Page 20 of Say You'll Stay

“Yeah, everyone needs something these days, don’t they? Get in line.”

When it’s confirmed the resident didn’t make it, there is arguing and cursing between the standoff and sobbing in the background.

The sickening crack of a knife through a skull forces arippled flinch through Olivia’s body. Andrew put down the one who passed like a rotter, but a bullet isn’t a bite. She’s having a hard time wrapping her head around why he’d bother.

In the end, their attackers are outnumbered by a small margin and escorted out with a handful of the drugs they came for.

“They’ll come back,” Cole tells Andrew. “You can’t let them go like that.”

“What’s the alternative? Shoot all three of them in the head point blank?”

Cole raises a brow with a half-shrug. “I’m not saying that. I’m also notnotsaying that. Everything’s different now and you got people to protect.”

“Gave ‘em something to hold them over. They know we don’t have much more. Maybe they’ll move on now.”

“Even if they do, they won’t be the last.”

“We’ll deal with that when or if it happens. One day at a time, right?”

The one who brought all this to the care home’s doorstep has apparently defected and stayed behind. He pipes in with a regretful reassurance. “They won’t come back, I promise. We all had plans to keep going north. They aren’t looking for me anymore. They’ll move on.”

Cole only offers him a glare, holsters his weapon, and stalks down the hall with a rumble that gets louder once he spies Olivia in the doorway to their room. “I told you to stay in here. Something coulda happened. Got bullets flying all over the damn place.”

“And I told you not to leave,” she counters. They’re a foot apart, locked in a stand-off she refuses to back down from.

Her instinct is to shrink away from conflict. Do anything tokeep him happy, like she told herself she would when they first met, but she forces herself not to cower or beg forgiveness. Cole only gets angry when he’s worried and the odds of her catching a backhand are slim to none.

She can’t spend however much of her life she has left, fearing the next blow, so she stands firm and matches his irritation with her own. If this is all an act and he really will hit her, she should find out now, when there are people to help, rather than later when there won’t be.

This time, he didn’t yell at her like he did in the diner. He kept his word that he wouldn’t repeat that performance.

“They needed me out there,” he replies.

“We need you here.” Her words soften at the edges, and that’s when he deflates.

His shoulders slump as he moves past her to check on Lucy, where she’s still sound asleep. “I’m trying to keep you both safe. I need you to help me out with that. You could have caught a bullet if it got worse before they left.”

“You think they’re coming back?”

“Not sure. Weren’t happy about not getting all the drugs, but the traitor who stayed behind says they’ll move on.”

“They’re outnumbered. They know that.”

“For now,” he replies.

“Thanks for what you did back there.” Andrew appears in the doorway, cutting into their conversation.

Cole tips his head in a quick nod. “Sorry, you lost someone in all that.”

“Me too. Thought it would be the virus we had to worry about but looks like it’s other people who’ll get us instead. Don’t know if this will turn bad again. Like you said, they won’t be the last. Y’all are welcome to stay as long as you need,but if you wanna skip out, I don’t blame you.”

“Have you heard anything about the safe zone?” Olivia asks.

“More like the shit zone. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt that says oh shit, I almost died.”

Cole scowls. “So that’s fucked now, too? Nothing left?”

“Last I heard, only the dead live there now. Good thing you ended up here, if that’s where you were going.”

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