Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  When Riley’s ocean-tinted eyes opened, Drake’s face was the first she focused on. She smiled, then frowned and pushed herself into a sitting position, confused about how she came to be sleeping on his chest. Though she didn’t appear to be angry, he still moved his hand slowly, silently asking if he could touch her face before he did. When she didn’t object, he tucked her hair behind an ear and brushed his knuckles along her cheek. He couldn’t believe they had found her, and how close she’d been to him over the last month. As he studied her sleepy features, his mouth remembered exactly how soft her lips were, and what she tasted like, and he wanted to kiss her good morning, but she wasn’t ready for that. Drake knew something truly terrible had happened. He knew the moment he saw the camper. Connor would never understand what he and Keel felt there. All that dark energy and pain, all the blood and violence. Riley would forever be changed, but Drake still loved her. In fact, he loved her more. So, after his knuckles reached her jaw, he took his hand away and stretched out his neck before doing something that would upset her.

  “Morning,” he mumbled. His own voice was thick and gravelly from exhaustion.

  She winced, then stretched her back. “Morning,” she answered softly.

  Her knees were still propped on top of one of his thighs, much closer to his manhood than was wise so early in the morning, and he struggled to focus on anything other than her proximity to his favorite body part. He counted backwards from one hundred and tried not to think about how she was arching her back, bending the sleep out of her spine. When he got to eighty, she began to remove her outer shirt, and mumbled something about washing her face, and his dick twitched. He begged his body to remain sedate, and continued counting. Seventy. Sixty. She stood, but swayed in front of him, and he used a hand to brace her hip while she steadied herself.

  “My foot,” she said, stretching it. “It fell asleep.”

  He had to hold her hip to the count of forty-five while she leaned into his hand and rotated her numb ankle. He thought the feel of his fingers gently pressing into her flesh was going to make him explode. You treacherous louse, he snarled inside his head, when the twitch turned into something else and the front of his jeans became tight. Hoping she wouldn’t notice, he casually pulled one of the throw pillows onto his lap and removed his hand. He didn’t watch her backside as she stumbled away toward the bathroom. His early morning wood couldn’t handle it.

  RILEY

  I was still half-asleep by the time I splashed cold tap water onto my face. My heavy head felt as if it was full of stones, and I looked around at the cabin with an odd sensation, like reality and fantasy had become one thing, and I was walking straight through it, untouched by both. I heard every creak of the floorboards when I walked, felt every draft of cool air on my skin, saw every color with exceptional clarity. There was something familiar about the morning, like I’d already consumed it, and the leftover twang left a bad taste on the back of my tongue. Perhaps, I thought, after splashing another handful of water onto my cheeks, it was because we’d left the cabin just the day before, thinking we wouldn’t need to return. Maybe I’d had the same dream two nights in a row. Or, it could be that I was right all along, and had somehow ripped reality in half, and walked that delicate balance between life and death, real and not real. It wasn’t the worst place I’d ever been, recalling my emotional state just a few snow storms ago. Not even close.

  A soft rapping sound on the doorframe tore my eyes away from the small decorative mirror above the sink and Kris stood behind the curtain, smiling at me.

  “I’d invite you in, but there’s not enough room for the two of us,” I said, smiling back. She’d grown so much since the last time I saw her. And in her baggy clothes and overstuffed coat, I couldn’t tell she was pregnant, if she even was still.

  “That’s okay,” she answered softly, pushing the curtain open another inch. “Are you alright?”

  “Me?” I looked into the mirror and used a hand towel to blot my face dry. “Just trying to wake up. I’m surprised I fell asleep at all.”

  She nodded. “But I mean…are you okay?”

  We looked at each other, woman to woman, and though I didn’t have to say much to explain how broken inside I felt, she was still a kid in so many ways. “I’ll be okay,” I assured her, hoping the words were true.

  “Okay,” she said, picking at a crack in the wood frame. Her hand fell back to her side and she rolled her eyes toward the others. “What is Cole doing here,” she whispered.

  “Oh, that…” I said, carefully hanging the towel back onto its rod. “It’s a long story.”

  She grimaced and then shuffled her feet. “I don’t want him here,” she said.

  “Me either, believe me. If not for Jin, that little shit would be dead already.”

  She glanced sharply up at me, shocked. But then a smile began to tease at the corners of her thin mouth and she laughed. It brought Zoey to the bathroom, who pushed the curtain aside to stare in at me.

  “It’s okay, Zoey,” I soothed, rubbing her head. “Just girl talk, is all.”

  “I think she knew,” Kris said. She backed away from the doorway and let me out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. “She’s been acting crazy ever since we got to the lodge.”

  “Really?” I leaned down and embraced the dog, something she usually wasn’t too keen to partake in, but she wagged her tail so fast it became nothing but a black blur, and when I released her, she placed a paw on my leg for more. “You’re a good dog, Zoey. The best,” I told her, letting her lick my face. The hairs around her mouth which had been slowly graying before, had gone completely white.

  “I think Kris is right,” Connor said. He’d moved from his chair to behind the kitchen counter. “The dog must have known. Somehow, she felt you, too.”

  The last word hung in the air, and I glanced between Connor and where Drake was still sitting on the papasan chair, dragging his hands through his hair, trying to wake up, I assumed.

  “I didn’t think it was you,” I stated. It was true. I wanted them to know that.

  Jin handed me a hot mug, and I sipped it. More tea. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “Jacks!” Kris said. “He’s going to be so worried that we didn’t come back last night. But when he sees you…” Her voice trailed off, remembering something I hadn’t been present for. Her face went blank, and she walked around the counter toward the door, where her boots waited. Cole backed away, giving her a wide berth, but I noticed that he was staring warmly at her.

  I didn’t know what to do about Cole. With Kris there, I couldn’t tie him up to another tree, nor could I take him into the woods and shoot him. But I didn’t want him following us anywhere. He came to find her, to return her to the Ark, and that wouldn’t happen unless he dragged her across my dead body first.

  With a heavy sigh, I glanced back over at Drake, who had finally stood. He stretched and looked over his shoulder at me with a smile. With the mug hovering on my lips, I studied him. He was leaner, though still strong enough to break another man in half, but under several layers of clothes, someone could easily misjudge him. Connor was thinner too, more gaunt-like in the face, and different looking with the short hair and healing burns. He remained beautiful though. His eyes still pierced through everything they looked at, clear and sharp like the sky on a perfect summer day. But something else was there, I realized. Something darker. Not fear, not loss. Hate. The seething kind that is nearly impossible to hide from others, because it changes one’s expression without their knowledge. And I saw this hatred each time Connor’s eyes landed on Drake.

  As I sipped my tea, I watched the two of them move around the cabin carefully, intentionally ignoring the other, and began to see how bad things had gotten between them. Something catastrophic bubbled under the surface, something dangerous. When I set my empty mug down on the counter, I realized that nothing about our situation was going to be fun. It was going to be a nightmare.

  Chapter Seventeen

&nb
sp; JACKS

  He spent the greater part of the day and the first half of the night locked in his room with the baby. But for her late-night feeding he would need more boiled water, which was in the kitchen. The others didn’t return during the day, and it scared Jacks more than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone else, even though just the day before, he felt as if it was only him and Lily on a desperate island together. What the hell was he supposed to do if the others didn’t come back? He sure as fuck wasn’t going to leave the baby under Ashlyn’s care, and he couldn’t fathom hiking out into the wilderness with Lily strapped onto his chest. That would be absurd. He knew it. So, what the fuck was he going to do?

  After pressing his ear to the door and listening to the empty hall for a solid minute, he opened it slowly, using a flashlight to check and see if Ashlyn’s door was closed. It was. He stepped into the hall, and struck metal with his foot, sending a banging echo down the hall.

  “Shit,” he hissed, retreating into his room.

  She’d left a tray outside his door with food. In a loosely covered bowl was what appeared to be thin soup, though he’d sloshed most of it out onto the carpet with his foot. There was a package of crackers wrapped in cellophane, and a bottled mineral water that was half-full. He hadn’t heard her put the tray down, in fact, all day he hadn’t heard her once. He gathered up the tray and tossed the package of crackers and water bottle onto his bed, then closed the door, surprised that his noisy exit hadn’t woken the baby.

  He carried the spilled mess back downstairs and into the kitchen. In the dark, he dunked a clean cup into the water bucket by the sink and poured it over the soup bowl, then set that on the counter. It took awhile to make the bottle, and every time he scooped formula out of one of the last few cans he had left, his stomach dropped. Jacks had no idea how he would feed his child once the powered formula was gone. It was a constant worry, a constant ache in his heart.

  As he was shaking the bottle to get as much of the formula lumps out that he could, a soft sucking sound from the kitchen doorway startled him. Ashlyn stood near the door, with Lily fidgeting in her arms. The baby was suckling her fist, hungry and impatient for a meal.

  He stared at the woman, who was in a sleep shirt that stopped at the knees. Ashlyn’s hair was wild and loose, and the baby was playing with it, oblivious to any danger. If the woman didn’t scare the shit out of him, he would almost think her beautiful. But Connor had told him enough about what happened, and how clear he felt that the girl was a danger to them all. Jacks wasn’t going to take any chances with Lily.

  He set the bottle down on the counter, and put a hand out for the child. When Ashlyn smiled at him, but didn’t move, he took a careful step forward. The exchange was slow and awkward. But once Lily was safe in his arms, Jacks felt his blood pressure lower and the pounding in his head quiet. And he felt foolish. Ashlyn wasn’t a monster. In fact, despite what Connor had said, she still brought him dinner, no strings attached.

  “I heard something,” she said to him, leaning against the counter. “I hope it’s okay that I checked on her.”

  He didn’t like standing in the dark, so reached around until his hand found the flashlight. Lily squirmed in his arm, eager to touch the light, but he pointed it down at the floor between him and Ashlyn. It was enough light for them to see each other, but not much more.

  “Thanks,” he said tersely. “I didn’t hear her cry.”

  “She wasn’t. Crying, I mean,” Ashlyn said with a smile. “But when I saw the tray was gone, and looked in on you, she was alone. You don’t like to leave her alone.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I try not to.”

  She laughed, and though it wasn’t a completely horrible sound, Jacks’ hands still went clammy. “Relax, I just saw that she was awake, all by herself…figured this was exactly what you were doing.” She gestured to the bottle on the counter. “Just wanted to be helpful.”

  “Well, thanks.” He snatched the bottle and tucked it under his arm, then pointed the beam beyond Ashlyn, into the large sitting room. “I should get her back to bed.”

  As he walked by her, she reached a hand out and snagged his arm. “What did he tell you?”

  “Who?” Jacks asked, not looking down at her.

  “Connor. Drake. What did they say to make you scared of me?”

  He looked at her then, and let out a soft laugh. “You don’t scare me, Ashlyn.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” she said, shaking her head, but keeping her smile. “Just now, when you saw me with her, you looked like, I don’t know, like you thought I might toss her into the soup pot and make a baby stew.”

  Jacks tried not to grimace. “That’s absurd.”

  “Yes, it is,” she laughed. Again, not the worst sound in the world.

  “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just late, and I’m tired, you know.”

  She still had hold of his arm, but instead of gripping into his flesh, she began to caress him. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Things have been hard. I know.”

  He didn’t say anything, but didn’t ask her to stop, either. Her hand moved from his elbow up to his shoulder, then down again, like she was trying to soothe him. It had a surprising sedative-like effect, and he swayed with the movement. When Lily’s hand came out of her mouth and accidentally popped him on the cheek, he regained his bearings and stepped away from Ashlyn.

  “It’s late,” he said. As he hurried through the next room, being careful to dodge the furniture and random mess they’d all left about the place, she cleared her throat from the kitchen doorway.

  “I’m not a horrible person, Jacks. Not like they may have told you. I just don’t want to be alone. Is that horrible…is it a horrible thing to want to be with someone?”

  He tripped over his own feet, and turned around, lighting her up with the beam of his flashlight. “No, that’s not horrible.”

  “Then you understand me?” she asked. She’d crossed her legs and her arms, which made her look ten times smaller than normal. She definitely didn’t look horrible to him. In her sleep shirt, in the dark, her round eyes anxious, she looked vulnerable. She looked normal. And more than a little sexy.

  “I think I do,” he said.

  “When you’re done feeding her, and she’s asleep, I’ll be awake,” Ashlyn said. “I don’t sleep anymore.”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t sure if her words were a simple statement, or an open invitation.

  He left her standing there, barely dressed, and took the stairs up two at a time. The rushing of adrenaline through his body didn’t stop flooding through him until the baby had finished half of her meal. When she was done, he held her to his chest and patted her back until she burped in her sleep, then set her down in her bed. She was asleep long before Jacks left his room and went to Ashlyn’s unlocked door. She was still asleep when Jacks pressed Ashlyn against the wall of her room, lifted her shirt, and lowered the front of his pants enough to get access. The baby was still soundly sleeping fifteen minutes later, when Jacks, dizzy from the rushed and mechanical sex, stumbled back into his room and collapsed onto the bed. He thought he would feel better, but he didn’t. He was just as hollow as he’d been the day before, and the weeks before that. Ashlyn’s offering had done nothing for his soul.

  ASHLYN

  Before the virus, Ashlyn would never have dreamt of having empty sex as a form of manipulation. Not until she was alone, surrounded only by dead people and a handful of the living, did she realize that the world was not meant for women. Her especially. She knew she was pretty, attractive even, if she dressed the right way and did her makeup and hair, but men didn’t care about any of that when they realized more dicks were walking the streets than vaginas. She was a target, simply because of her sex. So, when she set out on the streets of Santa Rosa, leaving her daddy’s winery behind, she did so with the appearance of a man. She put on her brother in law’s jeans, so they were baggy and low on her narrow hips, and used an ace bandage to
smash her already small chest down as far as the material would allow before draping her body in several layers that made her look bulkier than she truly was.

  She wasn’t tiny, but she wasn’t strong either. All she had to do through high school was smile at her coaches and they’d let her walk the mile, or sit out and record minutes. She didn’t think that one day, she’d actually need the upper body strength to lift a five-gallon bottle of drinking water by herself. In the office, the men always did it. She surely didn’t think she would need the cardio endurance required to flee down several city blocks in one sprint, in search of a safe hiding spot. Ashlyn never would have imagined that the type of tennis shoes she picked out of an abandoned store would be more important than her brand of favorite nail polish. But, the world had changed, changing her with it, and she hated what she had become.

  The first man she ran into didn’t speak, which worked great for her, because she didn’t speak to him either. At dusk, on a cool and clear night, he came out of the campground shadows slowly, afraid that perhaps Ashlyn was armed, and she was. Not with a gun, because no one had ever shown her how to use one, but she always carried a knife. She sat up and squared her shoulders, trying to look taller in the light of her small campfire, and he approached cautiously, gesturing at the fire, as if all he wanted was to sit and get warm. She let him, partly because she was terrified of being alone, but also because she was terrified to talk and give away the fact that she wasn’t a twenty-something clean-shaven man hidden under all her baggy clothes and the wide brim hat with the camo pattern that she had tucked and pinned her hair into.

  He shared a can of beans with her, and she offered him some water. They sat in silence, watching the flames of the fire, and jumping when living things snapped the fallen twigs in the dark around them. When the night had grown too long, she’d quietly retreated into one of the five tiny cabins, which consisted of four walls, a roof and one wooden plank bed. There was no lock on the door. She didn’t sleep a wink that night, certain a smile or a gesture gave away her femininity, but the man slept just fine. From the cabin next to hers, she listened to him snore for a solid six hours, until he woke at dawn and left a bag next to the fire pit with a can of mandarin oranges and a sack of granola inside. She decided to stay at the campsite for a second night, because maybe he was a good guy, and maybe he would come back and she wouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open and her hand wrapped around the hilt of her knife. She waited up till the moon shifted to the west, and fell asleep alone, with no visitors.