“Why not?”
“Because if I have to, I’ll kill Rosewood myself. And anyone who gets in my way.” He sounds so sure. His voice doesn’t waver and neither do his hands. Jamie’s face is hardened in anger and frustration, and not even the boy I met nine months ago at gunpoint looked like this person who’s in front of me now.
That boy would never say this. He’d never look at me like this. Before, when I broke into his cabin, he looked lost. As if it wasn’t me breaking in, but him waking up not realizing where he was. I thought he’d kill me, but then almost immediately I could tell he wouldn’t. I don’t even remember if I thought that then or if I was just gambling.When he gave me food, I thought he might be trying to poison me, but the longer he spoke, the safer I felt.
If I broke into that cabin today and saw this person...
I think he would have shot me.
“No.” I shake my head. The old Jamie still has to be in there somewhere—this is because he’s scared, that’s all. We’re all scared; I just have to remind him we can be scared together. I put my hands to his cheeks so his eyes are locked on mine. Blood is seeping through the bandage on my left hand and it’s throbbing with pain. “You don’t need to do this. I get why you think you do, but you can come with us and we’re all going to be fine. No one is ever perfectly safe, not even before the apocalypse. But we can be happy, and we can try. All of us.”
I turn to Cara for backup.Please help me.She nods and takes Jamie’s hand.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she says. “We can all be scared, but staying together is what makes us strong.”
He closes his eyes and for a second my heart leaps. We did it. He’s going to stay with us.
But he gives a slow shake of his head.
My hands drop away from his face. There are no tears in his eyes, and he looks resolute.
“Denton is right. I killed Rosewood’s son, and as long as he’s alive, he’ll never stop trying to find me.”
I think the reason it’s called “heartbreak” is because it really does feel as if your chest has split open and everything has fallen out. And then all that’s left is numbness.
“Jamie, please,” Cara tries.
He shakes his head. “And I don’t want you to come with us either. I want you both, Amy, and Henri-Two to make sure you get to Henri.”
My voice is icy when I speak. “I have no intention of going with you on a revenge mission, Jamie.”
He seems surprised, as if he thought I would fight him on this or sneak onto a truck to come with him.
“It’s not a revenge mission.”
“Yes, it is. And I didn’t see it before, but you’ve been like this for...” I shake my head. “Since you got shot. You pushed the people in the Keys away. You refused to let that be our home. You gave up on the boat mission after I got kicked off for someone who was a legit navy admiral. You gave up on getting Henri, which was the entirepointof us going to the Keys. Then when we were on the road, you tried to hide medicine from the Nomads—the people who helped us and gave us food. You pulled a gun on Denton yesterday. This isn’t about keeping us safe, no matter how much you’re trying to tell yourself it is. It’s a revenge mission. Because you don’t like the person you’ve turned into and—”
I stop myself just in time, because I was about to sayI don’t like him either. But I don’t want to say that out loud. Not that I need to. I can see in his face that he knows exactly what I was going to say.
“I love you,” I say. “I do. Just please come with us.”
And just like he knows what I was going to say, I know what he’s going to say, too. He’s made up his mind.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I try one last time.
“I’ll come find you when it’s done,” he says.
I turn away from him. He calls after me, but I go up the deck stairsbehind the lodge and straight into the dining hall area. Nadine is there, but Denton isn’t. I walk up to her, interrupting a conversation she’s having with another woman.
“Where’s Denton?”
“Why?”
“Just tell me.”
She looks down at my hands, probably checking that I’m unarmed. Smart move, Lady Marine.
“He went to the bathroom.”
