We laid everything out on the counter: cans, boxes, a few half-used bags of rice and pasta, their tops rolled and clipped shut by someone who expected to return.
It looked like more than it was.
Finn straightened and rolled his shoulders, then turned to face me. I met his eyes for half a second before I understood my mistake and looked away.
The pull registered before I could stop it. Quiet and unwelcome—and then, underneath that, something not entirely unwelcome, which was worse. Whatever part of me had apparently survived everything intact chose this particular moment to make itself known, without apology, without shame, and without any apparent awareness of its own poor timing.
I recognized it for what it was: elemental attraction.
The fact that some part of me could do this—still respond this way to a man’s presence—didn’t feel like survival. It felt like a flaw I hadn’t finished paying for.
I looked back at the counter. The cans. The half-empty bags of rice. Anything that wasn’t his face.
Finn spoke first. “We’ve got enough for a week, maybe two.” He said it as he said most things—direct, handing me the information like any other fact. “After that, we’re in trouble fast.”
Ten years of school pickups, utility bills, and ordinary weeks—and now my world had shrunk to days. Maybe less.
“How close is the nearest store?” he asked.
My stomach tightened. “Eight blocks. But won’t it already be—”
“Looted.” He looked away, pressing his tongue against his cheek. “Yeah, possibly.”
He dragged a hand down his face, his mind elsewhere, running calculations I couldn’t access.
Eight blocks.
We both understood what that meant.
Finn took a deep breath, and something in his eyes resolved. “We sleep while we can,” he said. “I’ll take first watch. Then you and Fiona rotate.”
I stared at him. Sleep was a word I understood, but I couldn’t grasp how it would actually come. My legs hadn’t stopped shaking for ten minutes, a fine, continuous tremor that ignored every command I gave them.
“Me?” I whispered, the word barely a breath.
“You know this house,” he said, as if that was the only data point that mattered. “The sounds it makes. I need you both functional by morning.”
There was no hesitation. He didn’t ask if I could manage it; he hadn’t seen me fall apart in the hall, but his failure to even consider the possibility was its own cold assessment. He’d decided I was a tool for the job, and he was moving on.
“Okay,” I said.
He gave a short nod. “Keep it quiet. If anything sounds wrong, anything sounds like it’s getting in, you wake me immediately.”
“Got it.”
The silence between us held for another beat—long enough that I became aware of the boarded windows at my back and the sounds drifting in from outside, the city continuing its undoing—a distant siren that died abruptly, a shout that wasn’t a scream.
Then Finn reached over and killed the kitchen light.
Darkness came down all at once, complete and immediate, and I heard rather than saw him move toward the door.
“Come on,” he said, his voice low. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Seven
Kind Of A Plan- Libby
By mid-morning, we had what resembled a plan.
