Chapter 8
Wyatt’s been smoking again while knowing that he shouldn’t.
His wife hates it when he smokes. You’ll set the house on fire one day, she scolds.
So he’s taken to lighting up at work before a flight or on the patio when she’s asleep.
Quitting isn’t as easy as he thought it might be, or perhaps he’s just weaker than he’s willing to admit.
A lungful of smoke coats his insides, and he savors it, intending to snuff it out on the ground with his boot before going inside, but something catches his attention before he can…a flicker of light coming from inside the house.
He follows it with curious apprehension as the golden hue deepens, and he briefly worries that she’s gotten fed up with him for good now and set the house aflame herself after packing her shit and leaving him behind.
They’d been fighting more than usual. Small, nitpicky arguments about nothing in particular that only end up confusing him once it’s all said and done.
She is angry at him every time he comes home, and he fears the answer as to why, so he hasn’t dared to ask.
Hasn’t attempted any of that open communication their couple’s therapist suggested months ago because that might offer answers he isn’t willing to accept, like his wife admitting that she’s fallen out of love with him.
It is easier to let her say he spends too much time at work than it is to imagine her wishing he’d stop coming home.
It’s hard not to let that flickering light draw him in, though.
He follows it through the living room and kitchen, the heat of it luring him close until the space of his house transforms into his wife’s apartment after their divorce.
The walls melt, and the floor feels like jelly around his feet.
He’s no longer coming home after a long day in the air, but searching for her in the wake of an apocalypse.
The sight of her rotting away on the sofa with her brain matter scattered across the fabric is enough to have him heaving with a combination of shock and grief.
Why he’s grieving is anyone’s guess. She left him.
Said she found someone else. He has no business coming here to offer help that she’d never accept, but here he is, checking on her because it’s the right thing to do when the right thing never got him anywhere good before.
It doesn’t now, either. No good deed goes unpunished, his mother used to say, and when the flames from the apartment fire begin to engulf him, stroking up the backs of his legs and digging into his skin to flay it off, he’s never been more certain she was right.
He runs into the inferno to escape certain death out the other side, screaming as the heat cooks the parts of him that it captured, twisting and turning and begging for relief.
“Wyatt?”
“Stop, make it stop, please, please make it stop,” he sobs.
“Look at me.” A soft hand tilts his face to the side until his eyes focus on the person beside him. “You have a fever, you’re not on fire. You’re just hot.”
There’s a pretty woman looking at him, all soft and sweet. She’s got a wet cloth running down his naked chest, which makes him shiver.
“You can’t be here,” he whispers. Doesn’t she know it’s not safe? “I can’t get you out! I can’t even get myself out.”
“What you’re seeing isn’t real. You’re delirious. You can’t trust your eyes right now.”
It’s only then that she becomes familiar. Her blonde hair and that smile he likes so much trigger a hidden memory. “Addison? Why am I on the floor?”
“You fell out of bed trying to get away from—”
“The fire.” He covers his face with his hands, hissing when she runs that cold cloth under his armpits.
“Sorry. Sorry. It’ll cool you off faster.”
Embarrassment at his condition makes him burn hotter than the fever. He’s half-naked on the floor while she gives him a sponge bath. That’s enough to have him ready to curl into a ball and never look anyone in the eye again.
He doesn’t need help. He can handle it himself. It’s not her job to take care of him.
All those bumps and holes in the ceiling stare down at him while tree branches scrape against the window, just like the crackling of splintered wood as it came apart around him in the hallways of the apartment building.
“Shit, we gotta go,” he curses, wrenching himself upright and hissing when his whole body aches.
It’s not unexpected. He always hurts. There are scars on his thighs and more across his back.
Bruises from that fight over the plane with the looters.
The plane…what if it’s gone? What if someone found it?
That damn plane is his last resort if everything continues to go to shit, though he hasn’t gotten as far as where he’d actually go should he decide to use up the little fuel it has left.
If it’s gone, he’ll be stuck in Kansas unless he leaves on foot, and so will Addison.
“We have to go.” He stumbles to his feet and grabs her hand, dragging her down the hall.
“Wyatt, stop. You need to rest, you can’t walk—” She plants her feet and tries to guide him back to bed, completely oblivious to the urgency.
He grabs her by the shoulders, holding her stare and spitting out a frantic warning. “We have to go! If they get the plane, we’ll be fucked! It’s our only chance out of this now, you don’t understand.”
Why is she being so difficult? The dire situation they’re in is plain to see if she would simply take a moment to look.
“Okay, I’m coming.” Finally, she relents and lets him guide her up that rickety staircase to the attic.
He’s not sure why he’s going up instead of out the front door, but in his overheated brain, it makes perfect sense that the plane would be waiting for them here.
Everything hurts so much more than usual. He’s so damn tired and weak that by the time they bust through the door, he’s leaning half his weight on her. He shoves a chair under the handle to keep the looters out before his legs collapse, and he slumps to the ground.
She catches him with a surprised gasp as they sag down together. Branches scrape against the house as the wind howls. A storm is brewing outside, even stronger than the one in here.
Addison’s arms wrap around him, and much as he hates letting her take care of him, it’s difficult not to accept it this time. He’s in no shape to argue. Deep down, he likes it more than he’ll ever admit.
Her fingers comb through his hair as he settles in her lap, her voice raw and shaky. “We’ll find the plane, I promise. We’ll find it, and everything will be just fine.”
“It’s close. Do you see it?”
“Not yet.” Her hand strays down to lie over the middle of his chest, where his heart rises up to slam against it. “You need to breathe slower, okay? You’ll pass out soon if you keep going like this. Breathe with me, in and out, real slow.”
“But the plane?”
“I’ll find the plane for both of us, don’t worry.”
“If you take it for yourself, I’ll understand. I won’t be angry,” he says with a shivering exhale.
“Now, why would I do that?”
“Leaving is what people do. Before the outbreak and after. Besides, you don’t owe me shit. I’m a fucking liar, anyway. Been lying to you this whole time…take it. Just take the plane and go.”
Her brows furrow, that hand on his chest pressing gently while his head goes heavy in her lap. “I think you don’t know what you’re saying. Once this fever breaks, you’ll be right as rain again. Just you wait and see.”
Maybe she’s right. She seems certain enough.
Everything is confusing, up is down, and left is right, but what he knows for certain is how good it feels when she runs her fingernails across his scalp.
A tingle up his spine is the only flutter of pleasure he’s felt in so long, so he tries to focus on that and nothing else.
He’s hot for some reason, but suddenly there’s a blanket over his legs and halfway up his ribs.
Doesn’t know where she got that from or when she grabbed it.
It reminds him that he’s been running around shirtless and pantless except for his boxers.
That means she’s seen what’s etched into his back and legs.
That’s okay. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. He still can’t figure out why she sticks around, though. He’s too broken to be worth a damn, but she hasn’t left. Yet.
What they have is innocent. She’s a new friend at best and nothing more. He would never risk that, yet in moments like this, when she smells so good and feels so warm against him, when he’s never felt safer than he does with her…yeah, in moments like this, he wishes they were more.
“I didn’t save her,” is what he says instead of vomiting a litany of emotions at her feet.
“Who?”
“My wife. Or Gwen. Or Emma. Anyone. I can’t protect you either.
” All he does is fail the people he cares about.
He failed his wife, for not being the type of husband who would make her stay.
He failed Gwen for not convincing her to get on the damn plane sooner.
He failed Addison already for letting a week go by without finding Emma.
“How about you let me protect you this time?”
Her words are like a cool balm on his tattered soul, offering something he’d never ask for but craves like a hit of cocaine.
“Let me keep you safe,” she whispers again, her voice strained as she leans back against the dusty attic wall. “I think I see constellations up there. Did you paint those when you lived here?”
He rolls over onto his back with his head in her lap and looks up at the mural of a night sky in this old farmhouse she’s convinced he grew up in because he’s a fucking liar that lies. “No. Do you like it?”
“I do. I like it very much.”
“The archer, it’s there, see it?” He points haphazardly in that direction, noticing the blood on his fingers for the first time.
“I see it.” She runs her hand up his arm to bring it back down. “Don’t worry about that. It’s just a scratch.”
“Just a scratch,” he mumbles, even more tired than he had been a moment ago. “Did you fix me up?”
“Mhmm.”