There was no room for fear, only a thrill of anticipation as his hands closed on my shoulders and shoved me hard into a tree trunk.
The pain stung, and it cut through the gray shroud that had muffled my senses for days. I could feel the ridges of bark bite into my back, feel the warmth of his hands through the threadbare shirt, feel the heat of his hate burning in the scant inches between our faces.
For one unbroken second, we just breathed. His fingers twitched, and for a wild moment I thought he might throttle me, that he might finish what our families and this forest had started.
I wanted him to. I wanted him to do something irreversible, to burn down what was left of us so we could finally be free.
Instead, he let go, shoving me off with a snarl.
I stumbled and caught myself on a rotten log, the sudden gap between us more nauseating than the impact.
We went back to sit on opposite sides of the fire, staring at the same ember and thinking our separate, poisonous thoughts.
THE PRESENT
CAIDEN
The morning was gray. Not fog exactly, more like the air had given up on being clear.
The trees stood around us in a tight circle, tall pines and aspen, their trunks straight and unforgiving, their branches whispering to each other like they were laughing at us.
Amelia lay a few feet away, curled on her side, arms tight around her ribs. Her brown hair had come loose from whatever half-ass attempt she’d made to keep it back, strands stuck to her cheek.
I stared at her longer than I should have.
That was the problem out here. There was nothing to do but stare at the truth. Nothing to distract me from the way she existed in the same space as me, breathing, living, surviving. And every time she inhaled, it scraped something inside my chest I didn’t want scraped.
I pushed myself up, slow, because my body screamed if I moved too fast. My joints cracked. My muscles felt like they’d been wrung out and hung to dry. I flexed my fingers and watched them shake.
My hands were split open in a dozen places, the skin torn from climbing, from grabbing, from pulling her up when she slipped. Blood had dried in the creases like rust.
I clenched my fists until the tremor eased.
I scanned the tree line, forcing my eyes to focus. Hunger madeeverything swim. It turned shadows into movement. It turned every rustle into teeth.
I hated that part. I hated how my brain, starving and desperate, reverted to pure animal.
I stood, swayed, and steadied myself by pressing my palm against a tree. The bark scraped into my wounds. Pain flared, and for a second it cut through the haze.
My eyes snagged on a patch of red berries near a bush, low to the ground.
My stomach lurched with want so violent I almost doubled over.
Berries meant food. Food meant not dying. Berries also meant poison, if you were unlucky or stupid. And out here, luck and stupidity were basically the same thing.
I crouched, ignoring how my knees protested, and leaned closer. The berries were small, clustered, glossy. Pretty in a way that felt like a trap.
I stared hard, trying to summon whatever survival training I had left in my skull. The military taught you a lot of things. It did not teach you how to identify every deadly thing nature could hide behind a shiny skin.
My mouth watered anyway. My body didn’t care if it killed me. It just wanted something inside it that wasn’t emptiness.
Behind me, Amelia shifted. A soft sound, like a swallowed groan.
I didn’t look back. If I looked back, I’d see her eyes. Green and exhausted. I’d see the accusation living behind them. The question she never stopped asking, even when she didn’t speak it.
Why did you always ruin everything you touched?
I plucked one berry and rolled it between my fingers. The skin felt too smooth. Too perfect. Like it was waiting.
