Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) (9 page)

“Careful, those last two socks are
yours. I wouldn’t want you to have to wear them dirty.”

He flashed me an easy smile and
winked. “I’m so sure.”

I enjoyed teasing Tavis and liked that
we had so little history together…that he had so few memories of me, and that
there wasn’t much I had to live up to. I liked that I didn’t have to worry
about disappointing him.

“I’m just looking out for you,” I
told him.

“Like you care,” he quipped,
draping the socks over the line. I heard him swear, and when I looked over, he
was shaking off a sock he must’ve dropped. “Damn it.”

“That’s Jason’s…you better make
sure it’s clean.”

Tavis strolled closer, holding out
the soiled sock.

Shaking my head, I refused to take
it and handed him the scrub brush instead. “Be my guest.” I grinned. “I’ll
check to see if anything on the line is dry yet, and we can head back up to
camp.”

Tavis looked at me askance, then
crouched down to grab the soap and scrub brush. “I just caught us dinner,” he
grumbled.

“And,” I countered, “you just
dropped my brother’s sock in the dirt. In fact, you should probably make sure
it’s
extra
clean…you might want to scrub it a second time, just in case.”

“Again, such a comedian,” Tavis
chuckled.

I batted my eyelashes at him and
felt a splash of cold water on my face as a result. I blinked rapidly in
surprise, my mouth gaping. “Really?”

“Sorry, I guess my aim with water
is as good as my bow…but you
did
say you like the
crisp
water,”
he said in a sing-song voice and flitted his own lashes.

Smiling despite my annoyance, I
tsked and shook my head. “You’re the one who
doesn’t
like it…” I said,
splashing him back. Once…twice.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry!”
Tavis took a few hurried steps backward, chuckling and holding his palms out defensively
as he stumbled over the larger rocks scattered about. “I surrender. Just don’t
make me drop the bloody sock again.” He held the sock up, still laughing.

I nearly snorted in amusement at
Tavis’s sudden change in tune. “You’re pathetic. It’s just water.”

Hearing panting and the crunch of
twigs behind me, I turned around to find Cooper running happily toward the
water and Jake standing beside one of the pines, holding a piece of grass
between his fingertips.

My face heated, and I suddenly
felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. “Hey.”

Jake’s gaze traveled from me to
Tavis and back as he let the blade of grass fall to the ground. “Hey.”

“Just finishing up with the
laundry,” I said, wiping my wet hands on the front of my t-shirt. His eyes
fixed on mine as I closed the distance between us. I appreciated the fact that
the bright morning sun provided me the opportunity to study Jake’s features. His
nose was a little crooked, and long, honey-colored lashes fanned around his
amber eyes.
And although
I could hear Tavis
moving around behind me, my attention remained on Jake’s freshly shaven face.

“Your brother wants us to start
packing so we’re ready to go after breakfast,” Jake said.

I smiled. “Okay. I should get all
my crap together.”

I glanced back at Tavis, who was
already putting my canvas bag of wash stuff into the wheelbarrow, along with a
stack of the clothes that were already dry and folded on the boulder. “I’ll get
it,” Tavis offered.
He exchanged a quick
glance with Jake, then pushed the wheelbarrow toward camp.

Walking side by side, Jake and I
followed behind him.

“Your shirts are clean,” I said
awkwardly.

“Shadow’s fed,” he offered in
exchange, and treated me to a rare smile.

I grinned. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll get
to start riding him soon. He seems to be doing a little better.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Jake said. I
could tell he was trying to figure out what to say.

“So, what do two people talk about
when one knows nothing and the other knows everything?” I asked, wondering if
my nervous babble helped break the tension or only added to it.

Jake offered me a sympathetic
smile. “I don’t know everything.” After a brief hesitation, he added, “What do
you want to know?”

I thought about it for a moment,
wondering which, of all my questions, I wanted to ask Jake the most. “What were
you like before the Ending? I mean, what did you like to do for fun and that sort
of thing?”

He looked at me with an amused
grin.

“I know it’s probably not the
question you were expecting, but I figured I’d start with the basics…”

Leaning down, Jake pulled a piece
of wild grass from the field, and we continued walking. “For fun?” He shrugged.
“I traveled a lot, took a lot of odd jobs, and got into a lot of trouble
instead of going to college.” Jake paused, and I could feel a sudden sadness
filling him. “I came back when Gabe’s sister passed away from leukemia and
decided it was time to get my act together. I needed to be there for Becca.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I
said. “At least you still have Becca and Gabe, I guess…” I’d seen enough of
Gabe’s memories to know that was sort of a sticky situation.

Jake nodded, and I could tell he
was
grateful. “I just wish I hadn’t taken so long to do the right thing. I
finally found a good, steady job as a mechanic, bought a house, and figured out
how to stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah? That’s good.” I had a hard
time picturing Jake getting into trouble, but then, I had no idea what
I
even did before the Ending. “And how was it that you managed to stay out of
trouble?”

“Reading…a lot.”

“Oh…”

He gave me a thoughtful, sidelong
glance. “‘Oh?’” He smiled. “What were you expecting?”

“I’m not sure, I just didn’t
picture you as a reader, I guess.”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t picture
you as a gallery assistant.”

“A gallery assistant? I can’t
really picture it either.” We ambled along, Tavis a dozen yards ahead of us,
rolling the wheelbarrow into camp, and Cooper exploring the sparse woods nearby.

“I wish you could ask me a
question, or rather, that I could answer one,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry
you have to tell me all of this again.”

“Actually, we’ve never really
talked about this sort of stuff before.”

“No? But I thought…”

Jake shrugged. “Pasts don’t matter
so much when your whole world is ripped away from you. We just weren’t like
that…we didn’t dwell on the past.”

It was hard to miss the longing in
his voice. “Oh,” I said.

“Sorry, that probably wasn’t very
helpful.”

Since he was closer to me than
usual, I had an easier time feeling his emotions. I knew he was sad and hopeful
and confused, which I understood and tried not to hold against him. I felt the
same way.

“Maybe one day you can tell me
more about myself?” I joked, realizing how idiotic that sounded. Too bad it was
true.

“Or, maybe…” He stopped walking,
and I automatically stopped as well. “Maybe we can just start over.”

I faced him and stared into his
eyes, trying to see the truth, not just feel it. “Do you want to?” I was
picking up mixed signals from him, and I wasn’t really sure what my
own
opinion was.

His expression turned skeptical
and he searched my eyes for answers I didn’t even know the questions to. “Do
you
want to?”

I thought about the dreams I kept
having and how unsettling they were—how exciting and frightening and…confusing.
I nodded once, nervous about what starting over entailed. Then in a bout of
self-consciousness, I looked down at my feet. I didn’t want him to see the
blush caused by the thought of doing all the things we’d done in my dreams.

“You don’t seem sure,” he said,
narrowing his eyes when I glanced back up at him.

“No…I mean, I am.”
I think.

“Is it Tavis?” The question seemed
to come out of nowhere. “You guys get along well. I’m not sure—”

I shook my head. “It’s not him,
not really.” Jake eyed me as I continued, “We get along great, don’t get me
wrong. It’s easy being around him. He’s easy to talk to, and there’s no history
to navigate, there’s no pressure…” Peering up at Jake, I tried to act more
certain than I was, but failed miserably. “Who I used to be…she’s just a lot to
live up to,” I admitted.

Jake’s eyes lingered on mine
before he scanned the small patch of field separating us from the others. “I
don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me,” he finally said.

I smiled up at him. “I know, and I
don’t, I just…” I had no idea what I was trying to say to him. “Things aren’t
complicated with him.”

I couldn’t help but feel the
slight sting my words caused Jake, but I had to tell him the truth, if for no
other reason than to remind us both that whatever had been between us before
was gone now. It was going to be a lot of hard work to get back a semblance of
what we once had—hard work I wasn’t willing to turn my nose up at, but hard
work I also wasn’t sure either of us was ready for.

But it didn’t mean we couldn’t
try.

8

DANI

MARCH 29, 1AE

Cahone, Colorado

It was late
afternoon, and I was sitting beside our burgeoning campfire, staring into the
flames and generally despising myself while I built the fire up for Sarah. I
prodded the burning logs with a stick to rearrange them before adding a few
more hunks of freshly gathered firewood.

I was becoming a
horrible person, possibly the worst person I’d ever met. Okay, maybe not the
worst
person—I was no Mandy, no General Herodson, no Clara, no Dr. Wesley—but
lately, I’d felt like I was on my way. I certainly wasn’t a
good
person,
not anymore. I was a horrible friend, a deceiving girlfriend, and a
child-killer. But of my mounting flaws, it was all of the lying that had
started to erode my soul.

I hadn’t been
lying because I enjoyed the taste of deceit on my tongue, or because I felt a
thrill hurting others; I’d been lying to protect the people I loved…to protect
myself. But the problem with telling so many lies was this: it’s so easy for
one little lie to spawn a dozen more, which in turn birth their own litters of
little lies. And when the first lie, lie zero, is a whopper, the horde of
untruths and not-saids grows much,
much
faster. My core lie was as big
as they get.

I was lying to
Jason about his mom, Dr. Wesley. After Camille’s revelation, I’d made a promise
to myself to never tell him that she was alive and relatively well—considering—and
that she was living in the Colony, loving companion to the man who’d
orchestrated the destruction of human civilization. I would never tell him that
I knew why she left him, Zoe, and their dad over twenty years ago, that General
Herodson had threatened to kill her children if she didn’t give him everything
he wanted, do every single thing he requested of her, and that she’d come to
love her captor. I would never tell him that she was the person who created the
virus that killed almost everyone, including their dad.

And I would never
show him the letter she’d written, the one addressed to him and Zoe that
supposedly explained everything; it was stuffed in the bottom of my left
saddlebag in the manila envelope with the rest of the garbage she’d given to
Zoe, directly beneath my emergency stash of tampons. Jason would never look
there.

Maybe if that was
the only lie—or
set
of lies—I was maintaining, I would’ve been able to
deal with the guilt. But there were the other lies, ones that had nothing to do
with Dr. Wesley. They, too, were lies of omission. I’d yet to tell Jason that I
kissed two men while I was in the Colony, one to steal his gun and keys, and
one—Gabe—simply because I wanted to. For some reason, “the General took control
of my mind and made me do it,” sounded like the lamest possible excuse,
regardless of it being the absolute truth. There was definitely a reason I was
avoiding Gabe.
Awkward…

On the other side
of the fire, Sarah was sitting at the folding table, staying warm while she
chopped vegetables for the rabbit stew that was going to be tonight’s fresh
offering.

I poked the
burning logs again, simply for the sake of stabbing something with the stick. Letting
out a heavy breath, I looked around camp.

The tents were
set up in a rough ring around the fire, the carts and wagon in a half-circle on
one side, blocking some of the dusty wind, and the horses munching on whatever
roughage they could find in the sparse fields of wild grasses on either side of
the tiny creek we’d plopped down beside. Everyone was busy—down in the creek’s
ravine washing clothes or dishes, filtering safe drinking water, gathering
firewood, or hunting and foraging to bulk up our fast-depleting food supply.

“I still can’t
get over the fact that we have a covered wagon—a legitimate covered wagon,”
Sarah said. “I feel like a pioneer woman every time I climb up onto the thing!”
She shook her head, her curly brown ponytail bobbing.

Biggs strolled
over to the campfire, carrying a fresh load of firewood.
“Hey, babe!” He quickened his step as he neared,
stopping by Sarah’s prep table to drop a quick kiss on her cheek on his way to
the dwindling pile of sticks and branches beside the fire. He offered me a nod as
he set down his burden, then returned to Sarah. His hand darted out, and he
snagged a carrot nugget the size of my thumb off of Sarah’s chopping board.

“Hey! You thief!”
Sarah laughed, making a shooing motion.

Chuckling while
he crunched, Biggs moved around the table to stand behind her. He wrapped his
arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder and his palms on her belly.
“How’s the little guy today?”

“
She
is
fine. Kicking a bit more, but Harper said that was normal…or as normal as we
can say…” Doubt weaved through Sarah’s words, despite what I figured was a
valiant effort to remain positive.

Biggs kissed her
neck, then started murmuring reassurances against her skin.

I felt like a
voyeur, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them, from such a genuine display
of affection…of love. A yearning ache sprouted in my chest, sending out
tendrils that spread envy and loneliness throughout my body. Before I’d been
abducted by the Colony, Jason had shown just as much affection toward me as
these parents-to-be, but after…with each passing day, I could feel him drift
further away from me. Soon, I’d be just another member of the group to him.
Just another survivor.

“Hey,” someone
whispered near my ear, and I started. I felt hands on my shoulders and looked
back to find Ky studying me, his eyes pinched with concern and possibly a
little bit of pain. “It’s just me,” he said as he crouched beside me, partially
blocking my view of the oblivious, adorable couple. “Thought you heard me
coming.”

I met his eyes,
then looked into the flames and shook my head. “Guess I zoned out.”

There was a long
stretch of silence between us. Eventually, Ky took a deep breath. “You feel
like shit.”

I snorted quietly
and scrubbed my good hand over my face before meeting his eyes again. “Listen,
Ky—I’m a mess…I know it, and I’m sorry, I really am, and I know it’s not easy
for you when I’m all crazy like this, and I really appreciate whatever
insightful words you’re planning on sharing,” I said in a rush. “But this isn’t
one of those times when talking about my feelings is going to make all the bad
ones disappear, so…”

He turned his face to the fire, staring into the flames like
they might hold some hidden secret. “I like you, D. I like you a lot, you know
that.” He shot me a sideways glance, then returned to staring into the
crackling flames. “But if you don’t figure out a way to deal with whatever’s
eating at you, and I mean this in the least dicky way possible, I’m not going
to be able to be around you
at all
.”

I exhaled heavily.
Honestly, I wasn’t surprised.

“You’re my
friend, D, and in case you haven’t noticed, those are”—he squinted—“a little
hard to come by these days. I don’t want to cut you out of my life…”

“I—I—” I shook my
head. “I’m sorry, Ky.” Laughing bitterly, I sent out a halfhearted wish for the
universe to send someone like Clara my way, someone who could erase certain unwanted
memories and droplets of corrosive knowledge from my mind.

Ky flashed a weak
version of his usual mischievous grin. “And now for those insightful words you
mentioned…” Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and held his
hands out to the flames. “Sometimes the people who seem the strongest, who seem
the most in control of their shit…sometimes they
have
to be that way on
the outside because what’s inside them is so wild, so extreme, so far beyond
too much, that if it was ever unleashed, they’d never be in control again.”

I swallowed hard,
cleared my throat, and poked the burning logs…again. “I’m assuming you’re
talking about Jason…”

Ky nodded.

“So what are you
saying? That Jason’s dealing with too much on the inside, and that’s making him
push everyone away?”

“He’s not pushing
everyone
away.”

“Oh,” I said.
“Right. Just me. Awesome…” A chilling thought gave rise to a wash of goose
bumps. Did that mean that Jason knew about the lies? Had Zoe told him? Or had
Mase or Camille let it slip?

Ky lifted one
shoulder, offering me a small smile.

“How do you know
any of this? Or…have you felt something from him?”

Ky laughed dryly.
“Hell no. He keeps me cut off from feeling his shit permanently. And thank God,
’cause I have a feeling that whatever’s going on inside him right now…well,
let’s just say I wouldn’t enjoy having a front-row seat on
that
joyride.
I’ve got enough to deal with from you, Zoe, and Jake…not to mention everyone
else.”

This time when he
looked at me, his dark brown eyes were so focused and intense that I held my
breath. “But I’ve been friends with Jason for over a decade, and I know him
well enough to tell when he’s working through something. And right now, he’s
working through something big, and I
know
it has to do with you, because
you’re the only woman—the only
person
—who’s ever gotten so deep under
his skin.”

He clapped a hand
on my knee. “So, since the only thing that
ever
seems to unplug your
emotionally constipated relationship is to talk things out and then run off and
do whatever it is you crazy kids do, I’d suggest you sit down for a chat as
soon as possible. If not for my sake, at least fix this for Zoe, because she
doesn’t seem to be able to block
anything
, and you know the poor girl’s
got to be drowning under the weight of all these crazy emotions, hers included.”

All I could do
for five breaths, ten breaths, was stare at Ky. He was right. He was so very,
very
right. Saying nothing, I looked across the fire at the table where Sarah had
been sitting, but both she and Biggs were gone.

Ky gave my knee a
squeeze before standing. “Look…I saw him and Sanchez on the other side of the
carts, inventorying ammo or some shit like that. You should take the evening
off, talk to him, fix whatever’s wrong, or
don’t
fix it, I don’t care…just
do something, ’cause this headache is killing me.”

Internally, I
resisted, and that made me realize how big of a baby I was being. Ky was right;
Jason and I needed to talk. And my resistance to do just that made me
reevaluate some of my assumptions about what was happening to our relationship.
Maybe Jason wasn’t the only one pulling away, building walls; maybe I was doing
it, too. Maybe it was the secrets…leeching the vitality out of our relationship.
Maybe Jason could feel the strain just as much as I could. Maybe he thought my
feelings had changed, just like I thought his had. So many maybes…

There was only
one way to know for sure, only one way to fix things. I stood, patted Ky’s arm,
and said, “Thanks…really.” Then I started across camp toward the carts.

Jason and Sanchez
weren’t inventorying ammo. They weren’t doing
anything
,
so far as I could tell. They were sitting on a fallen log,
apparently deep in conversation. Sanchez had one of her legs pulled up and her
chin popped on her knee, facing Jason, while he had his elbow planted on his thigh
and was resting the side of his face in his hand.

I paused, between
the front of the wagon and the back of one of the carts, suddenly not so sure
of myself. Maybe all of my maybes had been worthless. Maybe we were already
done, and he was moving on. Maybe I was the most pathetic woman in the world.

Sanchez noticed
me first, then looked at Jason and nodded in my direction. When Jason
straightened, when his eyes met mine, I had a total deer-in-the-headlights
moment. My heart pounded, and blood whooshed in my ears with each beat. I
couldn’t blink.

“I should get
back to…that thing,” Sanchez said as she stood. She offered me a tight-lipped
smile and strode off toward the creek.

Jason stared at
me across the dozen or so yards separating us. For several seconds, that was
all he did. Stare. Watch. Assess. Until, placing his hands on his knees, he
stood.

I gulped. I
hadn’t been so ridiculously anxious—so uncomfortably aware of my own
awkwardness—around him since I’d been in middle school. Taking a deep breath, I
took a step toward him, then another. And another. I forced myself to keep my
eyes on his face, to keep moving.

Jason studied me
as I approached, his expression giving no indication of his thoughts or mood,
and I couldn’t help but wonder if Ky had been right. Was Jason so closed off,
so controlled, because he felt too much and was, for whatever reason, afraid of
the intensity of his own emotions?

I stopped a few
feet in front of Jason. The skin around his eyes tightened the barest amount.

After a
fortifying deep breath, I raised my hand, reaching out to brush my fingertips
over the exposed skin of his forearm. I stopped short of touching him.
When
was the last time we even touched?
I thought it might have been the
previous afternoon, when my Ability flared back to life, and my eyebrows drew
together. That we’d gone a whole day without physical contact seemed impossible.