on my hand has loosened. The ache for him makes me angry at her. Both feelings compete with each other, confusing me. I don’t know why they have to be so close together. I want but I don’t know what I want. All these things I could have had, I knew I could have them but I didn’t know I wanted them. I want, I want, I want. Every part of me is reaching for something but I don’t know what it is but I know it’s not Rhys and it’s not her.
Short breathy gasps from the mat next to mine interrupt my thoughts. I shift a little and as soon as I do, it stops. A minute passes. It starts again and then I understand.
I wish I didn’t.
Trace is masturbating.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force sleep and then it happens and I dream of Baxter’s room. I am making my way down a row of desks filled with former classmates. They look like all the blood has drained from their bodies. They stare at the chalkboard, as still and blank as statues, but I know I could wake them up if I move the wrong way and I don’t want to wake them up. The closet door at the back of the room is shaking. I hurry down the aisle until I’m pressed against the door, where I found Baxter. This is where I found Baxter but Baxter is dead. We killed him. That means what’s behind the door is new. I open it and then she’s there, Lily is there, falling into me. I hold her until her skin melts into mine and then I’m not holding on to anything.
I wake up, fuzzy around the edges. Rhys’s wrist is draped across my wrist. I raise my head. Everyone is still asleep except for Cary, who moves around the room restlessly.
He stops when he notices my eyes are open.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why are you up?” He shakes his head, doesn’t answer. I look at him more closely. “Did you even sleep?”
“How can I sleep when the psycho’s got the gun?”
“Cary—”
He holds his hand up and then heads over to the table. He pulls the chair out and drags it across the floor so it screeches loudly and jolts everyone awake.
“What’s going on?” Rhys asks sleepily. “Cary, what are you doing?”
“I have something I want to talk about.”
“What?”
“Rayford.”
Rayford. Rayford. A survivor’s camp, waiting. I forgot all about it and they probably haven’t stopped thinking about it. I forget my brain doesn’t work like theirs do. Trace shifts beside me and rubs his eyes. I think about what I heard him doing.
I wonder who he was thinking about when he did it.
“Did you hear me?” Cary asks loudly. “I said I want to talk about Rayford.”
“Yeah, we heard you,” Trace says.
It takes a while to get it together. Everyone does the bathroom thing, changes into fresh clothes. Cary’s patience wanes quickly. His eyes say he wants to throttle us, but he keeps his mouth shut. When we finally gather around the table, Trace not-so-subtly claims the seat at the head of it. Cary remains standing.
“I’m trying for Rayford,” he announces.
He might as well be telling us someone’s died.
“You’re trying for Rayford,” Rhys repeats slowly.
“I want to find out what’s happened to the rest of the world. I want the military protection. I want—”
“To be away from Trace,” Grace finishes.
Cary turns red. “It’s not about that.”