Page 24 of Say You'll Stay

He springs away like she’s made of molten lava, his face burning as red, and words stuttering like she caught him jerking off. “Dammit, shit, almost knocked you clean over.”

She stares while he flounders, running a nervous hand through his hair and shifting on the balls of his feet. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be? Fine. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

She tilts her head, trying to puzzle out why he’s acting weird as hell. “Any time someone says fine more than once, it’s never fine.”

Get it together, he tells himself. It’s not like she has any idea that he’s got two ribbed and extra lubricated condoms in his pocket that he kept on the off chance she may want to sleep with him one day in the very, very distant future.

Because that’s not why he kept them. Not at all.

“Looking for more towels for the baby,” he covers. “Yougood? Need something?”

“You didn’t find any?”

“Hmm?”

“Towels?”

“Oh, nope. Not in there.”

She nods, watching him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Okay. Dinner’s ready, mac and cheese tonight.”

She’s been helping out in the kitchen since mixing food and putting it on plates isn’t labor intensive. He wants to be useful too, but isn’t much good at anything around here aside from pointing a gun when needed. There’s been no sign of any other challengers, but supplies are dwindling and another group is becoming a secondary worry.

He follows her back to their room where hot food awaits and ruins it by plowing right into a subject he’s been trying to avoid. “Need to talk about what happens after this. When we leave. Where we go.”

Her face falls, and so does his gut. There are moments when he thought she’d be eager to stay with him and others when he’s not so sure.

“It feels wrong to leave these people,” she says, softly. “The longer we stay, the more guilty I feel.”

“I know. I wish we could hang around here and do our best to keep this place afloat, but finding supplies in the city is already rough. We don’t need to get stuck in a wasteland.”

“So we leave the residents here to get stuck while we push on?”

“They got others to try for them. This isn’t on us.” He feels like a jerk to say it out loud, but what’s best for her and Lucy takes priority.

“You’re right. I just didn’t think I’d feel as bad about it as Ido.”

“Not trying to force you to leave if you don’t want to. If you ah…you know, if you’d rather stay here, maybe I can stick around a bit longer and make sure you’re settled.”

Her deep, horrified frown proves he’s only fucking this up. Trying to make her understand it’s her choice how this goes and she’s not stuck with him, but it only came out sounding like he wants to ditch her. He might stay too and starve with the rest if she refused to leave.

“I want to stay with you,” she replies, the sadness in her words stinging some cold part of his heart that she’s begun to thaw.

“Alright. I’m only making it clear that you aren’t saddled with me and my shit plans.”

That eases some of the hurt he saw a moment ago and her next reply is a lot more teasing and far less tinted with fear of betrayal. “Ourshit plans. We’re doing this together. Good or bad. That’s how a fake marriage works, and I’m not asking for a divorce yet.”

He ducks his head, hiding an amused half-smile. “Okay then. What do you think about Waylon’s Smithsonian idea?”

They’ve been mulling over it for the last couple of days. Rumors say this place is free of corpses and stocked with emergency supplies.

‘I dunno, man, I fucking forgot, okay? I was in a bad way when I got here. My brain’s just starting to feel normal again now.’Waylon claimed, when they asked why he never said anything before.‘They ain’t storing Ativan or morphine in there next to the giant dino statues, so I didn’t give it much thought.’

“If it’s still standing and there’s help there, then that has to be the safest spot in the state,” she replies.

“Yeah, or a trap.”

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