Chapter 3
Veronica hops out of the car, her curly black hair bouncing as she lands.
Delilah pops her door open. Once we were driving, she squeezed into a seat so that she didn’t spend the entire ride on Maverick’s lap.
She scrambles out of the car, joining her twin; from behind, the only way you can tell them apart is their clothing and how Delilah’s dark hair is slicked back into a bun while Veronica’s is wild and free.
Heads bowed, the twins talk as they head into the camp together.
Maverick eases himself out of the left-hand side. Meanwhile, Chase murmurs at me to open the door by me. I blink, then realize that it’s time to get out. I do, spinning around, taking in the camp once I’m standing next to the SUV.
Chase scoots out, instantly pulling me into his side as though afraid I’m going to fully lose it and bolt away from him.
Silly Chase. My legs are way too shaky to go that far.
Once David has packed up his supplies into a black backpack that he shrugs onto one of his wide shoulders, he slams the car door behind him and points.
There are about thirty cabins spread out in front of us.
Maybe more. I can pick out at least four distinct rows: three rows have ten cabins each, give or take, with a spattering of three more in the first row.
That row isn’t as straight as the line of cabins behind it, and the farthest one on the right is about twice the size and turned toward us.
David is gesturing to the one closest to us, a single cabin on the left. The window is open, and there’s a lit candle flickering on the sill.
“That’s Caroline,” he explains. “Back when Camp Sunnyside was a real camp, she was head of registration. This camp was her summer home for forty years. When the Turning happened, she retreated here. Veronica lets her stay, but she doesn’t understand what we’re doing here.
Not really, but she tries. She lost her husband and her kids on January 1st. We’re all she has.
Treat her with respect. She waited up for you. ”
I still don’t really understand what’s going on here, either, but I get what David is saying. For whatever reason, Veronica picked this camp as the base of her operation. Her group of rogues and rebels find shelter and safety in these cabins, but Camp Sunnyside comes with a woman named Caroline.
Okay. Sure.
Why not?
With David as our reluctant chaperone, we go to Caroline’s cabin.
Before any of us can knock on the door or announce our appearance, it swings inward, revealing a hearty if petite woman in her late sixties, early seventies. She has fluffy white hair and a lined face, barely reaching up to my nose as she peers up at us.
She’s wearing a flannel nightgown, a pair of muddy slippers, and a whistle around her neck. In her hands, she’s holding a clipboard and a pencil, and I can’t help but be reminded of the tech back in New York with her robotic voice and her own clipboard.
Caroline greets us effusively, waving at David before hoisting up her supplies.
“Welcome to Camp Sunnyside. I am Caroline Henderson, and I’ll be your registrar this evening.” Her dark eyes land on me. “Let’s start with you. What’s your name?”
“You really need to know that?”
The woman looks up from her clipboard again, then looks apologetically at me. “Well, yes. If you want to be part of this camp, I do. We need to know who our people are. Who we can trust.” She pauses. “Who’s missing in the morning.”
Ugh. Ain’t that a gut punch? As though I need the reminder that the lurkers are out there—and so are those responsible for Project Phoenix.
I dare a peek over at Mr. Rambo Wannabe. I don’t know why David seems to think that Caroline is out of the loop because, if you ask me, she seems pretty shrewd. She knows exactly what’s going on and how dangerous these times are.
She has a point, and it’s not like Veronica didn’t send us her way. No wonder we have to go through this registration bullshit.
Only one problem: what is my name?
I know it’s Hallie, but I don’t feel like Hallie.
Same for Alexandra. To continue to pretend to be my lost sister…
no. I can’t. Xandra is dead, but in a way, so is Hallie.
If I admit that that’s who I am, then Chase will expect things will go right back to the way they were before the accident that killed my sister, and if there’s one thing I am sure of it’s that there’s no way in hell I’ll ever be the same again.
“Holden,” I blurt out. “My name is Holden.”
At the very least, it’s one I can claim. Jack—Dad—is a Holden. Mom was a Holden. My twin, my brother… I am Holden.
I wait for the older woman to call me out on using a name I might’ve made up on the spot. But I guess she just needs something to write down on her clipboard because she scribbles it on a sheet of paper, then glances at me expectantly.
I shift my weight. “Yes?”
“Last name?”
Right.
Shit.
Can’t be Holden Holden, can I—
“Knight,” supplies Chase. “Her name is Holden Knight.” He shoots a look my way. A devilish grin is tugging on his lips, while his eyes hold a desperation that twists my stomach more painfully than when I sense a lurker’s approach. “Right, babe?”
If I married Chase, I planned on taking his name. Not very modern of me, but ever since I was in fourth grade, I’d doodle Hallie Knight in the margins of my notebook. I always knew that Chase was it for me—until I lost my mind and, for a few months, he wasn’t.
Not that it matters. I just need a name… “Right.”
She adds that to her piece of paper before looking up at Chase.
I know the exact second that she sees him.
I mean, really gets a good look at him. The woman is old enough to be his grandmother, yet she nervously tugs on her whistle as he gives her that “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” smile that’s worked on me a thousand times.
“What about you?” she asks, sounding slightly breathless. Shit. Not even Caroline is immune to Chase’s good looks and his charm, huh? And, no, I’m not jealous of granny over here, not one bit… “What’s your name?”
“Chase, ma’am. Chase Knight. Holden is my wife. Go on. Tell her, baby.”
Ah, hell. He broke out the ma’am. Poor Caroline.
She seems even more flustered at that, plus at how polite he is as a survivor.
But that’s Chase. He contains multitudes: he’s happy to chase me through the woods, run me down, and fuck me in the ass, but as soon as some woman in her pajamas with a clipboard starts asking questions, he’s the same sweet schoolboy who convinced all of Madison High that he was the All-American boy next door.
He was, too. Star player on the football team, a stellar first baseman who got a scholarship for his bat and his glove before choosing to focus on his studies and become a social worker.
He’s a great guy, sometimes almost too perfect, and there were moments when I wondered if he loved me as much as I obsessed over him.
Even when I thought I was my sister, I couldn’t get Chase out of my head—or stop myself from giving him my body. He owns me, every fucking inch, and always has, but until the Doctor broke me, reminding me who I was again, I don’t think I really believed that I owned him.
I know better now. He sat at my bedside after the accident even as I tried to send him away.
He slept under my window and comforted Dad, telling him that I’d get better one day.
He chased me out of the Grave when the ghosts and my insanity had me fleeing home, and he offered an antidote to that bastard in East Jersey to “win” me as his own.
I can’t forget that fateful night out in the woods, either, when I went to my knees in front of him and he had me beneath him in no time.
And then in the cell only this afternoon…
He called me his wife then, too. I was the idiot who agreed, but that was in the heat of the moment. I can’t be his wife. Not while I barely know who I am… how can I stick Chase with this shattered shell of the woman he once loved?
I can’t. It’s as simple as that. And I know that Chase will be as determined to keep me with him as I am to keep an arm’s length between us while I figure out what my next move is.
I love him. So much that it aches. I fucking love him, but I’m too messed-up, too broken for a man like Chase.
He deserves better, and if I have to get that message through his thick skull, that’s what I’ll do.
But how can I do that now? With the woman waiting for me to either agree or correct him… how can I jeopardize our safety among Veronica’s people because I’m too insecure and fucked in the head?
I watch as Caroline’s shrewd gaze drops to our hands.
No wedding rings there, but in the days after the Turning, that’s not so unusual.
If Chase and I had actually managed to get married last July like we were supposed to, we wouldn’t have worn rings anyway.
There’s nowhere to buy them, and it was such a silly thing to worry about at the end of the world.
I fold my fingers into a fist, nod, and my answer is at least the truth: “I love Chase.”
Caroline makes a note on her clipboard. “Married couples get to share a cabin on their own so they have some privacy. Veronica says.”
The way she adds that part tells me that doesn’t agree, but she recognizes who is in charge here anyway.
Me? I’m just about to shit my pants.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Why didn’t I think that far ahead? I don’t know how many survivors occupy this camp, but with as many cabins as there are, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of empties set aside for “privacy”.
Just like I can’t imagine there are too many married couples here, but in case there are…
they wouldn’t want to share a bunk with others, would they?
That’s what Maverick is going to have to do.
David explained that these are communal cabins, with anywhere between six to eight bunks in each depending on the size, and if Mav wanted, he could join David and some of the other hunters in their claimed cabin.
Mav muttered something non-committal, and David dropped it to lead us over to Caroline’s cabin.
He must have figured there was no separating Ken and Barbie because he didn’t even offer up a solution for where Chase and I were going to sleep. That, or he knew that Caroline was going to assign us one of our own—and that’s what she does.
After she tells David what cabin to bring us to, she turns her attention to Maverick.
Maverick gives his name. He uses his nickname, and Caroline jots that down dutifully. Same for his surname, though when she asks if he has a preference for which cabin he wants to join, he asks if there’s anyway he can bum a bedroll and sleep out under the stars.
I know what he’s doing. Oh, he can blame it on how he’s spent the last few months surviving outdoors. Maybe that’s true. Then again, after what happened to him at the hands of the Doctor… he probably doesn’t trust himself around others.
Which is why I’m pretty sure David is so adamant that he takes a bunk in his cabin. Veronica might have given us all permission to stay at camp, but of the three of us, it’s Maverick that David seems determined to keep his eye on now that she’s gone off with Delilah.
In the end, Mav is too tired to argue. He accepts the placement, we all say good night to Caroline, and the older woman shuffles back inside her cabin. Moments later, the candle in her window is blown out. The shades are drawn.
She’s going to bed.
I guess we are, too.
At least, I hope so. It’s after ten, and we’ve been up since before the sun.
If I have to be here, I’m at least grateful to go to sleep in a real bed, and I’m partially relieved when David says he’ll show me and Chase to our cabin first—after a quick tour so that we know what we’re getting ourselves into.
Sure. If it makes him happy.
I wait until David takes the lead, followed by Maverick, with Chase and me bringing up the rear before I nudge him in the side with the elbow of Rory’s jacket.
Chase arches his eyebrows.
“You could’ve said I was your sister,” I mumble to him.
For a moment, Chase looks surprised that I said that.
I don’t know why. Unlike me, Chase didn’t have a sister.
He had a younger brother—who, same as Rory, died during the Turning—so he can’t be shocked that I would mention taking over some fictional sister’s identity.
But then it hits me: he’s surprised that I would rather claim to be anyone other than his wife.
Surprised, and a little disappointed by my reaction.
Oof. There goes another twist low in my gut, and one that has nothing to do with lurkers.
Damn it. I hate the way he closes his face off instantly, almost like he’s trying to hide what he’s feeling from me.
But he can’t. I thought it was so strange how easily I could read Chase when I thought of him as my twin’s former lover, but now that I know he used to be mine…
I know him so intimately, it’s a cinch to look at him and tell what he’s thinking without him having to say a word.
But then he does.
Chase strokes the back of the jacket’s leather sleeve. “Wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It’s how he looks at you,” cuts in Maverick to my shock. I had no idea he was listening, or paying attention to anything other than his own troubles, but then he says, “If he looked at a sister like he does you, they wouldn’t let him stay,” and the eagle-eyed cop strikes again.
I frown at his back. “How does he look at me?”
“Like he’s always thinking about fucking you, kid,” is all he says before he increases his pace to catch up to David.
Not me. I jolt, stopping in place. My head snaps as I turn to Chase. Why? Don’t know. Maybe I want to catch a glimpse of his expression and prove Maverick wrong. All of that desperation written on his handsome features… that was just Chase willing me to love him. Right?
I don’t know what he looked like before, but when I meet his gaze, I get an impish grin that has the butterflies in my belly fluttering.
He shrugs. “Guilty as charged, Hal.”
I stiffen. “Holden. Call me ‘Holden’.”
Chase doesn’t even hesitate. “Holden,” he agrees.
Better.
Maybe.