Chapter Fourteen Night Road
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Night Road
They walked after dark because Tollhouse owned headlights.
Rhett hated the logic.
Eden seemed built for it.
She moved by stars, ground slope, and the pale backs of maintenance stones. When clouds covered the sky, she used a compass and counted steps.
Rhett stopped asking how far.
The answer was always too far.
Near midnight, they found an old pipeline inspection hut.
No roof.
Three walls.
Enough.
Rhett set the fuel cells in one corner and checked the perimeter.
Eden lowered herself against the west wall.
Her face had gone pale.
"Boot."
She did not argue this time.
Bad sign.
Her ankle was swollen twice normal size.
Rhett sat opposite.
"You're done walking tonight."
"I know."
That frightened him more.
He opened the medical pouch.
Two anti-inflammatory tablets.
One antibiotic packet.
Three closure strips.
Mina would have made better choices.
Rhett handed Eden the tablets.
She took one.
"Both."
"Your shoulder."
"Different medicine."
"Liar."
He almost smiled.
"Take both."
She did.
Then she reached for his shirt.
Rhett caught her hand.
"What?"
"Shoulder."
"It's fine."
"Your turn for bad lie."
He released her.
Eden peeled back the wrap.
The cut looked angry.
Heat radiated from the skin.
"Starting infection."
"Not ideal."
"Antibiotic."
"We have one packet."
"Exactly."
"For you if the ankle—"
"My ankle isn't infected."
"It could be."
"So could your personality."
Rhett laughed.
Eden did not.
"Take it."
He looked at the packet.
One full course? No. Three tablets, maybe enough to help, not enough for certainty.
"Split?"
"Bad medicine."
"Everything is bad medicine now."
She hated that because it was true.
Rhett swallowed one tablet.
Eden took one.
They saved the third.
Compromise by mutual stupidity.
The night cooled fast.
Eden shivered.
Rhett unfolded the single blanket.
She looked at it.
"No."
"Don't be dramatic."
"I'm not sleeping under one blanket with you."
"We can each have half."
"Blankets don't understand borders."
"Neither do freezing temperatures."
"It's not freezing."
"Your lips are blue."
"They are not."
He held out the blanket.
Eden took the far edge.
They sat shoulder to shoulder because geometry was cruel.
Rhett's injured side faced away from her.
Eden's leg stretched straight.
The blanket covered both badly.
For ten minutes, neither spoke.
Then Eden said, "Your heart's fast."
Rhett looked at her.
"How would you know?"
"Your arm is touching mine."
"That's not my heart."
"I can feel your pulse."
He could feel hers too.
"Could be danger."
"No engines."
"Could be infection."
"Could."
She turned her face.
Too close.
Rhett saw the pale scar along her left eyebrow, nearly invisible under dust.
He had noticed it the first day.
Now he wondered how she got it.
He did not ask.
She looked at his mouth.
The moment stretched.
Rhett wanted to kiss her.
The want felt inconvenient, obvious, and disloyal to several dead people at once.
He sat back.
Eden's expression changed.
"Good," she said.
Rhett frowned.
"Good?"
"You thought about it and didn't."
He stared.
"You're very confident."
"You were looking at my mouth."
"So were you."
"Yes."
The honesty hit harder than denial.
Rhett's throat tightened.
Eden looked out through the missing wall.
"Not now."
"No."
"Not because of Glass Road."
"Partly."
She looked back.
Rhett did not hide.
"Lyle matters."
"Caro matters."
"Yes."
"And wanting something doesn't solve that."
"No."
Eden nodded.
"Good."
The word came softer this time.
Rhett pulled the blanket higher over her shoulder.
She let him.
At some point she fell asleep leaning against him.
Rhett did not.
Not for a while.
He listened to the wasteland.
Wind through broken pipe.
Distant stone cooling.
Eden breathing.
He had imagined his enemy for years as a woman with a survey mark and no face.
Now she had a face.
A laugh.
A bad ankle.
A dead mother who had carried music through evacuations.
Hatred had been easier when he knew less.
That thought should have worried him.
Instead, Rhett shifted carefully so Eden's head rested more comfortably against his good shoulder.
Then he slept.