I wanted, and I hated that I wanted, but I was starving for it, for the violence and the tenderness collapsed together until I couldn’t tell which was which.
But, this was Caiden, I shouldn’t have this hunger inside of me towards him, but it’s there, and I’m terrified it won’t ever go away.
It was wrong, so wrong.
I watched the shadow of a hawk spiral over the dry creek bed, and I thought, not long now.
Whatever Caiden and I had become—whatever wolves or scavengers we’d turned into—there wasn’t much left in us but the will to be the last one gnawing on the bone.
The thing was, I didn't want to be the last. I wanted him to stay, despite our past, even if it meant I kept eating until there was nothing left but the two of us, empty and toothy and sated on each other’s ruin.
I wanted to ask him if he blamed me for any of it, if he would have left me in the freezer if the choice was there, but I could not make my tongue move.
So I just sat, letting the sweat bake over me, feeling the wound throb and the riot of wants settle into a hard, black seed.
We did not move for the better part of an hour. There was nothing to wait for, but neither of us wanted to move. The exhaustion was not just in muscle, but in nerve: a weariness of having survived, of having to keep surviving, day after day.
Eventually, I fished a can of beans from the pack, wedged it between my thighs, and cracked it with the knife.
I took a spoonful, then another, but the food made no impression on my hunger. I passed the can to Caiden, who scooped up a mouthful and swallowed without comment.
The intimacy of the moment was so raw I wanted to laugh. We had shared a cage, a wound, a killer; now we shared a spoon, the backwash of our spit swirling together with the chemical tang of the beans.
I remembered a time, not so long ago, when the idea of touching anything that had passed Caiden’s mouth would have made me gag.
Now, the idea of not sharing it was what made me sick.
When he handed it back, his hand lingered, thumb grazing the inside of my wrist.
It was not an accident.
I stared at the point of contact, feeling the pulse there.
I wanted to say something, but the words jammed in my throat. He watched me, all focus, all waiting, as if to see what I would do next.
“We’re not gonna die out here,” he said finally. “I refuse.”
I made a noise that might have been a laugh or a cough or a sob. I wasn't sure. I was too tired to check.
“Good,” I said. “Because I’m not done hating you yet.”
The words had no teeth, no venom, but he seemed to understand the new gravity of them. The way “hate” was a lifeline now, a chain that held us together when everything else was wind and bone.
He grunted, and the silence held for a few more cycles before he stood. His fingers hooked through the can’s rim, and he lobbed it into the creek where it spun in an eddy, gleaming silver under the sky. “Let’s go then,” he said, voice gruff with something like hope.
We walked. The sun climbed and baked the earth around us, the heat a relentless press that made the sweat roll down our necks and soak the bandages.
My shoulder throbbed in time with my heartbeat, each step sending a new jolt of fire into my arm. I said nothing about it. He didn’t ask.
The terrain was monotonous and hostile, every rise and dip echoing the ache inside my limbs. We tracked the creek for a mile, maybe two, until the water vanished into a dry gravel bed.
I wanted to stop, to curl up in the little hollow and sleep until the next century, but Caiden just kept moving, head down, eyes glued to the horizon.
When I lagged, he waited. When I stumbled, he caught me. No words passed between us, but his hand on my elbow or the small of my back kept me upright and moving, putting himself in front of the worst of the wind.
When I looked at him, I saw the old Caiden—the bastard, the bully, the monster—but I also saw the shadow of the boy from the playground, the one who’d sat quietly beside me and watched the sky.
I hated how much I needed both of those versions of him. I hated how my body responded to the closeness, the heat, the memory of his hand on my stomach. I hated that the hate was now a thin film over muscle and bone, a web that bound us together even as it threatened to rot us from the inside out.
