“Sent you? “Why would she send you here?”
“She still works for the government,” Aerin says. “She found out what was happening in the West, and she sent me here to find proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“You know how they told us the West was recovering? How they always said it was just a matter of time before we would be able to expand back to the other side of the mountains, and the land would be useful again?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all a lie,” she says. “There is no West anymore.”
Chapter 10
Having Aerin cook was a good call. Aside from my own lack of skills, the stew she comes up with from a bunch of cans is fantastic.
“What did you do?” I ask her with my mouth full. “This is incredible.”
“Not too tough to make it tasty when you have access to salt and pepper,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of stuff thrown together. The seasoning is what makes it tasty. Found a container of oregano, too.”
“Yeah, I can taste that.”
“The boiled water also helped,” Aerin says. “No ashy aftertaste.”
“This is so good.” I take several more bites. “We can skip the traveling. Let’s just stay here forever. If you’re willing to cook like this, I’ll do anything and everything else!”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Aw, why not?” I give her my best pouty face and then immediately wonder if I look cute or just pathetic. I suck my lower lip back into my mouth and glance away, trying to figure out just when I started to care about how a woman perceives me.
“Because the canned food is only going to last about three days.”
“I guess that’s a valid reason.” I watch her for a moment as she finishes her meal and takes the bowl to the sink. “Are you ever going to explain your comment about the West?”
“No,” she says, clinking dishes in the sink. She turns on the water and rinses them off. “You’ll see it when we get there.”
“Quite the tease, aren’t you?”
“You can do your own dishes, then.” She looks over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow at me.
I don’t know why that look goes straight to my dick, but it does. Every fucking time. She uses that look a lot, and it’s becoming embarrassing. I can only hope she hasn’t noticed as I fidget in my seat, take the last couple bites of stew as well as a couple of deep breaths, and then stand up and wash off my own dishes as she walks over to the bed.
“We should get a few hours of decent sleep,” Aerin says as she sits down on the bed and grabs her pack from the floor. “If possible, I’d like to get most of the way there tomorrow.”
“How do you even know what time of day it is now?” I ask.
“I don’t, really. Just guessing. We were maybe three hours from daybreak when the quake hit. I think we were stuck in the shaft for about five hours.”
“We were never actually stuck,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “We could have gone in at any time.”
“Whatever.” She waves her hand dismissively before going back to rummaging in her pack. “We’ve been in here six hours, maybe seven. It’s probably late afternoon or early evening, and neither of us slept well.”
“All this stuff and no clock?” I look around the room as if I might have missed something like that before.
“I think there was one on that wall.” Aerin points to a spot above the dresser where I can see a dim, round outline on the painted wall. “Could have been, anyway.”
“Maybe a mirror.”
“No one would have a mirror that small.”