He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at me; his gaze stayed firmly on the world beyond the gates as the hand holding mine clenched, squeezing hard. I squeezed back, following his gaze. Moments passed by in silence, leaving me wondering why we were up here. And then I saw it ...
It was just a sliver at first, a spark of light and color beyond the tree line, and then all at once the sun burst free, lighting up the sky in an explosion of color.
“When I was little, my uncle used to wake me up before dawn,” he said. “He’d drag my lazy ass up to the roof to watch the sun come up. He always said a man should bear witness to every sunrise and sunset, that when everything else was fucked up and failing, you could always count on the sun. That the damn sun would never let you down.”
He glanced down at me and I looked up at him, both of us silently watching each other. Up until now, I’d never believed that feelings could be so real, so powerful, obliterating everything that you were and giving birth to something entirely new. Something so unbelievably real that I could barely breathe.
“Sometimes I wish it would all just burn away,” he said, his voice hoarse and so broken that tears sprang to my eyes.
“Me too,” I whispered, speaking the truth—almost wishing for it. Because if this was it, if this was all there was left, maybe it should just burn away. Maybe we all should.
One second we were staring at each other, and the next we were kissing. We kissed and kissed, and then I climbed up his body, wrapping around him, and his hands were on me, cupping my backside and fisting in my hair.
It was perfect, me and him and the explosion of life all around us. So perfect, in fact, that if the sun had chosen in that moment to take us all, to finally rid the world of its remaining stragglers, I wouldn’t have cared.
He pulled away first and I took a breath, and then another. I breathed in and out, feeling as if I were breathing for the first time in so long. I breathed long and hard, sucking the crisp morning air into my lungs, letting it wash everything else away, all the sorrow, the guilt, the hopelessness, and the longing.
Reaching up, I cupped his face, ready to tell him that everything was going to be fine, that we had each other now and we could survive this, that we could survive anything. But the thought gave me pause. All this time I’d been feeling weak inside these gates, thinking I needed him to survive this place and these people.
I’d been so wrong. I didn’t need him to help me survive. I didn’tneedanyone.
But the truth was, I didn’t want to survive on my own anymore. I didn’t want to do any of this on my own.
And as I stared into his dark eyes, I could see that he didn’t want to either.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eagle
After dropping Autumn off at the doctor’s office, I headed down the hall and took a seat in the stairwell. It smelled faintly of bleach, and looked cleaner and less dusty than it had yesterday.
Autumn didn’t realize it but every day during the last week, I hadn’t left her alone. While she worked, I waited, watching everyone that came inside the building, worried each day that it was the day Liv would make her move.
We had to leave, but I still hadn’t come up with a plan. The guards at the gates had been doubled, something I was positive was Liv’s doing. If I tried to leave, especially with Autumn, I had the sneaking suspicion I’d be accused of stealing something that Liv would proclaim belonged to Purgatory. Whatever Liv wanted, Liv got, and right now Liv wanted revenge.
I’d mulled over the idea of being up front with Jeffers about all of it, every single dirty detail of my relationship with Liv over the years, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There had to be another way to get the fuck out of here safely, and with Jeffers’s last shred of sanity intact. If he didn’t have me shot on sight, the knowledge would—at the very least—break him. And he already blamed me for so much, I couldn’t be the one to take Liv from him too. He needed to figure out on his own that she was poison.
I could always kill her. Kill her and run. But then there was the question of where the hell we would go.
We couldn’t wander forever. My supplies would run out, and out there in the wild, supplies were finite, dwindling more each day. I was sure there were other places to be found, other colonies where people had congregated for safety, but I couldn’t imagine them being any better off than Purgatory was. Same shit, same type of people, different place.
It was an endless cycle of questions that I had no answers for. Nothing I came up with boosted my confidence but instead left me feeling something I wasn’t used to feeling, something I hadn’t felt in a damn long time. Helpless.
Footsteps on the stairs had me sitting up straighter. Craning my neck, I watched as Marcus appeared at the bottom.
“Been lookin’ for you, boss,” he said. Sending a hand through his greasy hair, he glanced over his shoulder.
“Found me,” I muttered.
“Something’s happening,” he continued. “They’re all gathered up in Jeffers’s building. Something big is going down, and everyone’s talking. Figured you might know what the fuck is up.”
It could be anything. A horde might have been spotted. Or maybe someone had been found stealing, or even murdered. Jeffers gathered guards on a regular basis, and most times it was just to dole out their earnings.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, but even as I said it, my stomach took a dive to my feet. Maybe this was it; maybe Liv was making her move. Accusing me of something and gathering the guards to take me down and lock me up would be a great way to get to Autumn. There’d be no one to protect her without me around, and no one would stand up to Liv in her defense.
Marcus looked skeptical. “If you say so.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I’m laying low just in case. If they’re gonna be cracking down on the small-business man, then I’d best make myself invisible.”
I snorted. “You think you’re the only one who skims? Half the people here aren’t being up front and got shit going down on the side. Lying, cheating, and stealing is the only way anyone gets ahead. Look at Grannie. She’s doing better than all of us.”
