I hate that he helped me, again. He’s like a nice asshole. Ironic.
The hand around my waist somehow landed under the hem of my vest, on the tiny sliver of skin between my waistband and my shirt. His fingers are warm, pressing into my side. There’s no reason for him to hold me so tight, or to hold me at all, yet it feels nice; for once, having someone looking out for me. The confusing thoughts make me sick.
“And your sister?” he asks, not acknowledging he probably just saved me from breaking my neck. I feel his fingers slowly spread out across my skin. He definitely doesn’t need to be doingthat. Is he trying to carry my weight more efficiently, or is he actually trying to feel my skin? Unwanted flutters coil in my belly.
Suddenly, I feel overwhelmingly overheated and my mind races with disconcerting images. Flashes of heat—of fogged-up windows in the back of Jason Mooring’s car a few months ago before the world went bad—when I snuck out of the apartment to meet him. I wonder where Jason is now.
I blink away the thoughts and stare at thethingholding me.
His eyebrows squish together and a frown pulls at his lips. Maybe he can’t figure me out. Or maybe he really could read my thoughts and he’s mortified about the fact that one of his hands touching my skin is making me think of the last time I was touched by a guy. I clear my throat and look away.
He carries me steadily until he finds solid ground and slowly lowers me until my toes touch down. He steps away and looks at his hand, the one that touched my skin, stretches his fingers, then quickly wipes them on his pants.
What the hell? Does he think I have the cooties or something?
I stare down at his hand, humiliated.
He stares down at his hand, disgusted.
He clears his throat and swallows loudly. “And your sister?” he repeats the question, more slowly this time.
I pause for a moment then mistakenly look up to meet his gaze. His blue eyes leave me with a mess of unsettling thoughts. Why is he asking? Will he use the information against me somehow?
“She’s confused also?” he asks.
I’m not sure how to answer him but I do so without thinking, I guess because I’m just used to explaining. “Claire has Down Syndrome.”
“A disease?”
“No,” I snap, wanting to punch him. “It’s not a disease. It’s just,” I hesitate, watching his features question me. I laugh darkly. “It’s a disorder. She was born with something extra inside her.”
“Extra?”
“An extra copy of a chromosome. Chromosome Twenty-one.”
“Her genetic make-up was altered?”
“Not on purpose. She just developed that way.”
“And what happens with her?”
“For someone like Claire, it’s like being a seven-year-old forever. Her body ages and develops, but her mind doesn’t seem to follow.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not the condition she has, it’s understanding her, and she needs me. She needs someone to help her through this newworld,” I say, trying to keep the sadness from my voice. “Why do you care anyway?”
“Good question,” he mutters under his breath. We watch each other for a few moments, surrounded by the heavy white fog. It makes me feel dizzy, like being in some highly elevated mountaintop with my head in the clouds. Except that these clouds smell distinctly like chemical shit.
He looks down at the hand that he held against my skin, balls it into a fist, and opens it back up slowly. “Your skin is soft,” he murmurs.
I don’t like that he noticed. “Don’t let my outside fool you, asshat. I’m made of much stronger stuff.”
I trip over something and stumble as I finish trying to be a badass, arms flailing right for the ground. Asshole doesn’t help me this time, and it’s only when I turn my head over my shoulder to curse at him that I realize I’m kneeling in the middle of a pile of half-rotten, maggot-infested dead bodies.
