When the sun began to slant, orange and mad, we crested the first rise of the day and saw nothing but a new, wider valley, another stretch of rock and rippling heat.
Caiden stopped, sweat streaking his face, and let out a low,guttural “Fuck.”
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, and for a second I thought he might cry. I almost wanted him to. It would make it easier, maybe, to forgive him for all the ways he’d failed to be a monster.
Instead, he turned to me and said, “If we don’t see water soon, we’re going to have to slow down. You’re bleeding again.”
I looked at my arm. The bandage had become useless, blood seeping up and blooming through the gauze. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have.
“I can keep going,” I said. My voice felt like it belonged to someone else, some tougher animal that didn’t know how to shut up.
He gave me a look and shrugged. “Fine. But if you fall over, I’m not carrying you.”
A sick thrill ran through me at the thought of him carrying me. I imagined it: his arms under my knees and back, his jaw clenched against the effort, his breath damp on my face.
I wanted to snap at him, to say he’d never have the strength, but the words dried up in my mouth. The idea of being weightless in his arms made my body hum with a longing that had nothing to do with safety, or maybe everything to do with it.
He started down the other side of the ridge, boots crunching the crust of earth. I followed, letting my weight carry me forward, letting gravity do the work.
At the bottom, a wash of stone and eroded sand gave way to a patch of green. Grass, stunted and burnt, but it meant water. Somewhere underground, some trickle feeding the fragile roots.
My mouth flooded with anticipation. I could have devoured the landscape.
We searched for the source, kicking at rocks and poking at the dirt. When I found the seep, I almost cried.
We knelt, scooping at the liquid with our hands, sucking it from the ground like desperate animals. In the moment, I was nothing but thirst and want, lapping up the taste of life like it was the last drug on earth.
He watched me drink, and in his eyes I saw an echo of the fever that burned in my own. The way his lips parted, the way his gazetraveled my jaw, my throat, the curve of my shoulder, made the skin go hot under the bandages.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, daring him to look away.
He didn’t. His voice was soft, almost tender. “You have dirt on your face.”
“Yeah? So do you.”
He reached out, thumb brushing the smudge from my cheek. The touch was electric, a jolt straight to the base of my spine.
I flinched, but didn’t pull away. His hand lingered.
We crouched there, side by side, the silence between us suddenly taut and humming. I wanted to say something stupid, to break the tension, but all I managed was, “What?”
It came out defensive, as if I needed to remind him that I wasn’t prey.
He didn’t answer. His thumb moved, slow, deliberate, tracing the edge of my jaw.
For a second I thought he would kiss me, and I wanted it too much to find words for the wanting. The ache moved through me, a pulse that rewrote every old hurt into something raw and new.
Instead, he just said, “You should rest,” and stood, his hand falling away.
I watched the muscles in his back flex under the thin shirt as he walked back toward the patch of shade. I hated him for stopping. I hated myself for wanting him not to. I hated that we had nothing else in the world, no other horizon but our own ruin.
But I followed, because I didn’t want to be alone with the old ghosts.
We huddled under the shelter of a boulder, knees drawn up, the heat radiating off the rock like a fever. I peeled the sodden bandage from my shoulder and wiped at the blood.
Caiden watched, face gone shuttered and blank, but his hands twitched in his lap, restless.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
