I didn’t kiss him back, but I didn’t push away either. While one side of my brain screamed at me to run, the other side shattered at the brokenness of him, from the utter intensity of emotion that he put into this kiss.
Eventually, he pulled back and looked down at me. His eyes were soft and exposed but shrewd at the same time, as if he realized for the first time that I hadn’t been about to confess my undying love to him. This was Kane at his most raw. He was completely helpless to me in this moment. I knew I held all the power and that a stronger person would crush him and use it to their advantage.
But I could not.
And it had nothing to do with the hundred emotions fighting each other in my head. This had to do with being a decent person despite my circumstances… despite what everything else had turned into around me.
We didn’t speak. There were not words adequate from either of us to follow up the outpouring of Kane’s soul.
Because that was exactly what it had been.
I took a step back, still unable to make sense of anything going on in my head or flickering across Kane’s face. He watched me for another long minute and then reached for the door. His hand slid over my waist to take it and his touch was once again smooth and seductive.
Clearly, whatever he saw on my face was not enough to shut him down for good.
That should have scared me more than it did.
He pulled on the door before I could step out of the way and he bumped me toward him once again. Without warning, he leaned down and kissed my lips one last time. It was a chaste, quick kiss but it was enough to prove his point.
“I know what that was, Reagan. And I also know that if I took one more minute with you, that you would be mine,” he promised me. “But then you would blame everything else but the truth. So next time we kiss, you can be the one to start it.”
Mortified by his suggestion, I squeezed back into the room and pushed the door closed behind me. He must have locked the door but my ears started rushing with sound that I knew had to be coming from my spinning emotions. They were a tornado inside my head and it was all I could hear.
I dove under my covers and curled into a ball.
The tears came next. Frustration. Anger. Hopelessness. Insecurity. Confusion. Self-loathing. Homesickness. Hendrix-sickness.
I was in an impossible situation with an enigma of a man. I couldn’t make sense of anything and I had a feeling that this was exactly what Kane wanted. He wanted me off-balanced like this. He wanted me to crumble under the weight of his pressure. He wanted me to forget the things in my life that were true and good and pure and get wrapped up in the murkiness of his craziness.
But I would not let that happen.
I would not become his possession.
I closed my eyes and imagined every sweet moment between Hendrix and me. I pictured him washing my hair in the river all those months ago. I pictured him cleaning my cuts and the glass out of my hands the first time I met him. I pictured him holding me late at night and kissing me first thing in the morning. I pictured his familiar body and the ridges and dips of his muscle that I had memorized in the most secret parts of me. I pictured his promises of a better future, his faith in me as a fighter and survivor and his never-ending love for me.
He had always been fighting for me, since the day he met me and I knew he would not give up now.
Now I would fight for him, too.
And I would trust him to come for me.
I wouldn’t be here with Kane forever.
I had to believe that I would get out of this mess soon… that I would get Page out of this mess soon.
And when that day came, Kane would finally meet his end. What he had done to me was unforgivable. Hendrix would end him or I would. But either way, these were his final days.
Episode Six
Chapter One
862 days after initial infection
Page giggled and pointed at me. “Your butt landed first!”
“No way,” I argued. “That time I was completely flat. I felt it!”
She shook her head. “Nu-uh! Nothing but butt!”
I joined her infectious laughter. “Nothing but butt?” I poked her in the side. “Fine, you try it.”
Her face grew serious and she lifted her chin. “No problem!”
I saw her competitiveness come to life and couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, good grief. You are definitely a Parker.”
She grinned at me and then climbed up to the arm of the couch. She put her feet together and steadied out so that she didn’t wobble and fall before it was time. Her arms crossed over her chest and then she closed her eyes and fell back dramatically onto the couch. The cushions sagged beneath her before bouncing her wildly.
She opened her eyes and looked up at me through a curtain of wild hair. “Well? Did I fall back completely straight?”
I shook my head, pretending to be disappointed. “Not even close. Sorry, Babe.”
“Nothing but butt?” she smiled at me.
“Definitely, nothing but butt.”
She pulled herself up and scrambled to the couch arm again. We had been playing this game for at least an hour but neither of us was able to fall straight back.
It was oddly frustrating in that way when you have nothing else to think about or do and you obsess over the smallest things just before you have a nervous breakdown and lose your mind completely.
Well, that was where I was standing at the moment.
I really hoped Page’s mental state was a little more intact than mine.
I had never been more bored in my entire life. I suspected that Kane’s true intentions were more malicious than he originally let on.
He planned to kill me.
Death by staring at wood-paneled walls until my brain spontaneously exploded.
He was a criminal mastermind.
Page fell back and bounced right off the couch. Her elbow hit the coffee table on the way and she howled in pain.
I dropped down to my knees and tried not to laugh. “Are you alright?”
She groaned. “No, I think I died.”
This time I did laugh. “You didn’t die. Sorry, Sweets.”
She opened her eyes and laughed. “Darn.”
I pushed her knee playfully. “Yeah, right! If you go, it’s only a matter of days before I join you!” Her pretty brow line furrowed in confusion, so I helped her out. “Your brothers would murder me if something happened to you!”
She laughed some more and relaxed back onto the hardwood floor. “They love us a lot, don’t they?”
My heart felt melty and sticky in my chest and tears pooled along my lower lashes. “Yes, they do.”
The door to the outside opened and Kane walked inside. His body was strapped with a gun across his back, multiple knives in a belt around his waist and another AK in his hands. He looked like Rambo.
If Rambo had poor eyesight and stupidly sexy glasses.
He brought a plethora of smells with him; Zombie decay and smoke from a recent fire were the strongest, but I imagined sweat mingled with dead leaves and blood added to his end-of-the-world-cologne. His skin was painted with almost-black blood and his too-long hair was slick with sweat.
“Wouldn’t your dad be proud,” I taunted him viciously. “You finally killed something.”
His face split into a wide grin. “She’s bitter today.”
I pulled myself up and crossed my arms, so ready for this battle. “I haven’t done an official study on this, so don’t quote me, but recent research shows that when a female is kidnapped and held against her will she becomes very bitter. And hateful. And angry. And vengeful. And-”
“I get the picture,” he interrupted. He turned around and did up all the latches on the door, then walked through the living room to the kitchen.
I followed him. It was hard to love an ugly person, and I had decided somewhere in the last forty-eight hours that I could be as ugly as I needed to be for Kane’s obsession to fizzle out.
The last two years had been excruciatingly painful for me. I’d fought more obstacles and enemies than I knew were humanly possible to face and still maintain your sanity.
Maybe I didn’t even have that. Maybe I was just as crazy as Kane.
But as hard as I’d struggled to keep my soundness of mind, I’d fought equally hard to keep my humanity. Daily I battled bitterness, despair and anger. I didn’t have the luxury for the five stages of grief and when my parents died unfairly and unexpectedly, I’d been forced to move on and focus on the future. They weren’t my only heartache along the way either. With each new horror, with each new difficulty and nightmarish situation, I’d held onto my soul with every ounce of strength I could muster.
That didn’t mean those negative feelings didn’t stay with me, lurking just beneath the façade of goodness I kept up for those I loved.
Those feelings were there, burning with the heat of the sun, boiling lava building inside of me, an emotional fire so hot it would turn anything it touched to ash.
If Kane wanted to play these games, he could have it all.
He could have the worst of me.
Then we would see how determined he was to go through the work to keep me.
He walked to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of water. “Thirsty?” He held one out to me and quirked a brow.
I shook my head and he shrugged. Untwisting the cap, he put the bottle to his lips and downed the entire contents in one long pull. His throat worked up and down as he swallowed gulp after gulp. A stray drop of water trickled from the corner of his mouth and ran down his now-clean-shaven face and along the bumps of his angled neck.
He sucked in a big breath of air when the bottle turned empty and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in a final display of savagery.
It was the most barbaric I had ever seen him behave.
Which seemed strange at first. He abducted me. Twice. We had fought physically, and I’d seen him kill.
Yet still, he wasn’t this wild or uninhibited. He was collected. He was controlled.
This gesture seemed so out of character for him that I actually lost the entire speech I had prepared.
“My mom will start dinner soon,” he told me. Apparently, he didn’t find it strange that I was standing in the middle of the kitchen watching him drink water.
“I’m not helping her,” I declared.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Are you really so helpless that you need a woman around at all times to care for your most basic needs?”
He let out a bark of laughter and turned so that I could have his full attention. “Reagan, I can take care of myself. I can even take care of you, if you’d let me. But this situation is… complicated. And I benefit from having an extra pair of hands around. Imagine if it were just the three of us? Imagine if I had to cook dinner and keep an eye on Page and you? My mom is here to do the simple tasks so that I can give you the attention you deserve.”
Unable to think of any argument against his cold logic, I said, “Hendrix is going to kill you.”
He smiled at me. “You like to remind me of that. But Hendrix has to find me first.”
“Hendrix is with Miller and Tyler,” I reminded him. “This is your family’s hunting cabin. It’s only a matter of time.”
He walked toward me and put two hands on my shoulders, sliding them up until they cupped the nape of my neck and he could stare down into my eyes with all the gravity in the world. “Tyler hasn’t been up here since she was a little girl, Reagan. And the last time Miller was here, he was seven. That was years ago. He was just a kid. Are you really counting on them to save you?”
I struggled to swallow. “You can’t keep us here forever.”
“I’ll tell you this one more time so that you understand; I don’t intend to keep you here forever.”
“What’s your goal then?” My voice was a desperate plea.
He bent forward and kissed my forehead. His lips savored my skin and his entire body relaxed at the connection between us. He pulled back and smiled at me, completely unfazed by my piss-poor attitude. “I smell bad. I’m probably going to shower. The goal is to stop smelling bad.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You do smell bad.”
“There were five of them out there.” He sighed and stepped away from me. “They weren’t all together thankfully, but that was more than there were yesterday.”
“Kane, what’s the plan if they come at us in-horde?”
He looked back at me and with enough truth that I actually believed him, he said, “I have a plan, Reagan. You might not trust me. But you should know that I don’t want to die any more than you do. I’ve thought this through very carefully.”
I snorted. “I can see that.”
I stepped back and looked over at Page who was coloring on the coffee table in a notebook with pens and highlighters that were stashed in one of the bedrooms. She looked up at me and gave a small wave. I waved back and tried to look happy and tried to reassure her that everything was fine.
That we were fine.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Busy.”
I rolled my eyes. Linley had this habit of disappearing for hours at a time. Kane never announced her leave or her return. She came in and left whenever she pleased. But if Kane needed her, then she was immediately available.
I couldn’t find a pattern to her absences. I thought if she was on a schedule of some kind that I could find a way to use it to my advantage, but so far there was no rhyme or reason to her madness.
The same could be said about Kane. When he came into the house, he turned and immediately locked everything up. But when he had left for “patrol,” he hadn’t bothered to lock up behind him. I hadn’t made a move to escape earlier because I had seen the two Feeders that prompted him to go out there to begin with. They stumbled into the clearing in front of the house and I knew that now was not the time to run off into the woods with Page in tow and completely unarmed.
It had been like this for two full days.
I had to bide my time and figure out a way to get out of here that wouldn’t put us directly in the middle of who-knew-how-many Zombies. Besides, the best time to get away would be in the middle of the night, but that would be prime feeding time for them and I didn’t have a flashlight, a compass or even a direction to run for.
I let out a sigh of frustration. “Page and I are going crazy here. We need something to do. I’m going to die of boredom if you don’t find a way to entertain me.”
He turned to stare out the window. “Have you always been this uptight? Think of this like a vacation.”
“I’m always uptight when I’m held prisoner against my will. I’m just funny like that.”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”
I practically choked on my tongue. “Would you? Would you let it go if someone had you locked up?”
He looked at me over his shoulder, his gray eyes glittering with something secret. “Depends on who had the key?”
I pursed my lips and shook my head at him. “This is going to get old fast. The angsty banter just is not doing it for me. I think-”
He didn’t stick around to listen to me.
A Feeder appeared in front of the window over the kitchen sink and Kane took off to deal with it. He pushed past me and sprinted out the front door. I heard him struggle to unclick all the locks, but eventually the door whooshed open and I heard his heavy footsteps pound across the porch.
I watched from the kitchen window as he rounded the house and dealt with the Feeder. I couldn’t remember another time in the last two years where I’d had the opportunity to simply observe someone kill a Feeder without being emotionally invested or part of the act.
The window and house kept me entombed in relative safety and I honestly did not have a feeling for Kane’s safety. If I wanted to get psychoanalytical on myself, I could be honest and say that I didn’t have to struggle whether to worry about Kane
’s life or not because I never believed he was in danger.
The thought that something else would end Kane besides Hendrix or me couldn’t even fit into my head. I just… I just would not believe that he would get off lucky with death-by-Zombie.
In fact, I didn’t even want to be the one to kill him anymore. I was too much of a girl about it. I knew I would struggle with my compassion all the way through, or I wouldn’t be able to stomach the cruelty I wished him.
Hendrix wouldn’t have those same issues.
He’d be a man about it.
He would get the job done as efficiently or, er, non-efficiently as possible.
Kane fired at the Feeder who had only just started to turn at the sound of human footsteps. This Feeder was relatively new, I thought. The clothes were worn and dirty, but with normal wear and tear that suggested care and washing in recent history.
The Zombies that had been around for a while hadn’t changed since they had been turned. Their clothes were nothing but rags by now, full of holes, bloody and sticky with their festering wounds and pussing skin.
This Feeder had light red eyes and the clothes were carefully intact. That meant he wasn’t as fast gone as he could be. His movements were still jerking and stilted as his brain learned to function without true cognitive-alertness.
Kane popped off two shots right as he turned. The first bullet hit the Zombie in the shoulder and the second in the chin. Blood, bone and flesh splattered the window and side of the house. The Feeder was forced back with the impact of the bullets but didn’t go down.
Kane fired again, but nothing happened.
His gun was empty.
I watched with detached curiosity as Kane pulled a knife from his belt and leapt at the resilient undead. He took steps like he was going in for a layup and raised his arm above his head. His momentum carried him the last few feet and he brought his knife down, straight into the sweet spot between the Feeder’s eyes.
The Feeder had reached out to grab Kane and even while every ounce of life drained from his prematurely decomposing body, his hands crushed Kane’s torso in his super-strong, inhuman grip. Kane flinched from the acute pain and as the Feeder dropped away, I saw the claw marks and open gashes the sickly, yellowed nails left as they dragged down Kane’s back.