Page 60 of My Undead Love Life

The intimacy of the moment made every detail of her impossible to ignore. The warmth of her palm seeped through my shirt. Her breathing had slowed, but each soft exhale brushed my chin. I could see the lingering dampness along her hairline and the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat.

I thought about Keith. I remembered the pain that crossed her face whenever she spoke his name and the way she sometimes cried beneath the blankets when she believed the rest of us were asleep. Wanting her felt wrong. She was grieving. She trusted me to protect her, and I couldn’t take advantage of the comfort she found in me. It was too soon.

But, then, she stepped a little closer.

My breath caught.

Her gaze lowered to my mouth and remained there. The touch on my shoulder changed as her fingers curled lightly into my shirt.

I should have stepped back. Instead, my eyes dropped to her lips. They were slightly parted, and I could feel the warmth of her breath between us.

We leaned toward each other slowly, leaving enough time for one of us to stop. Neither did.

“Hey—” Oxi’s voice cut through the moment.

Spencer and I jumped apart so quickly that the sheath knocked against her leg. She caught it before it could fall.

I turned away and dragged a hand over my face.

Oxi stood at the entrance of the store with his arms crossed. Surprise widened his eyes, but he recovered quickly enough to pretend he hadn’t nearly caught us kissing. “The horde outside isn’t thinning,” he let us know.

Luck stepped up behind him, glanced between Spencer and me, and raised his eyebrows. Unlike Oxi, he made no effort to hide what he thought he had interrupted. “In fact,” Luck added, sparing us commentary, “it’s getting thicker.”

The lingering warmth in Spencer’s face disappeared. “Thicker?”

Oxi nodded. “There are more of them arriving. This horde is bigger than anything I thought possible. They’re covering the grounds around the city.”

Spencer’s hand tightened around the katana. “My family.”

The words escaped before she could stop them.

All three of us looked at her.

“They’re at the Oasis,” she whispered, voice cracking. “My parents and my sister. They have to be up in the treehouses, and I know they’ll be safe for at least a year. We built them to withstand the hordes, and we stored supplies, but this is insane.” Her words came faster as panic took hold. “The horde has been here for over a month because the snow is stopping their migration. What if they don’t leave before winter ends? What if they change direction when they finally move? We were already dealing with so much, and now, Keith is gone, and they don’t even know.”

The katana slipped from her hand. I caught the sheath before it hit the floor, but Spencer didn’t seem to notice. She covered her face with both hands as her shoulders shook.

I set the weapon carefully against the wall and stepped forward.

She folded against me the moment I wrapped my arms around her. I held the back of her head with one hand and pressed the other between her shoulder blades, wishing I could shield her from every possibility racing through her mind.

Luck joined us from the other side. He wrapped an arm around her and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

Oxi hesitated for only a moment before stepping in, too.

The four of us stood tangled together in the entrance of the cold jewelry store while the horde moaned beyond the walls. Spencer’s tears soaked through my shirt, and every sob shook against my chest.

“It’s still there,” I whispered. “The Oasis is still there.”

“We’ll get you back to it,” Luck said.

“We’ll wait out the winter and find a route,” Oxi promised. “We aren’t leaving your family behind.”

I held her a little tighter. My mind was already turning toward the mall maps. I thought about the routes leading out of the city, and the roads likely to be blocked.

The Oasis had only been a destination before. It was a place Spencer needed to reach, and getting her there had become another objective I could plan for. Standing with Luck and Oxi as we wrapped around her, it began to mean something different.

It held Spencer’s family and the people she loved. It represented walls, shelter, and a future beyond surviving from one abandoned building to the next.