TWENTY-SIX #2
I still feel it. His mouth. His hands not taking.
His body wanting and stopping. My body is remembering without permission, and I decide there and then that I absolutely hate memory.
That shit is super unreliable, always showing up with receipts like it was just waiting on the opportunity to show them off.
“Watch,” Fletcher says quietly.
I look over and, for one horrible second, I think he means me.
He doesn’t.
He’s nodding toward the back hall beyond the storage closet. There’s another service door there, half-hidden by old shelving. It could lead to a roof access, another storage space, or a place to quietly die in peace. That would be nice.
“Roofline might give us a view of the compound approach,” he says, then catches himself before adding anything that even sounds like a command. “Two-person check. Quiet. Fast.”
I actually want to resent how he phrases it. I don’t. But I do resent how hard it is to resent.
“I’ll go,” I offer, giving them no room to refuse.
Kaito is already pushing himself up to stand.
“No,” I snap.
He pauses halfway up, hand braced on the wall for stability. Every eye in the room lands on us, and I internally curse the whole situation the moment the word is out of my mouth.
I mean, I just love being the star of the evening entertainment.
Morning entertainment?
Whatever. Time died right alongside humanity and society and every other thing the universe wants to pummel into the ground.
Kaito’s voice stays perfectly even as he says, “You need cover.”
“I kind of need you to keep all your organs inside your body,” I correct.
“I’m capable of doing both,” he tries.
I raise an eyebrow at him, my face calling him an idiot before I can utter the words. What comes out of my mouth, though, is, “Pretty sure history would suggest otherwise.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “Dakota.”
My name in his mouth feels a whole lot more dangerous today. Not sharp. Worse. Careful. Like he’s remembering exactly how I tasted in the rain and is trying not to let that memory change the air between us.
Too late.
The air changed three days ago and it’s been acting like an asshole ever since.
Fletcher watches us both for only half a second before he says, “Kaito goes. He’s quieter than me, less likely to turn the hall into a debate, and if there’s a sightline, he’ll see it.”
I turn on him suddenly. “Excuse me?”
His expression doesn’t change once. “Information.”
Ewan whispers, “Oh my god, he’s actually learning. They grow up so fast.”
Just as he’s wiping an imaginary tear away, I point my knife at him. “You’re next.”
“Absolutely worth it,” he says.
Kaito gets to his feet fully, a little slower than he wants anyone to notice. I notice so hard it practically becomes a fucking character flaw at this point. We move through the hallway together, but not because I agree. Because everyone is temporarily making sense, which is all kinds of worse.
The hallway is narrow and coated in a layer of dust, walls lined with old maintenance charts and safety notices. Our boots make almost no sound at all as we move, Kaito following half a step behind me. Close enough to guard, but far enough not to crowd me.
The door at the end doesn’t lead to a roof, but to a small exterior platform bordered by a chain-link fence, and overlooking the lower access road.
Past that, through gaps in the concrete and trashed service vehicles, I can see the city changing.
Not whole, because it can never be that again, but altered somehow.
Cleared streets. Reinforced barricades. Watch posts tucked into the upper floors. A distant wall rising between two old factory buildings.
The compound.
My heartbeat stutters and my pulse skyrockets.
Kaito steps next to me. Not in front, just next to me, because apparently everyone is experimenting with that particular boundary today. Rude.
“They’ll have blockers,” I say quietly, then instantly regret it. But the words are out there before I even decide to let them out.
Kaito looks at the compound instead of at me as he answers. “Probably.”
“Medical supplies.”
“Yup.”
“Scientists.”
“Yup.”
“Rules.”
His eyes shift to me then and he’s a little slower to reply. “Yup.”
I grip the chain-link fence, and the metal bites through my glove. “Sounds peachy.”
“Sounds complicated,” Kaito comments.
I laugh only once, and there isn’t a trace of humor in it. “That’s just a polite word for cage.”
Kaito doesn’t answer straight away, so I continue looking at him. The gray light makes his face look sharper, the tiredness far harder to miss when it’s highlighted. His hand still presses the cloth against his side from under his jacket, and blood has darkened his fingers.
My anger bubbles again, and not the straightforward kind. Certainly not the useful kind. It’s the other kind, the one with fear hiding under it like a big ol’ chicken.
“You should have stayed down,” I say.
“I’m standing just fine,” he tells me.
“Really awful observation skills, thank you.”
His mouth almost moves. “You told me to sit, so I sat.”
“Yeah, but then you got up,” I point out with a very obvious frown on my face.
He shrugs. “You moved.”
I turn my head slowly, my eyes boring into him. “That’s not a reason for you to move around when you’re already hurt.”
“It is to me.”
I hate that. I hate the warmth that floods through me, inescapable and real. I hate the way my body reacts to his voice before my brain can bat the feeling away or lock it in a box, label it “absolutely not” and throw away the key so I can’t be tempted to peek inside.
I look back at the compound and say, “We need to talk about what happened in the rain.”
Kaito freezes. Not visibly to anyone who doesn’t know him, but I know enough now that I pinpoint the exact moment he stills, which is honestly a terrible development for me.
“What about it?” he asks carefully.
“You know what,” I answer, and silence follows, the quiet stretching out between us.
I can hear the sound of Zeds in the distance, their groans reaching me here, thin and utterly aimless. Wind rattles the chain-link fence and behind us, the office remains quiet.
Really, I should leave. I don’t. Instead, I say, “I don’t know what that was.”
Kaito’s voice is low as he tells me, “A kiss.”
I feel my cheeks heat instantly, so I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the enlightenment. I’m pretty sure I managed to piece together the general mechanics of it on my own.”
“So what did you mean?”
I look at him, and that turns out to be a mistake.
His eyes are dark and steady, and they don’t hold a single ounce of teasing.
There’s no smugness, no Alpha satisfaction, or anything that tells me he thinks he’s won something because I just so happened to put my hands on him first. And honestly?
That just makes it harder. Because I know what to do with arrogance.
I have the knives to deal with arrogance.
“I mean,” I say slowly, “I don’t know if it was fear, or heat, or biology. Or if it was because you keep following me around like a very intense shadow with stubbornness issues.”
His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second, and my body notices. Which doesn’t surprise me, because she’s a traitorous little bitch. Then he looks back at me and asks, “Does it only have to be one of those options?”
My hands tighten painfully around the fence. “Yeah.”
“No.”
“Kaito,” I grit, but he interrupts me before I can argue.
“Fear can make you want something true, right? Heat can make that wanting as loud as a siren. Biology can tell your body to wake up and pay attention,” he says, voice calm and measured, even as his scent deepens under the blood.
“But none of that dictates what you choose. It doesn’t decide it for you. ”
My throat suddenly feels too tight, and I hate it. I hate the way he says things so naturally, so plainly, as if he’s setting down weapons in places where I can see them clearly.
“So, if I wanted it because of my body?” I ask.
“Then your body wanted it,” he answers simply.
“And if I wanted it because of you?” The words slip out of my mouth and I make no move to roll them back up, shove them in my mouth, and choke on them.
Kaito’s jaw tightens, and there it is. The crack in all of the restraint he seems to possess.
“Then I’d want to know what you choose to do with that,” he eventually offers.
My pulse hiccups.
The compound waits ahead, and the others wait just behind us.
The world, annoyingly, continues ending no matter which direction you look.
And I’m standing on a rusted platform with an injured Alpha who has followed me through streets, roofs, tunnels, rain, Zeds, Runners, looters, Vector, and my own particular brand of fucked-up personality.
I should step back. I should. But I don’t.
“You stopped,” I mutter instead.
“Yup.”
“Quite fast, too.”
“Yup.”
“Why?” I push, a small niggle of desperation burrowing under my skin for the answer.
His gaze doesn’t once leave mine when he says, “Because you stopped.”
Something sharp and jagged in my chest shifts uncomfortably, and I can’t help my mouth from asking, “That’s… it?”
Kaito only shrugs. “That’s everything.”
My breath catches right in my chest, because he means it. Not as some cheesy line or something pretty to drop at my feet in hopes I get distracted by it. It’s just as simple as gravity and blood loss and knives sinking in sharp side first.
I step closer before I decide to even move, and Kaito turns still once more. But, this time, it’s very clear he doesn’t still from the pain.
“You’re hurt,” I say quietly.
“Yup.”
“You should probably tell me this is a bad idea,” I mutter.
“It probably is.”
“That’s very helpful.”
With a slow shake of his head, he tells me, “But not because I don’t want it.”
The platform suddenly feels ten times smaller, and the air seems to grow a whole lot warmer. Or, maybe that’s just me. Yeah, probably me. My blockers are weak, my body is a grade-A nightmare, and Kaito’s scent is wrapping around my senses like smoke finding every corner in a room.
Burning wood.
Worn flannel.
Want.