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He chuckles softly. “Mama ruled the roost. Pops was a good man, but he was as afraid of her as the rest of us.”
“You called her Mama? I like that.”
“Yeah. They were my mom’s parents, and they took raising us very seriously. Mama had a little shrine to our mom, and she’d light a candle every day and say something to her. It went from ‘Regina, give us the strength to make these boys into good men’ to ‘Regina, give me the patience not to whoop your sons into next week’.”
I laugh, still smoothing my palm in circles on his back. “I think I would’ve liked her.”
“You would’ve. I went to a party in high school that got busted. I begged the cops to leave me in a jail cell instead of calling Mama. She came into that station in her flowery robe and house slippers, with her bonnet on, and dragged me out by the ear. Pops kept having to take the wheel on the drive home because she was reaching behind the driver’s seat trying to whoop my ass while she was driving.”
“So you were a troublemaker?”
He snuggles closer into me. “No. I was a football player, and my friends dragged me to the party.”
“I can see you being a football player.”
He yawns. “Had the letterman jacket and everything.”
We sit in silence for a couple minutes, and I think he might be asleep when I say, “I think Briar’s dead.”
He shifts, cringing from the pain as he rolls onto his back to look up at me, even though it’s dark. “What makes you think that?”
“I can’t feel her anymore. You probably don’t remember me telling you I could feel her. I’m not sure you were even awake.”
“I remember. How long has it been since you felt her?”
“It stopped all of a sudden yesterday, and there’s been nothing since.”
“I’m sorry.”
I’ve been numb all day, pushing aside the hurt because it’s too much. “Everyone I care about dies.”
“I’m still here.”
“I haven’t decided yet whether I care about you,” I quip.
“Let me know when you do, would you?”
“I saw what you’re working with when you got hard earlier. It made me care.”
He laughs softly. “You said you were with someone after the virus. Did you two part ways, or did he ...?”
“He died. Our relationship was ... complicated by that point.”
I can’t forget the look on Donovan’s face the last time I saw him. I didn’t feel the same way about him I once did, but I still loved him.
Getting sent to the island was my second chance. My reinvention. And as hard as it was to just survive there, I left Alice Glass behind. I was Amira once again.
Briar and I met briefly on the boat that took us to the island before we ended up in separate camps. Nova was one of my first friends in the Dust Walkers camp. She saw me for what I was, not what I wasn’t.
So did Briar. She trusted me with her back, and that meant everything to me.
I keep trying to come up with explanations for why I could feel her before and now I can’t, but only one makes sense. It’s too devastating to process.
She told me to fight, and that’s what I’m going to do. Never again will I be sidelined by a man. By anyone. If Briar can’t save her sister and jam a knife into Lochlan Murphy’s balls, I will. Her fight is mine now.
Once Evander caught up on sleep and I slept for a couple hours, we ate the last of our dried beef and apples and set out for the last leg of our journey.
We already went around Atlanta, which is too dangerous to get close to. Jane is moving slower on the hilly terrain we’ve hit, but I’m secretly glad. Evander has been pushing himself too hard.
