My heart sinks, but I understand. Rushing him would be cruel. "Okay."
"You're not angry?"
"No." I squeeze his hand. "You need time to process. I get that. But Finn? When you're ready, I'll be ready too."
He nods, still holding my hand like he can't quite make himself let go. "Thank you for being patient with me."
"Thank you for wanting to try."
We walk back to the cabin in silence, but it's not uncomfortable. Our hands stay clasped the whole way. When wereach his door, he finally releases me, but his fingers trail along mine as he pulls away.
Progress. Small, careful, perfectly Finn.
And it's enough. For now.
five
Finnegan
Katetalks.Notconstantly,but unpredictably, which is worse. I'll be focused on a task and she'll ask a question from nowhere, and I have to stop and reorient. She moves things. Small things, things she probably doesn't notice, but I notice. Yesterday she shifted my salt container two inches to the left. I moved it back three times before I realized she was using it to season her food and putting it down wherever her hand happened to be.
I could ask her to put it back in the same spot. I don't. I'm not sure why.
But she also sees things.
When I show her my tracking notebooks, she doesn't comment on the organization. She doesn't call it obsessive or weird or too much. She just starts reading, her fingers tracing my careful columns of data, and within an hour she's found patterns I'd documented but never connected.
"This is incredible," she says, spreading both our notebooks across the table. Our data side by side. "Your elk migration shifts match my zombie movement timelines exactly. Something's affecting both species the same way."
"The canyon." I point to a location on her map. "Wind makes a low sound through the rocks. Below human hearing range, mostly. Herds avoid it."
"Sound." Her whole body goes alerrt, her shoulders straightening, eyes widening. This is what she looks like when she's excited. "Finn, what if it's sound frequencies? What if someone's using acoustic signals to direct the herds?"
The theory is solid. I've thought about sound before and I’ve noticed how certain areas stay clear, how others always have activity. Never had the framework to formalize it.
"We could test it," I hear myself say.
"We could test it." She's grinning now. "Small scale first—different frequencies near the cabin, record how stragglers respond."
"I have speakers. From the settlement, before. Never threw them away."
"Why not?"
I don't answer. I don't know. Some things I keep without reasons that make sense.
Kate doesn't push. She just says, "Can I see them?"
We work until midnight, rigging equipment, planning experiments. She talks through her process out loud, which should be annoying but isn't. It means I always know whatshe's thinking. No guessing, no ambiguity, no trying to read expressions I can't interpret.
"You're easier than most people," I tell her, and she laughs.
"That's not a compliment most women want to hear."
"It is from me."
She stops laughing and looks at me.
"Finn. When's the last time you touched someone? Not practically. Just... touched."
