My hand slid over the flare of her hip, and she made a small, involuntary sound, like my touch reached something she’d been guarding. She curled into me, tucking her head beneath my chin for a long breath, then turned her face up and sought my mouth again.
This kiss moved differently. Slowly, it tasted of salt and warmth and an essence that belonged only to her.
I broke it gently, rested my forehead against hers, as our breaths mingled in the narrow space between us.
“Sloane.”
“Hmm?”
“What are we doing?” The words came out barely audible, rough with something I couldn’t name. I pulled back to look at her, my fingers stilling on her skin. “I mean… what is this? What are we?”
Her eyes, soft and unguarded a moment before, flickered with vulnerability. She searched my face, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. The whole fragile silence of the night hung suspended on whatever she said next.
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead, her fingertips rose to my jaw, tracing the line, moved to my lips, touching them lightly, as if committing the shape to memory, and then she guided my face back down to hers and placed a kiss against my mouth so tender it made my chest ache.
“We’re figuring it out,” she whispered against my lips, her voice steady now, surer than anything she’d said all night. “Together. That’s what we’re doing.”
She drew me back into her, back into the warmth of tangled limbs and the quiet vibrations of a building keeping us alive in the middle of a dead world.
I understood.
We weren’t naming it tonight. We weren’t pinning it down with a word or a promise neither of us could guarantee we’d live long enough to keep. We existed inside the question—and for now, right now, that carried more weight than any answer could.
Her breathing evened out against my chest, deep and slow. I held her close and closed my eyes.
The fear hadn’t gone anywhere, still present in the dark corners and in the parking lot full of the dead. But tonight, it wouldn’t win; I wouldn’t let it.
Twenty Six
Sloane
Morning crept in slowly, and a thin strip of pale orange light stretched along the horizon beyond the glass roof panels, turning the dark water in the tanks a faint blue-gray. The place carried the faint smell of saltwater mixed with last night’s garlic.
I padded down the hallway toward the cafeteria, still half asleep, hair pulled into a messy knot on top of my head.
Coffee—nothing else mattered—but as I stepped through the doorway, I stopped short.
Ethan sat at one of the cafeteria tables with a can of Coke in his hand; the kid nearly launched out of his chair.
“Jesus!” he blurted, the can slipping in his grip before he caught it.
I raised both hands. “Whoa—sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
He blinked hard, cheeks flushing. “Well, you know—” He let out a shaky laugh. “Living dead walking around out there. Keeps you on edge.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and took another long sip as if the Coke might settle his nerves.
I moved to the coffeepot and started filling it, then put it on the stove. “Where’s your dad?”
“Upstairs somewhere,” Ethan said. “He went with Callan.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Doing what?”
Ethan shrugged. “Something about the marina. Escape routes, I think.”
That sounded exactly like Callan, always three steps ahead, already solving a problem the rest of us hadn’t named yet.