Page 77 of Chaos

“I imagined someday … maybe.”

That has a bittersweet smile tugging at my lips. “Maybe.”

He keeps going. “In some distant future where we didn’t have to worry about butchers and kidnappers and people in DC or Charleston or Raiders or running out of food or fresh water or bullets. And not with a risk to you.”

“That sounds like the Flower-verse.”

“I’d like it to be as safe as a Flower-verse.”

“Will we ever have that here, though? I remember enough history from my art history classes to know that for most of human history, life was dangerous and scary and short, and if we wait for perfect conditions, we might miss out on something we never knew we needed.” Even as this comes out of my mouth it feels vaguely foreign, like a lesson I need to learn myself before I preach it. “Stuff always happens in thewrong order for us. We met too soon. We fell in love too fast, but I still wouldn’t change any of that. Would you?”

“No.”

“It’s just another too-fast thing we’ll look back on and say was just right.”

His chest rises on a sharp inhale. “So this is it? This is happening?”

“Would you want to not? At this point? Knowing she’s in there?”

He shrugs helplessly.

“Don’t be scared,” I whisper.

He laughs humorlessly, his eyes drifting closed. “That’s a big ask, little girl.”

“I know. But we can do this. Can I … can we?” I gesture between us.

“Come here.” His hands curl their way around my back, his elbows nearly crossing at the back of my waist, our foreheads pressing together.

His breath touches my skin. My hands slide under his clothes to feel him with nothing between us. Our heart rates settle in, our breathing levels out.

“You killed Scraggle,” I whisper.

He takes a long, slow breath. “You’re going to get big and unwieldy.”

“Don’t try to distract me. You killed him.”

“See my field of fucks?” His voice is almost sullen. “It’s barren, and I have not one to spare.”

It startles a laugh out of me.

He settles his massive palm right over my low belly like he’s imagining it swelling with a baby. “You won’t be able to run or fight.”

I sigh and let Scraggle and Ben go, for now. “I know.”

“I need those bullets.” He helps me off him, and we stand, doing an awkward Walk of Shame down the hallways,past people who stare, our hands clamped together like a two-person tug-of-war team about to face a pair of champion wrestlers.

When we hit the end of the hallway, he says. “And finish the wall. It has to be done.”

“Okay.”

“We need more food,” he says, and I get the impression he’s talking to himself more than me. “We need to enlarge your garden and get serious about planting grains.”

He keeps naming things that need to be accomplished.

He says them in the voice of a man calling out stars in the night sky, like the act of naming them is the first step toward conquering them.

Maybe it’s true.

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