Love and Decay (8 page)

Haley walked over and lifted her arms for a
hug, but quickly dropped them. “I’ll hug you as soon as you don’t
smell like death.” She smiled at me. “We are proud of you, Page.
Even if we give you a hard time, we’re amazed at the woman you’ve
become.”

Reagan walked over too and smiled at Haley.
“She did learn from the best after all.”

“Yes I did,” I conceded.

“I’ll talk to Hendrix,” Reagan offered. “See
if I can’t remind him that you’re all grown up.”

“And I’ll mention the same thing to Nelson.”
Haley stepped back toward the door. “You’re lucky Miller went with
you, though. They might not trust you yet, but they trust him to
keep you safe.”

Reagan waggled her eyebrows at me. “And look,
they were right.”

I rolled my eyes and shooed them out. “Miller
needed me as much as I needed him. You can definitely trust me on
that.”

They both burst into laughter at that. “Oh,
we do!” Reagan promised before shutting the door behind her.

I stripped down to nothing, keeping my
harness filled with weapons close by. Just in case. It wasn’t ideal
to fight a horde naked, but stranger things had happened.

Okay, maybe not. To date, I had yet to kill a
Feeder naked.

Or a naked Feeder for that matter.

I tugged my braid loose and leaned over the
tub to wash my hair first, using a small ration of soap from my
pack. Then I submerged myself in the bath and quickly scrubbed the
rest of me. I would have loved to soak in the warm water until my
fingers were pruny and my muscles relaxed, but I had been covered
in enough gore that the water turned disgusting quickly enough.

After my body was cleaned, I used the same
water- because there was nothing else, to work my clothes clean. I
tried to get the blood and filth from my shirt and I used a
washcloth left for me to work on my pants. But tomorrow I would
need to find clean water to make any real progress.

I left the clothes hanging over a table in
the corner of the room and dressed in the clean clothes I’d brought
with me. I combed through my hair and tied it into another braid
over my shoulder. Satisfied that I didn’t smell like death, I left
the room to find my family.

When I opened the door, I jumped, startled by
Miller’s long body leaned against the opposite wall.

“You scared me!” I gasped.

He didn’t seem to care. “Walk with me?”

“Why?”

He tilted his head toward the back of the
estate. “Because I said please.”

“You didn’t say please,” I pointed out.

He held out his hand. I took it.

I would always take it.

He pulled me along until we found a door that
led to a veranda off the side of the mansion. Ten years ago, the
floors had been shinier, the furniture had been pristine and this
veranda had been open. Today, everything was worn and aged, even if
it was still clean. The veranda had aged too, but it had changed
for the better.

Vines wrapped around the wood latticing and
created shade and shelter. At night, the millions of stars peeked
through the open spaces of the vines, twinkling down on us and
offering a minimum glow of light.

Miller let go of my hand and leaned against
the side of the house. His watchful gaze scanned the grounds beyond
our little hideaway in search of any potential threats.

“Tell me what happened here, Page.”

His abrupt demand pulled the moisture from my
mouth, leaving it as dry as the desert we’d just crossed.

“What?”

“I want to know. And you need to talk about
it.”

“I need to talk about it?” I couldn’t believe
his audacity.

His dark gaze moved to hold mine, captivate
me… transfix me. “If you tell me your secret…” He gulped. “I’ll
tell you one of mine.”

My entire being perked up at the offer.
“You’ll tell me something you decide or something I get to
ask?”

His lips pulled into a half smile. “Are you
bargaining with me?”

“I’m not giving this away for just anything.
I have no desire to know why you hate green beans or who your first
kiss was. I want something juicy.”

His half smile turned into a full one. “I
hate green beans because they’re disgusting.”

“That doesn’t count!”

“Fine, Page. I’ll let you ask one question
and I’ll be completely honest with you. But you have to tell me why
you hate this place first. What has you so spooked?”

I tore my gaze from his and made the same
search of the premises as he had. Hidden by the house and the vined
veranda, I couldn’t see the back part of the property from here.
But I remembered it. I could feel the steel bars trapping me
inside. I could feel the Zombie breath cascading over me. I could
smell them. Hear them.

Closing my eyes brought me right back to that
godawful place.

I opened my eyes, realizing I had closed
them… Miller waited for me to speak, but I could feel his
impatience, his visceral need to know.

“When I was here… all those years ago…” I
struggled to control my spinning emotions and find the courage that
usually came so easily. “He locked me in with the Feeders.
Apparently, that was an exercise he used to train his Zombie army.
Arturo would use children to test their obedience. He would send us
in to the middle of their cages and we were forced to stand very
still for hours. They would get close and sniff us or scream at us
because they were so frustrated they couldn’t eat us. And we
couldn’t move, not even an inch, because if we did, they would
attack.”

“How do you-”

“I saw it happen,” I told him. “I watched
kids my age or younger die because they couldn’t be still.”

“But you were still?”

“Still as stone.”

His gaze drifted over me affectionately.
“Always so brave.” I didn’t answer that because I hadn’t been
brave. I had been still because it was necessary. There was no
other reason. After a long minute of silence, he asked, “Page, how
come you never told anybody?” He ran a hand through his hair. “God,
you must have been terrified. I can’t imagine going through that…
and you were so young.”

“He’s dead,” I said flatly. “You and my
brothers killed him. There was no reason to share.”

He shook his head, but he seemed resigned. If
anybody knew about keeping childhood secrets, it was Miller. Maybe
he hadn’t been tortured by a Mexican overlord, but he had been
abused for the majority of his childhood by an equally evil
tyrant.

“I would have listened,” he mumbled.

I shrugged. “It wasn’t something I needed to
talk about. I wouldn’t ever be back here. It wasn’t like I
developed a phobia of Feeders. It’s just that… that these memories
are awful. I wish I could scrub them from my brain. I wish I could
just forget them completely. I survived, I shouldn’t have to
remember it. You know?”

“I know,” he whispered.

My heart ached at his confession, because he
did know. The pain behind his dark gaze promised he kept too many
traumatic secrets locked up.

“And you did survive,” Miller continued.
“You’re amazing, Page. Even back then you had the most beautiful
resolve. I think I’ve been in awe of you since the first time I saw
you.”

His compliment warmed me inside and out. I
wasn’t used to Miller sharing anything, let alone feelings he’d had
since we were kids.

“Is it my turn?” I whispered. “Do I get to
ask you a question now?”

He nodded once. His eyes found the ground as
he withdrew into himself. He was terrified of what I would say.

I had a thousand questions to ask him, but
when I opened my mouth, I surprised myself. “Why are you afraid to
go back to the Colony?”

His eyes snapped up to meet mine. He hadn’t
been expecting that question either. He didn’t answer right away.
In fact, he was silent for so long that I thought he had changed
his mind and wasn’t going to answer.

Finally, he took a deep breath and admitted,
“I’m afraid of what I’ll find.”

“You mean, Matthias? What he’s done?”

“It’s more than that,” he confessed. “It’s…
I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of the control he still has over me.
I’m afraid… I’m afraid that I’ll find out I’m exactly like
him.”

“You’re not.” I rushed to assure him before
he even finished his sentence. I closed the distance between us and
threw my arms around his neck like I’d wanted to do earlier. He
smelled so good, like leather and soap and something so intensely
him. I wanted to bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in.

Instead I spoke against his heart, even while
his hands dangled at his sides and he refused to hug me back.
“You’re nothing like him, Miller. You’re good. So good. You’re
strong and clever and loyal, but most of all you’re good. And he is
nothing but evil. You couldn’t be more different. He might be your
father, but he’s not your family. And you might look like him,
but you are not him
.” I pulled back and bravely met his
stormy gaze. My stomach flipped and I could barely say the words
when I promised him, “I swear it. I swear your fears are
unfounded.”

Nerves fluttered through me as I waited for
him to say something. I couldn’t stand his silence, but I was more
afraid of what he would say to me. I didn’t want him to argue with
me.

I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he told me
I was wrong.

I was as afraid of his truth in this moment
as I was for him.

But in the end, it was my fears that were
unfounded.

He didn’t speak at all.

His hands finally moved to touch me, cradling
my face in the gentlest caress. He stared into my eyes, telling me
more secrets that I couldn’t decipher. Except this time, they felt
like hope and healing and intimacy beyond words… maybe they were so
deep and intense that nothing could describe them.

I opened my mouth to say more, to assure him
more… but he silenced me by covering my mouth with his.

Instead of words, I gasped, breathing him in
and letting him take control of my mouth. His tongue swept over my
bottom lip and I trembled at the feel of him, at the taste of
him.

This wasn’t like when Santi kissed me and I
simply memorized the mechanics of it. With Santi it had been all
about exploration and sating curiosity. With Santi I had been
physically present, but mentally absent, taking in everything from
a clinical, exploratory perspective.

With Miller I didn’t think.

I
couldn’t
think.

He overwhelmed everything inside me, forcing
my body to react, my mouth to move. He erased coherent thought and
made my mind spin with feeling and emotion and something so
delicious I thought I would melt from it.

I got lost in the feeling of him, in the
subtle scrapes of his teeth over my swollen bottom lip, over the
tangling of our tongues and the feel of his body against mine. He
trailed his hands from my jaw to my back, wrapping strong arms
around me and holding me tightly to him. I leaned into him, unable
to support myself any longer.

This was too good.

Miller was too perfect.

I was afraid that he would stop, that he
would pull away and I would be left to figure out how to do simple
things like breathe on my own and stand up by myself.

But he didn’t do that. Instead he deepened
the kiss, worshipping my mouth with his. His soft sigh of, “Page,”
was nearly my undoing. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and I
willed them not to fall. The force of emotion that he brought out
of me with this one hungry kiss was embarrassing.

I couldn’t even process how deeply I had
wanted this.

And I hadn’t even known it until now.

In the softness of his lips and the greedy
strength of his embrace, I realized I had been waiting for this
moment for almost my entire life.

I might have been too young to realize it or
too immature to fathom what it was. But now I knew. Now I knew it
had been Miller. It had always been Miller.

Santi had been a weak substitute. Just a way
to pass the time and teach me enough basics so that I didn’t
embarrass myself with Miller.

And yet this was more than a cataclysmic
moment in my life; it was more than an event I had been counting
down to and an inevitable marker of fate. Even though it felt like
all of those things.

This was also a promise. This was soothing to
my soul. And a future I thought I had lost forever.

When Miller pulled away I started to lose
hope that I would have him like this. Even when I was too young to
understand what it was that I wanted, I had believed I had lost him
forever. And by losing Miller, I had lost the fate that was mine…
the destiny that belonged to me.

But I had that now. I’d found him.

He’d come back to me.

So I let him kiss me forever… for eternity. I
didn’t know how much time passed as we stood there in each other’s
arms, memorizing every delicious thing about the other. But I did
know that it was bliss.

Miller and I were created to kiss each
other.

We were made for each other.

After a long time, he pulled back and rested
his forehead against mine. I kept my eyes closed, afraid to open
them and face reality again.

In that moment we weren’t trapped in the
Zombie Apocalypse or on the brink of fighting a deadly war. We
weren’t facing internal demons or external enemies. We were just
us. Just a boy and girl. We were simply stolen kisses and
fluttering tummies and soaring hope. And I could have stayed in
that moment for the rest of my life.

Miller’s lips pressed against my forehead and
then against my temple. He trailed kisses down my cheek and across
my jaw until he reached my mouth again, where he kissed me once
more. It wasn’t a hot kiss or an enthusiastic one; he didn’t use
all the amazing tricks he had with his tongue or demand anything
more than our lips pressed against each other for a long, endless
moment.