Chapter 12 #2
“Put a pause on sex?”
“Yeah.”
I’m sure he’s not happy, but he doesn’t argue that point, either.
Especially since he has to know I’m right.
I can tell him that I’m not his wife and gently reject his proposal for now, but if we go back to the cabin and I jump his bones…
yeah. I’ve gotta be better about sending the wrong message to him.
“Just for now. You can still tell everyone I’m your wife if it makes you feel better. I’m not saying ‘no’ forever, Chase. There isn’t anyone else I want. But I need to figure out who I am, if that makes sense.”
Who is Holden?
Maybe one day she will be Holden Knight. The idea that Chase might give up on us scares the absolute shit out of me, but I think I already know he won’t. That’s why I have the nerve to ask him for a little more time—because he’ll give it to me.
“I know who you are. You’re mine, and when you remember that, I’ll find you a ring worthy of you.”
I look at the gold twist tie in my palm. “You already did.”
A small smile touches the corner of his eyes. “Yeah. I guess I did.”
You know what? Fuck it.
I go up on my tiptoes, pressing a gentle kiss to Chase’s lips. “I love you. That won’t change.”
“I know,” he says, and there’s such an honest edge to his answer, I know we’re going to be okay. Eventually. “But if some other guy tries to make a move on you like Nicky did? I’ll beat the shit out of him, too.”
There’s only so much I can ask of him. “Deal.”
We lose two campers overnight.
It happens a week after Chase proposes, and I’m not sure if the fact that I constantly keep the gold twist tie in my front jeans pocket makes me feel better or worse when we join everyone else at the pavilion for breakfast and discover that our group of sixty-five is down to sixty-three.
I’ve learned that morning meetings are normal at Sunnyside.
Veronica likes everyone together at least once a day.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than patrol assignments and a rundown of what needs fixing.
Other mornings, there are supply requests, scavenging parties, complaints about food, or arguments over whose turn it is to scrub the communal bathroom.
Today, Veronica doesn’t wait for everyone to finish eating before she stands up in the middle of the pavilion with David and announces, “We’re missing two.”
The chatter dies instantly. I’m not the only one who starts looking around, trying to figure out who is missing.
I hate that my first thought is that maybe Tamera decided to leave camp, but nope.
She’s there, sitting on the opposite side of the pavilion.
Nicky is in his usually seat, a couple of tables down.
He’s still slightly bruised, definitely sullen, but he’s alive.
Who isn’t?
I get the answer a moment later.
“Eileen Foster and Perry Kline,” she announces. “Neither reported for breakfast. Neither is in their cabin.”
“Could’ve left,” someone calls out.
“Maybe,” David says. “But their packs are still here. All of their supplies are in their cabins. And they both were doing a lurker check about a click from here.”
“That’s about a kilometer for you non-military folks,” adds Veronica. “They didn’t come back at dawn. I confirmed it with Caroline. Everyone else was accounted for except those two.”
David takes over again. “We’re checking the perimeter for damage. Aaron’s got a team looking for tracks or trails they might have taken. Until we know what happened, nobody goes beyond the boundary alone until we know what happened.”
Nobody argues. We haven’t had a loss since we’ve been at Sunnyside, but the others…
the way they react is a clue that this isn’t the first time it’s happened to them.
They’re unnerved, but they understand, especially because we all know that David might be giving the orders, but they’re coming from Veronica.
And then she looks directly at me.
“Holden.”
Ah, fuck. “Yes?”
“You up for a walk?”
Chase immediately stiffens beside me. I don’t. There’s no reason to freak out when I know exactly what she wants.
I don’t know what happened to Eileen and Perry, but after I head out into the trees that surround the backside of the camp with Veronica, David, and Kira—another vet, straight out of the Army, and just as good as a tracker as Aaron and Raul—I can confirm one thing: there are no lurkers nearby.
I expected as much. Lurkers can only come out when it’s dark, and though the woods are shadowed thanks to the cap of trees over our heads, there’s enough light to send the monsters scampering like cockroaches.
There’s not enough of their sickly sweet, burnt caramel odor to lead us to believe that Eileen and Perry got caught in a lurker attack, and the area that we checked showed no signs of what happened to them.
I did my part. Veronica was grateful for the effort, but later that night, I’m still worrying over two strangers I barely know.
I mean, I think I spoke to Eileen once. And Perry…
he took the last piece of bread during dinner my first week at camp and he’s been my secret nemesis ever since.
But if something happened to them… no one deserves to be eaten by a lurker because they’re a bread hog.
Chase is still in a snit that Veronica refused to let him accompany me out into the woods earlier.
Shit. It’s like we’re really back in the Grave after all, and is insistent that I stay protected behind our borders.
In his point of view, I can go up to edge of our settlement to see if I can sense any lurkers nearby, but I need to leave the searching on the Outside to real hunters.
It was the way he said “real hunters” that triggered something inside of me.
Even Hallie was pissed at how Chase was determined to constantly protect her, but after weeks of killing lurkers at his side, you’d think he would know better.
I am a hunter. I’m also a sensor, and the only one at Sunnyside.
I told Chase I wanted to go back into the woods after dark to see if I can get a better read on any lurkers.
He lost his every-loving shit. About three minutes into his tirade that I already did my part, that Aaron’s team did their best to search for the missing survivors, and that, if I’m really concerned, he’ll go out and help instead…
yeah, I started tuning him out because, no matter how much I love him, I’m not about to let any man tell me what to do.
Not my dad.
Not Maverick.
And especially not Chase.
Okay. So maybe I was being reckless. I thought that putting some space between us would make things easier during the rest of our stay at Sunnyside, but all I’ve done is torture myself with how close Chase is, yet so far away at the same time.
I don’t have anyone else to blame. Just me.
But I fucked up by pushing him away, and I then get aggravated because Chase is acting like I’m a child when, technically, I’m three months older than him, and because I have this need to prove myself…
to discover who Holden is… I go ahead and make one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
I wait until Chase mentions he needs to go to the bathroom—his code for either taking a shit or playing with his cock since we haven’t done more than cuddle in bed after I told him we needed to stop fooling around, and if he has to pee he’d tell me flat-out—and sneak out of our cabin.
If there are lurkers finding their way to our settlement, I won’t sit tight and let them attack. Not when I can sense them coming.