Chapter 10 #2
“They removed the gag, and I immediately asked for someone to get Brandon. But they didn’t need to get him. He was there. He told me to shut up. When he removed the blindfold, all I could do was stare at him in shock.
“Brandon looked at me like I was worthless, like I’d disappointed him in untold ways. Then he told me that I wasn’t of any use to them because I couldn’t be trusted. They couldn’t carry around deadweight. He closed the lid, and that was it.”
That oddly quiet click of the trunk had seemed bizarrely final, maybe more than him slamming it down would have been. But nobody wanted to alert the dead. She supposed she should have been grateful for that.
Cam made a pained noise.
Allie started wrapping the loose thread around her index finger.
“I was in there for hours, lying on my side in the dark, arms and legs tied, before Morrigan spoke to me for the first time.” She’d finally stopped struggling against her bonds by then.
Maybe she’d given up, or maybe she was too tired to keep fighting.
Either way, she’d been curled up in a ball, nearly catatonic, when that humming, otherworldly voice had spoken to her through her mind.
Good. We’re finally rid of him.
Allie had laughed. She wasn’t sure whether she’d finally gone crazy or had been saved. But she’d laughed. For the first time in months. Morrigan had rescued her in more ways than one that day.
Afterward, Allie had begun wiggling her arms around.
They’d used cheap yellow plastic rope to tie her hands in front of her, and she’d been so frantic to escape that they hadn’t exactly been able to tie them tightly.
With some effort and guidance from Morrigan, she was able to get her hands free.
Less than ten minutes later, she’d crawled free of that fucking trunk and collapsed in the weeds of the ditch beside a road, where she sucked in big lungsful of fresh air and cried silently.
“From there, I was on my own.” Allie yanked the thread cleanly from the seam. “Thanks to Morrigan, I found the bunker a few days later, and you know the rest.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the bunker even lacking its usual hum, at least in Allie’s mind.
Finally, Cam spoke. “And you haven’t seen any of them since?”
Allie shook her head and looked around the bunker, awash in a familiar rush of gratitude. “This was where I healed. And hid.”
“Until Morrigan sent you to save me.”
She nodded. “Until then.”
Cam folded his hands together tightly and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath before he opened them again. “Can I hold you?”
Her laugh quavered. “Yes, please.”
In the next second, his warm arms closed around her and tucked her against him. She buried her face in the clean, Cam-scented curve of his neck.
After a few quiet moments, he said, “I’m so goddamned sorry you went through that.” His voice rumbled, full of tormented grief, from his chest.
She sighed, running her free hand down his arm. “It was just one more fucked-up moment at the end of the world.”
“Don’t joke. What they did was barbaric. If I ever cross paths with that fucker—any of those fuckers—I’m going to bury them.”
Allie curled her hand into the fabric of his sleeve. “Don’t think about that.” I don’t want you to kill anyone for me. All I want is for you to tell me about Laurel.
He exhaled harshly then buried his face in her hair. “You’re safe with me. You know that, right? I won’t leave you behind or try to hurt you. Ever.”
Allie swallowed. “And... I won’t do that to you either.”
Allie couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t let her worries and fears claw at the back of her mind while she hid from the real world—not when the real world was tomorrow morning and this was their last night in the bunker.
“I heard you and Keyshawna talking when I was still in the kitchen. She said she was so sorry about—”
“Laurel.”
That name, finally. Hearing him say it made her catch her breath.
“Her name was Laurel Jennings.”
At the sadness and resignation in his tone, she winced, but she couldn’t stop him.
She’d already fallen in love with Cameron Hale, for better or for worse.
And whether he loved her back or not, she didn’t want the ghost of Laurel Jennings to haunt whatever relationship they might take with them out of this bunker.
If possible, they needed to leave her ghost there, with Brandon’s.
She leaned against him. “Can you tell me what happened?”
After a long pause, Cam finally spoke again. “She was my girlfriend. I thought... well, I thought we were in love.” He shrugged. “I was in love.”
Although Allie knew it wasn’t logical, hearing that hurt, maybe because Allie now understood that she hadn’t loved Brandon, not really, and he hadn’t loved her.
But the kind of love that would cause a person to give up everything they knew for the other person?
She got it now. Was that the way he had loved Laurel Jennings?
She swallowed. “What happened to her?”
Briefly, he sketched it out for her. Their group’s trip to Mother’s Hands—which Allie agreed definitely sounded like a cult. Sister Pax’s oddness. Laurel’s decision to leave their group to stay there.
“I tried to talk her out of it,” Cam said, voice low. “She told me that she needed something different. Something new. To find something in herself.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t understand it. Thought maybe Sister Pax had done something to her, you know?”
“I get that.” Yes, Allie did know how tempting it was to think that your loved ones weren’t acting on their own accord when they did something that broke your heart.
“So I stayed.” He sighed into her hair. “I told Key and the others to go on without me, that I was waiting for Laurel. She was so smart and strong, such a badass, that I didn’t think she’d like it there. I mean, she loved being on the road. Fighting Zs, protecting people.”
The hazy mental image of Laurel Jennings forming in Allie’s mind morphed into something that looked a lot like Wonder Woman by way of Furiosa.
No wonder Cam had loved her.
But Cam wasn’t finished. “I figured it was only a matter of time until she figured out she’d landed in the middle of some fucked-up cult, and when she left, I’d be there to take her home.”
Oh, Cam. “But she didn’t.”
“They didn’t want me there, but I stayed out of their way. Made myself a shelter. Scavenged food, hunted a bit. Nearly starved, sometimes. I’d been there almost two months when I heard a commotion inside the walls—a sound almost like a big tree falling but not then some screaming.”
He swallowed. “I had a bad feeling, so I knocked on the gates, called out to them. They wouldn’t let me in.
Then, the next day, one of the sisters brought out this.
” He leaned back a bit and pulled out the St. Christopher’s medallion from beneath his T-shirt collar.
“Laurel always wore it. A confirmation gift from her mom.”
Allie sat up a little, staring at it. “Oh. Oh no.”
He nodded. “I hung around another few days, not sure what to do. A little crazed, a lot numb. Angry. Grieving.” He tucked the medallion back into his shirt.
“Then I struck out toward home on foot, but it was slow going. I had to scavenge constantly, but I was heading in the right direction until that storm hit. Threw me off course, then...” He gave her a faint replica of his real smile. “You know the rest of the story.”
She shook her head, tears falling freely. “I’m so sorry.”
He pulled her back to him with a deep, hoarse sigh. “I should have told you sooner. It was selfish. I didn’t want to go through it again. Not when I was finally happy for the first time in months.”
His voice ached with sincerity, with affection. For her.
“I understand,” she said, and she did. But it didn’t stop the pain and doubts. He’d lost Laurel under tragic circumstances less than a month ago. How could he feel that way about me after feeling so strongly for her? Giving up everything for her?
Her better self spoke up. Hey, you have a strong connection with him. It’s totally possible that someone like you would be a comfort... after he lost the warrior-goddess love of his life.
They held each other a while longer in the silence. Allie absorbed Cam’s warmth and felt the steady beat of his heart against her ear—and tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that while she might have put her ghosts to some kind of rest, his were going to haunt her for some time.