12. Emily

12

Griffin’s eyes squeeze shut, and I’d like to think that it’s because I’m hurting him when cleaning the cut on his leg, but it’s really because I’m annoying him. Which I suppose is equally satisfying.

“I don’t understand why you can’t tell us. How are we supposed to get you back to your friend when we finally find this medicine, if you don’t tell me where to drive?”

“Correction. I’m the one taking the insulin to her. This could be so much easier if you let me take the car.” I press the bandage over his thigh and sit back on my heels in the dirt. He spreads out his legs on either side of me while I work. It’s odd, a man with so much pent up rage putting himself in such a vulnerable position to someone who would gladly hurt him to get away.

He looks at me with an eyebrow raised. “With us inside of it?”

“I mean, you could ride in the trunk. Like I did. It’s poetic.”

“That is not poetic.”

I shrug. “Whatever, then. I can bring the car back to you. Now, which direction do I go to get back to where you took me? I can figure out the rest from there.”

Griffin stands up and then reaches down and pulls me to my feet. He holds onto my arm a little longer before he lets me pull away. “You don’t even have what you’re looking for yet, and you’re already trying to leave.”

I point my finger into the air as though making a point. “Detours, man. One of these millions of detours you’ve thrown upon me has to have it somewhere. I’ll find it on my way back if I have to.”

“How long have you been searching?”

“To be honest, I’ve lost track of the days.” He raises an eyebrow, and I huff. “I left Zoey two days before you found me, but that’s only because there wasn’t anything in the surrounding area and I was getting desperate.”

Griffin steps in close enough that I have to crane my head back to look up at him. He’s a freaking tree. “You’re not going out on your own.”

“Because I’ve put you guys in enough danger already. Your lives were peaceful before you met me. I understand.” Lowering my head, I start to turn and walk away. There’s no way I can ask them for this. They’ve already risked so much. I mean, yeah, I didn’t ask them to do any of this stuff. They volunteered and forced their way into my mission, but still.

He stops me with a finger to my chin, tilting my head back again so I’m looking into his eyes.

The gentleness of his touch surprises me. It doesn’t match the emptiness in his eyes. “Because you’re not going out there on your own. If you don’t want to take your captors directly to your friend, then that’s fine. We’ll take you as far as you’ll let us, but you’re not traveling the whole way alone.”

Water collects behind my eyes at his words and I strain to not let them show. I swallow hard, not breaking eye contact, even when a fire starts low in my belly. “Deal. Can we leave right now?”

“First thing tomorrow, princess. We’ll help you continue your search, and then I’ll take you back to the place you where you tried to summon an entire city of rotters straight to you.”

I roll my eyes. “I told you. I was driving them away from where I wanted to go. That was a burner car.”

One corner of his mouth turns up in a smirk. “I know.”

“As riveting as this is to watch,” Max interrupts. “We get you to a place where you can help your friend. A place where you won’t tell us. Will you come back to us after?”

I give him a sad smile and can see the wall behind his eyes rise before hearing what I say next. “I can’t guarantee anything. The only thing I know is that I need to help my friend and each day that goes by is more time that’s running out. I have nothing planned past that.”

The wall behind his eyes hardens. “I see. Well, then, that’s fine. You can leave, and don’t worry about ever coming back.”

“Max—”

“I’m going to go get some more firewood.” Turning his back to us, he leaves the clearing. My eyes drift over to the already large pile of firewood next to all the little fires surrounding our little campsite.

“It’s not you. Well, not entirely. Something triggered him today that he needs to deal with, so he’s not handling it well. We should probably leave him be for the meantime.”

“Something those dregs said before he killed them?” I ask.

Griffin nods. “He’s been through some shit since the dead rose. It’s not my story to tell.”

“We’ve all been through some shit since the dead rose. Doesn’t give us an automatic pass to being a dick,” William says. He’s sitting so quietly by the fire that I don’t realize he’s still there until he speaks. He watches the place where Max disappeared into the trees, with a frown on his otherwise beautiful face.

“Tell me about this medicine,” Griffin says, bringing my attention back to him.

“My friend Zoey, she’s diabetic. She can do stuff to prolong her time in between needing insulin, but it’s only a temporary bandage. Especially with not always being able to choose what she eats each day. She needs it, and with the world the way it is right now…well, life-saving things like that are getting harder and harder to come by.” I look away and swallow the sob that threatens to erupt at the thought of what will happen if we can no longer find the insulin she needs.

“Doesn’t insulin need to stay cold? How are you going to travel with it?” Griffin asks.

“It’s fine if you take it out for a day. But with traveling, I’ll either need to keep it cold or travel fast.” I explain what Zoey told me when I first found out.

“She means a lot to you,” William says, his focus now on me.

“Yeah, she saved my life.” I can’t tell them about how she’s the reason I belong to a colony. We’re forbidden to talk about it. I would love to bring these guys there, to show them a better and safer place than a tent in the middle of dreg hideouts and rotter lands. But after the last time the colony allowed an outsider…I shake that thought away with a shudder. “We’ve been each other’s rocks ever since.”

“And the friend she has there with her while you’re gone? Are they the reason you can’t tell us the location?” Griffin asks, practically reading my thoughts.

“Yes. The last time we trusted an outsider, he turned on us. Stole all our supplies, including all the insulin in storage, and left the gate open for rotters to stumble in. Nearly got us killed. We only survived by pure luck. We don’t want to risk that ever happening again. It’s not only my life on the line. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care as much.”

I don’t know when William stood up, but he’s watching me intently with his pale blue eyes with their usual sorrow. “The last guy you let into your life?” His jaw clenches when I nod. “I’m really glad you’re alive, Emily.”

The sun is nearing the horizon, and Max still isn’t back. I look around, but neither Griffin nor William seem worried. Even Buddy doesn’t seem to care, napping by my feet with a full belly, his little doggy snores filling the silence.

My worry grows until I finally stand up, deciding to do something about it. William stands, too. “What are you up to?”

He’s going to follow me, I know it. They’ve both told me not to go after Max, that they’ll find him if they need to, that he needs this time to himself. But I can’t stand the nagging feeling that something could be wrong, and I don’t want them to keep me from checking to make sure. I’ve already lost friends and family. I’m not in the mood to lose any of them, too.

“I’m going to the bathroom. Give a lady some privacy?”

William nods and sits back on the ground in front of the fire, watching me over the flames. “Don’t wander off too far.”

I don’t need to walk far before I find him. I don’t know what I expected to find, but beating into the corpse of a dismembered rotter wasn’t on the list, though it’s not surprising. He still has so much energy, the way he swings around his morning star like it weighs less than paper, bloody entrails coating the ground. I take another step forward and my foot snaps a twig. Max looks up, his green eyes dark and no longer full of life.

He sees me at once and drags the morning star through the grass to wipe off the blood. “Like what you see, pet?”

“I don’t like seeing you this way.”

He stalks toward me, his movements slow and predatory, the look on his face sending a chill down my spine. I take a step back, and he takes two more. We repeat that dance until my back is against a tree, his chest pressing against mine, pinning me to the bark. “Care to elaborate?”

“You’re reckless.”

“Just having some fun. No one else will get hurt.” He raises a hand and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering when they slide down my jaw.

“You’re hurting your friends, putting them at risk. Especially with the stunt you pulled earlier when leaving the hideout. They won’t let you get yourself killed, but you might end up getting them killed.”

He laughs, the sound sending a chill down my spine. “That won’t happen, pet. They’ll leave if they need to, before there’s a chance of that happening. People always leave. It’s just how it is.”

“That’s not true.”

His eyes turn cold. “You’re leaving.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. He’s not wrong, and I hate that it’s true. Maybe if I can explain the situation to the director, Richard, I’ll be able to come back to them and bring them to the colony. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t tell any of them that, because it’s not a promise I can guarantee that I’ll be able to keep. I won’t lie to them about that, and I won’t lie to him about this. Max might hate me for leaving, but maybe he can forgive me if I come back.

When I still say nothing, Max gets closer, pressing against me so that the tree bark bites into my back, the thin material of my shirt barely enough to protect it. He raises his arm and rests it against the trunk above my head, his fingers dangling down to play with a few loose, wild strands of my hair that seem to stick out. My heart rate speeds up and I tilt my head, but he moves his to the side and licks the length of my cheek. “Mmm, you taste as delicious as you look. Tell me, pet, do you still want to run away?”

My breath comes out in a pant. “I…I don’t…” His hips press against me and I feel the hardness of his growing erection. Holy crap. That’s all him.

He uses his free hand to trail a line from my jaw, down my throat, to my collarbone. “You don’t…what, pet?”

I swallow hard. “I don’t know.” His hands press against the tree trunk on either side of my head with such roughness that pieces of bark fall to the ground at our feet. His gaze stares straight down into my soul and, for a moment, I think he can read every thought in my head.

Lowering my hand, I run my fingers down his abdomen, past the waistband of his pants to the bulge in the front, and I palm it. He leans in close with a shudder, his mouth less than an inch from mine. “Careful, now. You might make it so I won’t let you leave.”

My voice comes out in a whisper. “What would you do if I were to walk away right now?”

He closes the gap and claims my mouth, making me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. He thrusts into my grip and his hands tangle in my hair while he steals my breath and devours my mouth and, for a few blissful moments, I hope he follows through on his promise disguised as a threat.