Dani stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. The skin of her feet was still riddled with blisters, but the fire seemed to help dry out the popped ones. “I don’t know. Do we?”
Lynn plucked at her meat. Skeever had caught a rabbit this morning, and they’d roasted it without much talking but with a good deal of smiles and little touches. “I don’t know. If it’s going to be a problem then yes, if not, then I guess we don’t have to.”
It was dark now. The crescent moon and the fire provided the only illumination, but that was more than enough to watch Dani clean the rabbit’s juices off her plate with a piece of flatbread. She kept her head down. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. True.” Lynn’s leaden arms and aching back reminded her of that with every move. “Does that mean you don’t want to talk about it?”
Dani nodded and finally looked at her. The little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth was soothing. “I know we’ll have to eventually, but with everything that’s happened today, I’m just…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Tired. I get it. Me too.”
Dani’s smile spread. “Thanks.” After a pause she added, “It was good, though.”
Lynn’s heart did a somersault. “Yeah?”
Dani’s eyes finally lit up with a spark. She sat a little closer on the pavement. “Yeah. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
Lynn laughed and brushed her arm against Dani’s. “Yeah, that might be nice.” Potentially stupid, but very nice.
“Come on, Skeeve, I want to go to bed!” Lynn held the door open for Skeever, who had decided another bathroom call was in order before bed—well after Lynn and Dani had taken care of that themselves.
Dani stood in the doorway of the makeshift bedroom, arms crossed, waiting with a grin.
“Skeever!”
He finally looked up and ran back from the bushes, then shot past her and headed straight for the bedroom.
Once Lynn had bolted the door and joined them in the bedroom, Dani closed the door behind them all.
Skeever settled on Lynn’s bed with a happy sigh.
“Ass.” Lynn pushed him gently with her foot as she stripped off her jacket. “Go sleep with Dani.”
“And that’s not mean?” Dani grinned and got under her covers.
Very little light made its way into the back room, but Lynn could see that Dani’s face was turned toward her. “Well, a little.” She spread her jacket out by the door. “Come, Skeeve. Come here.” She patted the leather.
Skeever took his time walking over, then whimpered pathetically as he lay down.
“Whiner.” She scratched his neck and side, kissed his nose, and left him to his own sleeping. She lowered herself down on her bed, kicked off her boots, and rolled onto her back with a groan. Every single part of her body was sore, and relaxing her muscles felt like agony. When she brought her arms up to lay her head on, a sharp stab of pain flashed from her wrist to her elbow. She hissed.
“You okay?”
Lynn brought her arms back down and massaged her pulsing left arm. “Yeah, I just keep forgetting about these damn bite marks. All that digging and hauling messed that whole area up.” The pain faded slowly.
“Sorry.”
Lynn looked toward Dani’s general area. The whites of Dani’s eyes caught a little light, and she focused her gaze on that. “Don’t worry. Really. I’ll be fine. I knew it was going to happen and it did.”
“Still. I’m grateful. Also for… after. I haven’t been thinking of… of Richard half as much as I thought I would be.”
Lynn didn’t quite know what to think of that. “Was kissing me only a distraction?”
“No!” Dani sat up. “No. Definitely not. It helped, but—” She paused and ran her hand through her hair. “Now we’re talking about it anyway.”
Lynn smiled in the dark. “Yeah, sorry, I’m just a little out of my league here. We went from playing each other to, well, this, literally overnight.”
“Two nights, and a lot happened in between.”
“Like?” Lynn shifted onto her side so she could watch Dani more easily.
“Like…” Dani lay down again and looked at her too. “Like not dying because you were with me, and you being there when I… struggled.” She sighed. “And you’ve been wearing on me with that ‘come with me’ bullshit.”
Lynn considered that. “Why is it bullshit?”
Dani groaned. “I don’t know! It just is. It’s… stupid.”
The blankets suddenly felt constricting. Lynn pushed them down to her waist. “But you’re thinking about it anyway.”
Dani didn’t reply for a long time. Finally, she said, “I need to talk to Kate. If you’re right, I don’t like what her plans are. And I still think you should come with me.”
“I’m no—”
“I know what you said. Skeever, shitty scout, I got it.” Dani seemed to wave her hand in the air, but it was hard to tell in the dark. “It would just be easier if you did come with me and if you wanted to take over Richard’s job.”
Lynn didn’t reply. She knew down to her bones that wasn’t going to work—for anyone.
Dani seemingly got tired of waiting for input. “If she forces me to go out alone like Richard did, well, I have just as much of a chance of dying as I would have with you.”
“You wouldn’t be alone if you came with me. You’d be safer.”
Now it was Dani’s turn to pause again. “Unless you left me, then I’d be in just as much danger—more, because I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.” Her voice trembled.
“I can’t make promises.” Lynn watched what she thought was Dani’s shape as they talked. “Well, I could, but you’d have to trust me to stick to it, and I wouldn’t take your word for something as important as this, so I get that making promises is useless.” She took a deep breath and let it out again. “It’s your choice. And you have to make it. All I can say is that…” Damn, why is it so hard to get this out? “That kissing you only made me want you to come with me more.”
Only Skeever’s breathing filled the silence.
“This is why I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Dani sounded sad or confused or scared, maybe. Without visual input, Lynn couldn’t tell for sure. “We don’t have to. We’ll stick to the plan: go back, you talk to Kate, you either show up or you don’t.”
“And you’d be okay with it if I don’t?”
Lynn swallowed down a ball of nerves. “I wouldn’t be happy,” she eventually said. “But I’d understand, and I’d survive. It wouldn’t change my plan.”
“What plan?”
“Head south, stay warm during the winter. Figure out a way to stay safe.” Lynn rattled the list off with ease. It was a simple survival strategy, but one that encompassed all that she’d always thought mattered most. It terrified her that maybe that wasn’t enough anymore now that she’d gotten a glimpse of what else life had to offer.
“Did you ever plan for someone else to join you?”
“No.” She admitted it honestly. “Well, once I picked up Skeever, he got added to the mix.”
“And you’d just as easily fit me in?”
Lynn was instantly presented with a vision of a little farm, fenced off and secure, with Dani working the field as Lynn walked out into the sunlight beyond the patio. Dani looked up and gave her a smile and a wave before wiping sweat off her brow. It was an entirely unrealistic vision of a future that would not—could not—exist in the world they lived in, but it made her smile regardless. “Yeah. Definitely.” Her voice was raspy, courtesy of a lightning bolt of longing that tore through her chest.
Dani sighed and turned. “We should sleep.”
Shit. Lynn nodded, then realized Dani couldn’t see her. “Yeah. Good night.”