He expected her to be offended, lash out at him for the cheap shot and tell him to go to hell but she surprised him again when she just smiled at him.
“Well if this was a first for you then I appreciate the effort twice as much. As awkward as it was, thank you for trying.” She kept that smile going and reached over to pat his knee lightly and he had to admit she was much smoother at it than he had been. “And hey, you got me laughing instead of crying so that’s good.”
“Still, ya didn’t hafta laugh so hard,” he grumbled, still feeling like an ass even with her trying to make him feel better about it.
“I’m sorry I laughed, it was just funny,” she said, imitating his awkward patting gesture and giggling once again, “But also cute.”
He eyed her then, trying to decide if she was making fun of him and it seemed her mouth turned up in what looked like a sincere smile. He felt the desire he had tried to tamp down rear up again. Was she flirting with him? Did it really matter? Wasn’t like he’d do anything about it if she was anyway.
His experience with women was fucked up. Before prison it had been a string of one night stands with other junkies that he barely remembered, he was so high. And afterwards he had pretty much shunned most people, including women. He had been focused on staying clean and taking care of Gran, he had no time to learn how to talk to women sober.
“Yeah well, glad I could give ya a laugh. Probably won’t be too much to laugh about soon enough. World’s gone to hell in a handbasket and we gotta survive it.”
“We should write that down. A motto for the apocalypse.”
“Naw, too long for a motto.”
“Any other suggestions?”
“
We’re fucked
,” he replied. “Short and to the point.”
“That’s not a very inspiring motto.”
“Not very inspirin’ times.”
“That’s not entirely true. All of us made it through the day whole. That’s inspiring, all things considered.”
He supposed she had a point. As shitty as the day had started, it had ended well enough. They all had their lives and limbs. A place to lay their head and food in their bellies. It wasn’t bad at all, especially when he reclined back on the ground to stare up at the star filled sky. It was beautiful. He had never seen so many stars in his life, always surrounded by the ambient light of cities and towns but out here in the wilderness, there was nothing to dim their light. This was a good place to be right now.
It wasn’t long though before his eyelids began to droop and exhaustion set in. He rolled his head on the ground to look at Veronica and he found her curled up on her side, her head pillowed on her arm, already asleep.
He slowly got to his feet, muscles sluggish and he looked down at Veronica. She was clearly exhausted and he hated having to wake her up. The image of taking her in his arms and carrying her into the tent flashed through his mind and his body tightened. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
It wasn’t just because the thought of her in his arms made him hard. Woman was just as likely to pull her knife on him if she suddenly woke up with his hands on her. So he nudged her leg with the toe of his boot and sure enough, she shot up in a panic, her hand scrambling for the holster on her leg.
“S’okay, ya just fell asleep out here.” She instantly relaxed at the sound of his voice. “C’mon, better get in the tent.”
She nodded, rubbing a hand over her eyes and stood up to kick the fire out. She followed behind him to the tent. The girls didn’t move as they entered, either naturally heavy sleepers or as dead ass tired as he felt. They were sleeping side by side on one side of the tent and the two larger sleeping bags were spread out next to each other on the other side.
Veronica unceremoniously dropped onto one of the sleeping bags, removing her holster but keeping it within reach. She didn’t even bother to climb into the sleeping bag, just curling up on top of it and closing her eyes without any hesitation.
He was hesitating though, staring at the only sleeping bag left. There was no fucking way he was going to spend the night laying right next to her, not after what happened at the fire. He had done enough stupid things in his life that he knew a bad decision when he saw one.
He picked up the sleeping bag and moved it to the far side of the girls. No better cockblock than a wall of kids between them. It would probably be smart for him to make sure the girls were always around him and Veronica in the future. They’d be the perfect mood killer if he started having any of those crazy thoughts again.
Ain’t the time. Ain’t the place.
Subject File # 742
Administrator - You love her?
Subject - Yeah, I think I fell for her the first night at the outlook. I can’t say why exactly but that’s when this feeling started and it hasn’t gone away.
Administrator - You are very lucky.
Subject - Don’t I know it. I thank God every day that I found her.
Malcolm lay in his tent, watching the canvas dome above him begin to lighten with the coming dawn. The symphony of insects reached its natural ending as the birds began chirping the arrival of the sun. The only other sound was the even and steady breathing of Kim, who had an arm around his waist and her cheek resting on his chest.
He was perfectly content in this moment, with the length of her warm body against him, her soft breath tickling his neck and the scent of her surrounding him in an intoxicating haze. He had no idea if this was a one time thing or something more. He knew what he wanted but he wasn’t sure where she stood. There hadn’t been much time to discuss it before things got down and dirty and she had quickly drifted off afterwards before they could say much. So he wanted to enjoy this for as long as he could before reality had to show its face inside the tent.
Unfortunately the peace couldn’t last forever and she stirred next to him. He held his breath as she blinked awake, taking a moment to get her bearings before she looked up at him. It was only when she broke out in a wide smile that he began to breathe again.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice husky with sleep.
“Morning,” he replied, letting his hand skim softly down her arm. “How you feeling?”
“Sore,” she sighed, nestling into the crook of his neck and pressing a kiss there. “But the good kind of sore.”
He could feel her smile against his neck and he couldn’t stop the one that spread across his face, a mixture of relief and pride.
“How are you feeling?” she asked as she pushed herself up to hover over him.
“Pretty damn good,” he said, lifting up to kiss her, his tongue sliding lazily against hers. She sighed happily, her body melting against his, the feel of her naked breasts pressed against his chest stirred his cock to life. He let his hand glide along the curve of her spine to her ass, cupping her and pulling her over to straddle his thigh, his growing erection pressing against her hip.
The loud bang of cast iron pans clanging together cut through the morning quiet and had both of them jumping back in surprise. Jesus, if there was anyone else asleep in the camp they wouldn’t be now.
“Shit,” Kim said, scrambling off of him and gathering up her clothing that was strewn across his tent. “I completely forgot I’m on breakfast duty this morning. Can I get a rain cheque?”
He blinked a few times, his aroused state making it more difficult than normal to focus on what was happening. It was only when she was buttoning up her jeans and pulling on her shoes that he realized the chance to talk about what was happening between them was about to slip through his fingers.
“Can we talk for a second?” She stopped tying her shoes and turned her attention to him, nodding for him to go on. “I just wanted to clear the air, figure out where we stand. I’m feeling you, I have been for a while now. So I need to know if last night was the start of something or was it just a seizing the moment thing?”
“Maybe the idea of seizing the moment is what gave me the extra push but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about this since I met you.” She shifted to kneel in front of him, hands rubbing over her thighs nervously. “Look, I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing. I haven’t dated all that much since Trey was born so I’m probably going to screw this up but we’re hanging on by thread right now. Today could be the last day for any one of us so it seems stupid to hold back the truth.”
She reached out and took his hands in hers. He could feel her trembling and when his thumb caressed her wrist, he could feel her pulse drumming double time. That got his own pulse jacked up, nervous about what she was going to say.
“You are a good man. You have gone above and beyond to help all of us. You do the right thing, no matter what. You are the kind of man I want my son to grow up to be and every time I see you with Trey, teaching him, guiding him, I fall a little bit more in love with you. I know I’m not supposed to say that L word but it’s the end of the world so to hell with social conventions.”
Malcolm thought his face would split in two from the smile that broke out across it. “Never was a fan of social conventions anyway. I love everything about you. I want to be with you for as long as I’ve got on this earth. I want to be a father to your son. I want us to be a family.”
He leaned across the small space and kissed her passionately, pouring everything he felt into the kiss. When they finally parted, they were both breathless.
“I’m glad we’re on the same page. I’ll see you at breakfast,” she said with one final peck and then she was ducking out of the tent, leaving him alone and a little dumbstruck. He shook his head at his luck. End of the world and he finds love.
He was still smiling about it when he climbed out of his tent and saw the camp coming to life, others emerging from their tents while Kim and Lorraine worked on breakfast. He spotted Trey outside his tent, lacing up his sneakers and he called out a good morning as he walked up to him.
“Are you guys going to go look for Travis and that woman today?” Trey asked.
“Not today. It’s too dangerous to go back into that town right now. The locals are going to be looking for us. Any one of us gets caught by them, they’ll make the person talk and that will put the entire camp at risk.”
“But as long as we don’t tell them where we are, they won’t know. I wouldn’t tell, no matter what they did.”
“That’s one of those easier said than done situations. In my experience, you can get a man to say just about anything if you put the right pressure on him.”
“Come on, are you telling me that you’d tell them where the camp was if they had you?”
“If they got to me the right way, yeah I would. It’s not like the movies. Everybody has a breaking point. We all have weaknesses. It’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s one of the things that makes us human.”
“It doesn’t seem right though to just leave them behind,” Trey said as they got to the truck and Malcolm opened the door.
“We aren’t giving up yet. It’s just that it will take some time. If we can figure out where those locals are holed up or the pattern of their patrols, we can plan how to search that town without getting caught.”
“If they are patrolling the town, wouldn’t they use something like radios to communicate with each other like we do?” Trey said. “If we can listen in on their radios, we’d know where they are.”
Well, shit.
The kid was smarter than all of them put together. Not a single one of them, even big, bad, CIA Special Agent himself, had thought about using the radio.
Malcolm grinned at the boy and held his hand up for a high five. “That’s a damn fine idea, son.”
Trey slapped palms with him and the smile on the kid’s face almost blinded him. His chest puffed out as he stood up a little bit straighter. “Thanks, Malcolm.”
“Since it was your idea, I’m going to put you in charge of this operation,” Malcolm said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “The CB in the cube van has got the best reception. Come on.”
Malcolm led the way to the cube van, passing through the camp and Kim waved in their direction. He waved back and they shared a secret smile.
“My mom seems really happy this morning,” Trey said and Malcolm stumbled a step. Did the kid know? Was he trying to tell him he
knew
?
Oh shit.
Malcolm dared a look at Trey and was relieved to see that the kid’s face said he was oblivious. It had been an off-hand comment, nothing meant by it.
“Uh, she must have woken up on the right side of the bed, I guess.” It was a pretty bad attempt by someone who was professionally trained to lie in tense situations but, in his defence, the CIA hadn’t trained him to be ready to lie to a kid about sleeping with his mother.
Thankfully they reached the truck and he nodded for Trey to climb up into the cab, stepping up to stand on the rail to point at the radio.
“Turn it on. Now see that big knob on the right, turn it until the needle is at the top of the dial. Each click is a different frequency. Listen in on each frequency for about two minutes. You hear anything, let me know. Whatever you do, don’t hit the call button on the mic. They’ll hear you if you do.”
“Got it,” Trey replied with a nod, reaching out to shift the knob to the next frequency, dead air coming out of the speakers. Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder and jumped down.