12. Tori

12

TORI

“It’s always the one you don’t expect,” I grumbled, flipping the page of the book and reading the scene with palpable tension.

The wife wasn’t murdered by her husband like I’d expected, no. It was her neighbor. The nice lady who she had become fast friends with after she moved next door only two months prior. She’d been fast to comfort the husband, and I had truly thought she was just being neighborly, but that wasn’t her intention.

No. She wanted the husband all to herself, and she didn’t care what she had to do as long as she got what she wanted in the end.

A bitter taste rose on my tongue as I read on, only feeling slightly better when she confessed everything and tried to kill the husband when the cops had been in the next room without her knowing.

I slammed the book shut with a huff and sat it back in the box.

“Not a good ending?” Micah’s brow rose from next to me.

He, Nathan, and Calix sat in the living room with me, and aside from their side conversations, they’d pretty much been staring at me. I had read through the entire novel since that morning, and the sun had already started to set.

“Something like that,” I murmured as I wrinkled my nose.

A dull orange slipped through the window, and Micah got up and lit the two candles in the room to give some more light.

“The zombies have almost passed through.” Nathan stretched his arms over his head before settling back against the sofa.

“When do you think we’ll be able to go down?” I asked, watching the flick of the flame on the candle next to me.

“Probably tomorrow.” Calix got up and went to his room only to return a few seconds later with the board game they’d been playing. He placed a pillow down for himself and sat down.

“Ready to get your ass beat again?” Nathan snickered as he slid off the couch and pulled me down with him.

Micah came down too, and we all moved to one side of the board.

“It’s really cool how well you guys play this game. Like you already know which player you are and which side you want.” I grinned as I took the last little tin game piece in the shape of a horse.

“And now we have you with us,” Calix murmured, his eyes glistening as he stared at me. “My mom used to play as the horse. It’s really good to see you using it.”

My lips quirked into a smile as I placed the horse at the start block with the rest of them. “She sounds fun.”

“She was, but she didn’t let herself have fun any other time. Only when we played this game.” He went quiet and handed everyone a small pack of two dice. “She’s why there are so many precautions in place for it. These baggies make sure everyone has their own dice. Mine are the green, Micah’s are the red, Nathan’s the blue, and yours is the yellow now.”

I nodded, slipping the dice out of the baggie and into my palm. “Thank you. That’s really nifty.”

“My mom was diagnosed with mysophobia—being afraid of germs—a few months after she had me. She’d been diagnosed with OCD a few years before she met my father.” He scrunched his nose in disgust at mentioning his father and rolled his dice.

The dice hit the board with two thumps, and he moved his piece onto a property that he bought, paying the banker, which was Nathan.

“What caused the onset of mysophobia?” I asked as Micah took his turn, paying for a property and taking the deed.

“She had an emergency c-section with me, and it was considered a traumatic birth for reasons she never disclosed to me.” His eyes were trained on the board as he talked, and his voice wobbled. “Her sutures got severely infected, and she was admitted into the hospital for a week. After that, she couldn’t stand any germs. My father lasted two months after she came home before up and leaving us both without so much as a goodbye.”

“I’m so sorry that happened, Calix. He sounds like an awful person. I know that was probably hard to talk about, so thank you for telling me.”

He shrugged, and Nathan took his turn only to land on the property Micah had just bought.

“No! Come on! It’s my first turn.” Nathan pouted, shooting Micah puppy dog eyes.

“Pay up,” Micah grumbled, holding his hand out for the money, which made Nathan whimper like a hurt animal as he stared at his money.

Something I liked about Calix’s version of the game was that there weren’t bills but rather plastic colored coins. Red was a million, blue was one-hundred-thousand, green was ten-thousand, yellow was thousand, silver was one-hundred, purple was ten, and orange was one. Easier to clean and keep better track of.

Nathan dropped his pleading face and grabbed a coin before dropping it into Micah’s hand. “No fun.”

“Very fun,” Micah clarified, and I swore I saw a twinkle in his eye.

“Your turn, honey,” Calix murmured, and I smiled before rolling the dice.

“Honey? That’s cute.” Nathan grinned.

“It’s comforting.” I moved my piece to what happened to be an expensive property and paid for it before getting the deed.

“How so?” Micah asked as Calix took his turn.

“My dad calls me honeybee. Just makes me feel at home,” I tried explaining the warm, fuzzy static that filled me when Calix called me honey.

“That’s cute.” Micah rolled his dice and claimed another property. “I’m so glad you came with us, darlin’.”

“Thank you for giving us that option.”

“We don’t usually do what we did for you.” Nathan landed only a space from the one I claimed and had to pay the bank for a card he’d pulled on that spot. “This is going to be a rough game for me.”

“Bad luck?” I rolled my dice and claimed a few more moves that landed me on a property that I bought. “Regardless, I’m happy you decided to intervene on our behalf before you knew us. I can imagine everyone has lost their morals the way the world is.”

“You have no idea, and I’m glad we intervened too,” Nathan muttered bitterly.

Calix landed on Micah’s property and handed him a coin while Micah smirked and proceeded to roll his dice and buy a new property.

“What do you mean?” I asked, and he rolled again, landing on a property next to mine that was still open.

His lips curved into a small smile as he bought the property, but his eyes darkened. “What happened to my family’s homestead was my fault, but because of what I did, we learned why we had to be so cautious with others.”

“If it was someone else who did it, I don’t see how that’s your fault.” My dice hit the board with two small thumps, and I moved to another new property in the same area as Calix’s and bought it.

Nathan sighed, running a hand through his hair before shifting his legs to the side. “We stayed at the homestead one entire year before I fucked up, and it was almost like we had been in a bubble, similar to your ranch, really.”

Calix took his turn and landed on a card block, and the card gave him five more red coins.

“Bubbles are great until they’re popped,” I murmured, and Nathan gave me a weak smile with a nod as Micah took his turn, landing on Nathan’s property and paying him what he was owed.

“Exactly. Only my actions are what popped ours.” Nathan took the coin from Micah and rolled his dice, earning another property. “We were out looking for other survivors. We wanted to help people.”

“And you found someone?” I took my turn, and landed on Calix’s property, paying him and keeping my eyes glued to Nathan as I waited for him to continue.

“Yeah. I did. It was a woman only a year or so younger than me. She’d been fending off a zombie with her high heel, and I was an idiot. I saved her, and we took her back with us. She managed to charm me enough to tell my dad he was paranoid instead of believing him when he told me something wasn’t right with her.” His lips curved down in a harsh frown. “But I had wanted her to stay with us, and I was blinded by the possibility of romance. That night, we slept together, and when I woke up, raiders were attacking in the middle of the night. She had been with them and led them straight to our home. They tried to kill us, but my dad had an escape route mapped out.”

“That sounds more like her fault than yours, Nathan.” I reached over and grabbed his hand to squeeze, and he squeezed back. “You had gone out looking for survivors, and you did what you had thought was right. She manipulated you. You can’t fault yourself for being compassionate and hopeful.”

“But Dad knew something was wrong. If I hadn’t been so blinded—”

“But you were, and what happened happened. You can’t do that to yourself, Nathan. Besides, look at what happened after. You have Micah and Calix, and me. Plus, we live in the best possible place to live in the apocalypse. These treehouses are sturdy and far up away from zombies.”

“See, we told you that,” Calix added.

“Told ya so,” Micah agreed.

Nathan’s frown faded as a smile replaced it, and he grabbed my hand tighter before jerking me up and into his lap, careful of the board in front of us as I squealed.

His warm lips met mine, and my legs dropped to either side of his lap. He trailed his hands down my sides until he grabbed my ass, and I pushed myself down enough to feel his hardness between his legs, making him moan.

“Wow,” Calix choked out, and Micah chuckled.

A loud, guttural roar shook the treehouse, and Nathan and I broke apart just as the roar turned to a high-pitched shriek.

“What the fuck was that?” Nathan pulled me to my feet as Micah and Calix jumped up.

“Sounded like a mountain lion.” Micah’s jaw tightened.

My ears hurt from the sound as adrenaline pumped into me, and we all rushed to the window to stare into the darkness as the shriek settled, replaced by whimpers before it went away completely.

Goosebumps covered my arms, and dread coiled in my gut as my hand clamped over my mouth.

Calix wrapped his arms carefully around my shoulders and leaned me into his chest as terror rooted me to the spot. “It’s okay, honey. We’re safe up here. Micah made this treehouse tough. Everything’s locked up.”

“What kind of wildlife is around here?”

“Bears, coyotes, rattle snakes, wolves now, and mountain lions are the most dangerous animals around here. But I’ve noticed a lot of out of place predatory animals since the apocalypse. Though, we haven’t seen snakes in a while now. Still watch out for them though, obviously.”

I nodded. “That’s terrifying.”

“That mountain lion we heard must’ve been bitten,” Nathan stated the obvious, and Calix stiffened further as he pulled away.

Micah dragged me into his arms, and his woodsy scent filled my senses as I snuggled closer to him, already missing Calix even as I savored Micah’s warmth. “We’ll keep an eye out and tell the others, though, I’m sure they came to that conclusion on their own.”

Watching out for zombies and wildlife was something I had become accustomed to at the ranch the past three years, but watching out for zombified wildlife was something else entirely.

We left the window and cleaned up the game and house before heading to bed, and as soon as I was tucked between Micah and Nathan, sleep took over, and my worries were mercifully put on pause.