“Fuck you, Denton, they killed Danny’s kid.”
Of course they know about Harvey.
Walt. I shot him but he didn’t die—he must have found his way back to another search party, or even Fort Caroline. And there he told them what happened. That we killed Harvey Rosewood and tried to kill him. And Fort Caroline set out for retaliation. And somehow found us here.
“Call Rosewood,” Steve shouts back to the men behind him. “Looks like we got the fuckers.” One of them peels away from the group, walkie-talkie in hand, and begins mumbling into it.
“How did you find us?” I ask Grover Denton. He frowns down at me, not willing to share his secrets. Steve isn’t so proud.
“Walt told us where he and Harvey found you,” Steve says. “We got on the highway and started down from there.”
“Steve, shut up,” Grover warns. But Steve doesn’t listen.
“Whole lotta people out looking for just you two, but we saw your fire tonight. Luck just had us stumble on—”
“Steve!” Grover turns to him. “I said shut. Up.”
Steve makes a face and turns away, walking to the others. Grover reaches down and pulls the gag from Andrew’s mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew says. He looks disappointed in himself. Like he should have known we’d be ambushed in the woods by the Fort Caroliners. I didn’t. Not this far away.
“You don’t have to be sorry.” I look up at Grover Denton, who walks toward the other men out for Harvey Rosewood’s revenge. “I do, though.”
“It’s not your fault,” Andrew says, tears in his eyes.
“No, not this. I...” My throat gives a subconscious gulp,interrupting what I’m going to say. The others are talking among themselves. They aren’t paying attention to us, quietly celebrating their capture. I twist the plastic ties. They aren’t the thick white ones that cops used to arrest people when handcuffs weren’t available. They’re the thinner ties anyone can find in a hardware store.
Andrew looks so disappointed, and I want to reach out to him and tell him it’s all right. But it isn’t. We’re going to be killed. It’s all I can see in our future. I move one knee forward, crawling across the gravel, and I lean into him. I put my forehead against his. We probably look like idiots, but it feels wonderful. Andrew looks into my eyes and I look into his. He tries his best to smile.
“I’m sorry because I... I wasted so much time,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
My heart’s racing and it has nothing to do with the fact that our hands are bound and we’re minutes away from death. “I have... I’ve... It’s...”
Oh, fuck it, why am I talking?
I kiss him.
He freezes and I nudge forward, trying to tell him it’s okay and he can kiss back because I want him to kiss back. He finally does, his mouth opening to mine, and he lets out a held breath through his nose.
Then he pulls away.
“You kissed me,” he says, as if I didn’t know what I was doing.
“I did.”
He groans in misery and I’m taken aback. “You kissed me for the first time and I just spent the last ten minutes with a dirty T-shirt stuck in my mouth.”
“I... you... what?”
“Screw it, never mind. Can you just... do it again?”
“Yes.” The word is barely out of my mouth before his lips are against it.
We kiss and it’s difficult because I want to put my hands to his neck and run them through his hair. Which, now that I think about it, needs a cut.
But our kiss has the opposite effect of a fairy tale. When it’s over, it isn’t happily ever after. We’re still in the same predicament.
