2. Basement Home & Sad Endings #3
"Not without telling you first," Sawyer said, his voice soft. "But yeah. It's the best plan we've got. You and I will stay back and keep this place secure. Seth, Jay, and Cara will go."
Addy shot Cara a questioning look, "You want to go?"
Cara lifted her chin. "I can help out there. And I want to. Jay shouldn't go without someone who can track, move silently, and hunt if the food runs thin."
Seth nodded in agreement. "She's the best one for it. Hands down."
Addy looked torn, emotions playing openly across her face. Her eyes found Sawyer's. "And... Sawyer stays with me."
Sawyer reached for her hand immediately, wrapping it in both of his. "Always."
Jay softened his tone. "That's exactly why I never even asked him. Addy, you're pregnant. He stays here—keeps you safe, keeps this place secure. That part isn't negotiable, and he'd have refused anyway."
Addy's eyes shimmered with unshed tears in the firelight. She squeezed Sawyer's hand.
Seth finally rose from the hearth. "We leave in spring, as soon as the snow clears enough."
Jay nodded. "Until then, we prep—gear, maps, training, routes, fuel, everything. No surprises this time. Nothing left to chance if we can control it."
Addy stepped forward and wrapped Cara in a hug that startled them both. Cara stiffened for a heartbeat before her arms slowly rose and returned the embrace.
"We're a family now," Addy whispered fiercely against her shoulder. "So you come home too. All three of you. That's my condition for agreement."
Cara swallowed hard against the tightness in her throat. "I will."
Jay stood back and watched them—Sawyer, Addy, Cara, Seth—and something settled deep inside his chest, quiet and absolute as any oath he'd ever sworn. This was his family.
And he'd cross whatever wasteland remained of the world to bring every one of them home.
That night, after the cabin settled—the faint creak of the wood stove, the low murmur of Jay and Cara's voices upstairs, Addy's soft laugh drifting once from behind the bedroom door—Seth lay awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling above.
Watch snored softly beside him, warm and loyal in a way that twisted something deep in Seth's soul.
His thoughts refused to settle, circling the same ground over and over.
He would be going back out there. Into the unknown, to places where people could die, and worse—places where a single wrong footstep or one careless breath could end everything for all three of them.
He rolled onto his back.
What the hell is wrong with me?
He'd given ten years to the Marines—ten years of missions, heat and dust and adrenaline, of doors kicked in and long nights on watch.
He'd been shot at, blown clean off his feet, watched friends die in sand he still visited in his dreams. Through every second of it, he'd stayed sharp.
Steady. Reliable. He had never been the guy who froze. Never the guy who broke.
But lying there in the safety of the cabin, wrapped in warmth he hadn't earned, a tremor ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold.
Fear?
He wasn't sure. Fear was familiar, a manageable tool he'd learned to use. This ran deeper, as though he'd stepped outside the life that had defined him, and every edge that once made him dangerous had quietly dulled.
Or maybe those edges had been torn away entirely the moment Molly screamed his name in that store.
He squeezed his eyes shut, fought the emotions welling in him.
He could still hear it—her desperate cry, the gunshots, AJ's cry cutting off into the silence that had never truly ended.
He'd been a soldier. A protector. A husband. A father.
And he had failed.
He swallowed hard against the tightness climbing his throat.
What if it happens again?
What if Jay counted on him out there and Seth hesitated at exactly the wrong second? What if Cara needed him and he moved a half-step too slowly?
His hands curled into fists beneath the blankets.
Dying didn't scare him, had stopped scaring him a long time ago—and that, if he let himself look at it directly, might be the most frightening part.
Failing again—that scared him.
Proving that whatever had gone wrong inside him in that freezer was still wrong, and always would be. Watching the others slowly realize he'd become someone they couldn't rely on, dead weight.
And beneath all of it, in the bruised places he never let anyone near—
He couldn't say for certain whether he wanted to live as much as theyneeded him to.
Seth let out a shaky breath and dragged a hand down his face, the stubble scraping his hand.
He would go. He'd already given his word, and his word still meant something, even now. Maybe more now.
But some part of him wondered whether he'd be walking out there in spring to survive...
...or to find out whether he still could.
Watch shifted in his sleep, nudging closer until his warm weight pressed solidly against Seth's arm, as if the old dog had heard every word Seth hadn't spoken.
Seth swallowed.
"Yeah," he whispered into the dark, resting a hand on the dog's side. "I know, buddy."