“For what? Not fuckin’ you, I hope. ’Cause I get as good as I give in that.”
“Yes. I know. But you always go out of your way to make sure I… I get what I need—in sex and in everything else. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He kisses the top of my head in the sweetest small gesture. “But like I said, I’m gettin’ as goodas I’m givin’. Nothin’ in the world makes me happier than bein’ with you like this. I’m hopin’ you’ll always let me fuck you that good.”
I swallow hard. He means it. For such a stoic, silent man, he’s been completely vulnerable with his feelings lately. There’s no way in the world for me to doubt them.
“Too much?” Ben asks softly after a minute.
“No. It’s not too much. I… I want it too. But sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
With a guttural sound, he lifts me up and settles me on his lap, cupping my face so I hold his gaze. “Listen to me, baby. I know you lost your dad too early and your mom and stepmom both sucked. But you gotta know this already. Love has never been about deservin’.”
My throat tightens with emotion. My eyes burn. I try to respond but can’t get a word out.
“None of us deserve it, but sometimes we get it anyway.”
“You deserve it.”
He blinks, clearly taken by surprise.
So I say it again. “You deserve it, Ben. You deserve everything. You’ve always been the strong tree with deep roots, and you deserve it.”
He smiles, his face and body both softening palpably. “I think you might have a kinda biased view of me, but let’s pretend that’s true. If I deserve everythin’, then that means I get to have you.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him tight,overwhelmed by what he’s saying, what he’s offering, what he’s giving me.
What he’s been giving me from the moment we met.
I want to give him everything too. He needs to hear the words out loud, so I say them. “You have me, Ben. You have me.”
Midmorning the following day,we get word from our lookouts close to the Capitol that three transport trucks left the city and are driving in our direction.
Transport trucks carry food and supplies. Not troops. But three leaving together and not diverting in different directions is strange.
Maybe there’s an emergency somewhere and the president is sending extra food and supplies. It happens occasionally. Or maybe they’re heading to different villages but using the same road for a while to get there.
There’s nothing particularly threatening about transport trucks. Normally we wouldn’t give them a second thought. But we’ve been waiting for the Capitol’s next move against us, and three trucks traveling together is strange.
It sets off alarm bells in my head, and I’m not the only one.
Me, Ben, Vella, and Roderick are conferring in the command station when Ryan gets off the radio and tellsus the news. We sit for a few minutes, mulling over the possibilities, but we all end up at the same conclusion.
“Sounds fishy,” Vella says, summing up what we’re all feeling.
“A lot of troops can be hiding out in the back of those trucks,” Roderick adds. “Perfect way to get close to us without alerting everyone in the city that there’s been an uprising. I’m surprised they haven’t tried something like that before.”
“Of course they get the idea right before we’re about to make our move.” Vella shakes her head. “Should we head out and set explosives?”
I make a face. “I don’t want to attack innocent transports. There’s always a chance the drivers could get hurt.”
“We need to know what we’re dealing with early,” Ben says.
With a nod, I say, “Yes. Let’s brainstorm. We need to figure out a way to know what those trucks are carrying before we lay the ambush.”
In the end,it’s simpler than we feared.
Vella gets on an ATV to drive out toward where the trucks are approaching. Then she drives wildly toward them, shooting her pistol a few times at the trucks until the back one of them opens and two guards begin to shoot back.
