“In the camper. There’s a bed inside.”
“Your bed.”
I hide my smile. “Yes. My bed. I’ll take the first watch. You look frazzled.”
He sighs deeply and puts the sleeping bag back inside his backpack. I can feel his need to argue—Stellan is used to being the one in charge—but he’s too tired to fight my authority tonight. I feel like pushing it a little farther.
“And I’m cooking, too,” I say.
He grumbles something unintelligible and walks away from the truck with my wood burning camping stove in hands. I snort and follow him with the bags of food.
Stellan watches in silence as I prepare a soup of lentils with a side of boiled eggs—a few merchants in the market have chicken coops. They feed them our food wastes and their feces makegreat fertilizer for the few hydroponic gardens we have on top of the RWE Baggers. I sneak an extra egg into Stellan’s bowl before handing it to him.
“Eat everything,” I tell him.
He frowns. “You’re not my mother.”
“No. But you can call me Daddy.”
He almost chokes on his first spoon of soup, and I chuckle at his horrified expression. And yet, underneath it all, I get a whiff of arousal.Interesting.
“No wonder you hit it off pretty fast with Perri,” he says. “You have the same brand of humor. Who would have thought?”
“You might have known, if you said more than two words a year to me.”
Stellan chuckles, surprisingly, then turns his back to me to finish his meal. My eyes snag on the back of his neck, where the hair is so fine and blonde it’s nearly transparent. I want to bury my nose in it and breathe him in.
“So, how do you intend to get in touch with Jude?” I ask.
He tried using their channel earlier in the truck, but only found static. They were out of range of my radio.
“A few days ago they were still helping my mothers get settled, before I left for the job.”
“Ah yes, Perri told me. They moved to the sequoia forest.”
He nods. “With the Highwaymen leadership gone, it became too dangerous to stay near Las Vegas. They took the RVs and left a few weeks ago. We wanted to help, but Jude and Oliver were closer, so they escorted them with theFirefly.”
It sounds like my ex-lover is playing happy family with his new mutant. A year ago, it might have sent me into a rage, but time in the wastelands unravels everything, and emotions such as rage and love wither under the sun if left unattended. Now I just feel a vague bitterness.
Stellan is studying me.
“Then let’s head closer to their location tomorrow,” I say. “The sooner we get in touch with them, the faster we can reach Perri.”
He nods slowly, and we both finish our bowls in silence.
Once Stellan is done washing the dishes with water from the large tank in my truck, he disappears inside the camper without so much as agood night. I’m the monster, and yet I have better manners than he does.
“Stellan isn’t an asshole,” Perri told me once when I’d asked why it seemed like he hated everyone. “He’s just extremely introverted and has very little energy to spare being social.”
“Except for you,” I said, threading my fingers through his long, chestnut hair.
Perri grinned, leaning into my touch. “I’m the reason his social battery is always so low. I’m high maintenance, and he never holds back with me. He gives me everything. His time, his attention, his love…”
“And you’re not even sorry about it.”
Perri was always glowing when he talked about Stellan. It sparked envy in me.
“Hell no,” he said. “Being loved by Stellan feels like sitting on top of the world. Nothing compares.”
