Page 13 of Savagely Yours
“Don’t…” He took my hand again. “Don’t worry about that. I’m not secretly plotting to leave you high and dry or something.”
“But it’s crossed your mind.” I walked alongside him, our pace far more leisurely than moments ago. “It’s okay if it has. I’ve never been on lockdown. I’m not sure if you have, but it can’t be easy.”
“Do you think about leaving me?”
“I dream about it. They’re nightmares, for the most part.”
“You’re scared.”
“Very.”
He nodded. “Good. I’ve been waiting for you to say so.”
“Yeah, but I’m not like you, Dez. I don’t have ‘former Navy SEAL’ anywhere on my resume. I don’t even go hiking because all it would take is one mosquito bite, and I’m breaking down the tent and going home.”
He laughed, a brusque and quiet huff that barely moved his shoulders. “We’re alike in many ways, Tapley.”
“Yeah, right. Like how?”
“I’m scared, too.”
I looked up at him, expecting to see something in his expression that meant he was joking, but his focus was on where our hands were joined. If he never let go, I would never pull my hand away. I needed him, and I hated how desperately I did, but in those nightmares, I clung to him like a tree branch. I begged him not to leave, screamed it at some points, and in the ones where he walked out the door anyway, I fell into a black pit of my terrified brain’s representation of hell.
“I like this,” I said. “Getting out of the condo. Doing something normal like walking down the street holding a good-looking guy’s hand.”
He let go.
I swallowed ahardknot of pain.
“There’s no more normal,” he said. “And, if my suspicions are correct, shit’s about to get even more wild.”
The knot got lodged in my voice box.
“Tapley, you remember what happened to Chris, right?” He gently gripped his hair before passing his fingers through the strands. “Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t. I can’t forget it, so it would be better if none of that’s on your mind.”
I hated this.
I hated depending, hated fearing.
Dez was only one person, as human as I was, but without him, I would have to face, head-on, the reality of how ill-prepared I was for societal collapse. Without Dez, I would have waited for instructions from officials before remotely thinking about getting cash and preparing a go-bag. It made me nauseous to think about whether the collapse had gradually occurred, and I simply hadn’t been paying attention. All it took for the spread of an illness was for enough people to be convinced it didn’t exist. And we still didn’t know what “it” was.
I fell to my knees.
Dez started to lower to the ground with me, but someone called his name. He looked over his shoulder, and a man angled his head, motioning for Dez to join him. Dez reassured me that he would be back, walked over to the man, and took one more glance at me before engaging in the conversation.
The air was thinning, but I couldn’t remove the mask. It wasn’t clear whether the pathogen was only passed in close proximity or lingered in death clouds in the air. Still, even in a breathable mask, I was struggling. My entire future slowly faded like dying light at sunset:
No house with the decorated entryway.
No Larke Tapley, Attorney General.
