“They’re here,” Callan announced, without hesitation or preamble. “Arrived a couple of hours ago. They’re up at the house. Safe.”
Relief washed over me, a wave starting in my chest and radiating through my entire body. My eyes closed, and I tipped my head back against the post, simply breathing.
“Thank God,” I managed, my voice broken. “Good. That’s… good.”
Callan crouched before me, studying my face in the dim light.
“You look like shit,” he observed.
“I know,” I replied, my voice flat.
He pulled me into a rough, tight embrace, one arm around my back, the other gripping the back of my neck. It was a hug devoid of sentiment, a visceral acknowledgment of survival. He held it for three seconds longer than either of us would ever acknowledge. I returned it as best I could, one arm barely cooperating, the other hanging uselessly, shaking.
“Thought you were dead,” he murmured into my shoulder. His voice carried a raw weight I’d never heard from him before, a vulnerability he’d never repeat.
“Not yet,” I said. “Working on it, though.”
We pulled apart, and I leaned back against the post, studying him. The same face, but harder, thinner than I remembered, with a new scar along his jawline. He looked like someone who’d been surviving, not just living. Yet, his eyes still held that sharp intelligence and quiet steadiness that had always made him the one person I trusted to watch my back when everything went sideways.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked, more disbelief than question, my voice tinged with a bewildered gratitude I couldn’t quite hide.
He grinned, just a little—that familiar half-smile that promised a story he’d enjoy telling.
“Well,” he said, settling back on his heels, “Lock got here first. About a week after everything went to hell.”
I blinked, letting that sink in.
“Lock is here?”
“Living and breathing,” he confirmed. “I’ve been holding things down since day one—the animals, the property, the gardens, all of it. It’s Lock, you know how he is. Give him a piece of land, and he’ll run it like a military installation. The place looks better than when you left it.”
I let out a long, slow breath.
Of course, Lock came. Of course he did. The man had a compass in his bones that always pointed toward the people he cared about, and he’d never once in his life needed to be asked.
“Then Sloane, Ethan, and I showed up about six weeks ago,” Callan added, ticking off the timeline with a casual efficiency that told me he’d organized this information long before I’d asked for it.
“Sloane?” I frowned. “Who the hell is Sloane?”
He scratched the back of his neck, a tell I recognized from our time serving together. It meant he knew what was coming would earn him grief and had already decided to endure it.
“…my girlfriend.”
I stared at him.
The silence stretched.
“Your girlfriend,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“You have a girlfriend? Last I heard, you were married.”
“Sadie and I split before the world did. She, uh… she didn’t make it.”
“So you got a girlfriend before or after the apocalypse?”
“After,” he said, at least having the decency to look slightly sheepish. “Timing’s weird, I know.”
