Lock smirked.
“That sounds about right for you.”
“And it took the dead rising and the complete collapse of civilization for me to figure out I’d been in love with her the entire time.”
Lock let out a low chuckle.
“Yeah,” he said. “Priorities have a way of sorting themselves out when the world narrows down.”
“Apparently.”
He crouched down then and finally popped open the medical kit. Inside—exactly what you’d expect from Lock: military neat. Gauze, tape, antiseptic, a compression wrap—everything lined up in precise rows.
He grabbed my ankle and started peeling the makeshift wrap off.
I winced.
“Jesus,” he muttered, studying the swelling.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a solid sprain. Let me guess, got it doing something crazy?”
“Yeah, I jumped off an aquarium and rode a pipe sixty feet down, but I had worse.”
He whistled low.
“Lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
While he wrapped the ankle properly—firm, practiced hands that had done this a hundred times on worse injuries in worse places—I studied him.
He looked older, more gray threaded through the beard, more lines carved around his eyes. The kind of aging that didn’t come from years alone. Grief had done this, carved him down and rebuilt him leaner, harder, with less room for anything soft.
“How’d you get here?” I asked.
He finished tightening the wrap and leaned back on his heels.
“Stole a sailboat in South Carolina.”
I blinked.
“You what?”
He shrugged as if he’d just described picking up groceries.
“Things went sideways fast. I’d been down there visiting a buddy from my unit.”
“And you just… took someone’s boat?”
“Owner had already turned,” he said flatly. “Figured he’d lost his claim.”
“Jesus.”
Lock smirked faintly.
“Hauled ass north for three days straight.”
“In a sailboat.”