Page 39 of Hate Wrecked

I nod, drawn to the door at the building’s far end. “We should see what’s in there,” I suggest, eyeing the door.

Riley looks at me. “Axe again?”

“If I have to.”

After trying the door, finding it locked, I curse, reaching for my axe.

Riley places a hand on my shoulder. “Hang on, Rambo. Let’s try that.” She points to a window.

We find an old wooden crate and a piece of metal that could double as an improvised crowbar.

Riley gestures toward my shoulders, and I nod. She climbs up, and the feel of her thighs around my head…fuck. I want to throw her down on the ground and spread her open. Taste her again. But I simply blink and clench my jaw, my hands grabbing her thighs as her hands thread in my hair. “I’ve got you,” I say as I reach my feet.

When I approach the building, Riley reaches out, trying the window. It lifts up. “Oh, thank God,” she exclaims, opening it all the way, leaning forward.

“You okay?” I ask, looking up. The swell of her breasts is all I can see.Jesus…

“Yeah. There’s a bed right below the window. I got it.” She pulls herself in the window, and I step back, steadying her legs. They slip in and out of my sight, and I hear a small crash. “I’m okay. It’s fine,” she yells.

I smile, running to the door. A few seconds later, she opens it, dust covering her top and face. “It’s dirty in here.”

I look her up and down. “I can see that. Not the first time you’ve been dirty, though.”

Riley glares, but I see the redness in her cheeks, and I know she enjoys this more than my grumpiness. We never teased; we never played. Not then. We confessed to each other, and we touched each other. I should have been her friend. That’s what she needed more than anything.

Or maybe what I should have been was a fucking bodyguard and nothing else. A nameless face that blended in the background.

Sometimes, I wish she never saw me, that I could have watched her in my silent torment.

I never wrote about us in the journal I kept back then because I was too busy stealing moments with her.

If we had left each other alone, what version of ourselves would have been born on the page? Ones that lasted? Not this. Not these scared people in this forgotten place.

Inside, there’s a small dining area with a tiny kitchen. I open the fridge. No power. Like everything else, the contents are gone, just as the captain said. Everything emptied before building can commence for the research facility. A scribbled note on the fridge door catches my eye as I let the door shut. I run my hand over the scrawl.

It makes the part of me that longs to tell stories stir in my chest. I brush it away and turn back to Riley. “I don’t think we would have wanted to find anything in there.”

She laughs and points to a door. I nod and walk toward it. I don’t want her to walk through any doors in case there’s danger.

Just as I hoped, I find a pantry. Canned foods line the walls, along with bulk bags of flour and sugar. And I find coffee. Riley rushes past me, transfixed. “Oh my God, smell it. Just smell it. It smells like heaven and the sun, and I need a damn IV of this.”

I shake my head. “You’re going to have to learn how to make a fire if you want a hot cup of that in the morning.”

She lets go of the bag. “How do you make coffee on a fire? Can’t we just do a cold drip?”

I shrug. There’s a coffee pot, but we can’t plug it in. “We’ll figure it out.” God forbid she doesn’t have her coffee. I’ll pay for that.

I know how she used to take her coffee—with a shot mixed in. It was the only way she could face the chaos of that house.

I shake the thought away, taking stock of our surroundings. “This is good. This is really good. We can catch fish with the poles and use everything here.”

“It is good,” Riley repeats, walking out of the panty.

“And we won’t have to stay in that little tent together. We can sleep in these beds.”

“It’ll be weird, though,” Riley says, unsure.

“What will?”

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