I was struck numb. Before he exited the bathroom, I quickly slid beneath the top covers and stared up at the ceiling fan light. The entire fragrance of my room changed just from him being in it. I could smell his deodorant, his sweat and the distinct smell of his boots. The latter of which I didn’t find pleasant.
“You can’t sleep in here,” I said when he crossed the room and picked his limp pillow up off the floor beside my bunk. It was then that I realized Zoey was resting on the floor beside Drake’s duffle bag, looking just as put out as I felt. She huffed softly when our eyes met. He’d kicked her off the bed at some point and she was not happy about it.
“Well, I am tonight, so get over it. Why are you being all weird? I’ve seen you naked, bruised and bloody and with bad morning hair. I couldn’t care less about your mismatched bra and panties. All I want to do is get some sleep. Like you.”
“You’ve never seen me naked,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Glaring at his backside, I watched him turn off the overhead and move through the shadows of the dull night light coming from a solitary plug outlet beside the lower bunk of Kris’s bed. I’d never seen Drake in tight-fitting underwear before. The amount of scars on his body was a bit dizzying. And since I found it hard to look away, I was clearly still attracted to the male form, no matter how much I hated the thought of any relationship at the moment.
“Stop staring at my ass,” he joked as he adjusted his bedding.
“I…I wasn’t,” I stammered. Was I? Not that it mattered. I didn’t see Drake that way, but I was still a woman who appreciated a good-looking, semi-naked man.
He flopped onto the mattress, atop the blankets and sheet with a loud sigh. “Whatever. G’night, Ry.”
Ry? We had nicknames now? I’d missed that memo. Without answering him, I rolled over, pressing the front of my body into the wall, listening to Drake’s breathing until it slowed to a steady pace. Just before my eyelids slid back to a close, the sound on the other side of the room changed.
Drake was snoring.
* * *
“I’m telling you that’s not possible.” Drake shoved his overloaded spoon of oatmeal into his mouth and gave me a dirty look.
“Find me a recorder, and I’ll prove it to you.”
“You’re lying. You just don’t want to share your room. And before you ask, Ryder already refused to make new arrangements. You’re stuck with me, baby.”
With a grunt, I spooned in my own mouthful of hot cereal and chased it with fresh orange juice. It was easy to miss a lot of things at the Ark, like Connor, but the fresh food didn’t disappoint. “Nope. I wish I was. Believe me, I listened to your nasal passages vibrate for hours.”
Kris slid onto the bench beside me, her tray slamming down on the table too hard. “Do what?” she asked. “Never mind, I don’t wanna hear.”
“Drake snores,” I said.
A rolled-up napkin sailed across the table and landed next to my glass. “Liar,” he grumbled.
Ignoring him with a shrug, I leaned toward Kris as she began eating. I whispered, “Where were you all night? When I went to bed, you weren’t there. When I got up, you’d obviously not been in your bed at all.”
She made an unintelligible noise and I caught the rosy blush on her cheeks before she covered the side of her face with her hand, resting her elbow on the table as if she was uninterested in the conversation. But I knew Kris better. She was embarrassed. With a quick glance around the table I realized no one else was paying much attention to her, so I dropped it for the time being. But the moment the two of us were alone, I planned on hanging her upside down over the edge of the closest roof until she told me what she’d been doing all night long. I doubted it was sleep.
“Where’s Skip?” Jacks asked as he slid into the spot opposite me. Lily happily flailed her feet from inside her stroller as he gently maneuvered it around the table.
“Lily!” Kris squealed, jumping up from her breakfast with more enthusiasm than normal. She rounded the table and bent over to play with the baby, tickling her toes and smothering her face with kisses. I smiled briefly, wishing I was able to do the same.
“He wasn’t feeling well this morning, so he’s sleeping in.” Winchester was the one to answer Jacks’ question and we all fell quiet. Even the baby calmed down, trading her cries of joy at seeing Kris for a mellow coo as she explored the curls of the older girl’s hair with her tiny hands.
“I’ll check on him after breakfast,” I volunteered.
Winchester nodded. “Thanks. I’m going to be in the medical wing today.”
“Ah, your first day as a nurse,” Drake teased.
I flicked his napkin back at him, sneering when it connected with the side of his neck. “Be nice. Win’s going to love it there. He’ll probably be stitching you up one of these days, so don’t piss him off.”
Ryder mentioned at some point the worst thing he’d seen there was a broken leg after a man fell off one of the garden roofs. All I knew about the facility was that they could check your temperature and set a mean cast. I doubted anything could be done for Skip, except being given hospital grade pain relievers. There was one actual Doctor and a handful of staff under him that he had trained himself. He seemed more than a little excited to have Winchester join the med team. With his background over the last year taking care of me, he’d had plenty of practice in the emergency medical field. I was his most popular patient. Not by choice, of course.
Opposite from the small medical unit there was an office that housed all the paperwork collected on each community member after their arrival. Our ‘background checks’ as Drake liked to call them, which were basic questionnaires about our past, were kept in a locked filing cabinet. I only knew this because Ryder had made a point of explaining to us that our answers would be kept under lock and key – confidential, he’d said. To ensure honesty. I doubted anyone in the community had answered the questions honestly. Like the one that asked if we’d previously had children before the plague. Why did they care? I left it blank at first, then went back and wrote in, ‘Unable to have children’. Or the one I considered more than a little inappropriate: ‘How many sexual partners did you have before the outbreak?’ Why the hell would anyone need to know that? I skipped that one with a laugh, as I did the one after it – ‘Have you ever been diagnosed and/or treated with a sexually transmitted disease?’ No, I hadn’t, unless my ex-husband could be considered an STD. I thought it funny to let them squirm on my lack of an answer.
Winchester had to dig Drake’s questionnaire out of the trash and hand it in with his own guessed-at answers. I didn’t know why he cared, but it was obvious he was at least trying to get along with the bigger, moody brute that Drake was most of the time. Plus, I had a feeling Winchester was afraid we would all be kicked out if we didn’t adhere to the ‘rules’. I appreciated his efforts, truly, I did. But I also eyed the trashcan that day with a sort of morbid fascination. And it took all my control to not ball my own paper up and toss it inside the metal wastebasket. The ‘leaders’ could kiss my ass if they didn’t like my ingenuous answers. But I’d handed it in. For Skip. For Lily and Jacks. Not for me. None of it was for me.
There was an entire level of the main building we’d not seen; the only above the ground level, and that’s where I assumed the leaders spent most of their time determining how they could rule the world that had been left broken at their feet. Not that I’d spent any quality time with them. Which I found as odd.
I opened my mouth to ask if the others had yet to come across the Ark’s leaders during the few days we’d been wandering around the property, when a boy with sandy-blond hair and rounded brown eyes walked up to our table. He smiled sheepishly, adjusting the food tray in his hands.
“Hey, Kris,” he said.
Her hands flew into her lap and she straightened her back, appearing at least two inches taller. “Hey,” she said.
I waited for an introduction, bu
t the two seemed quite content staring at each other rather than remembering they weren’t alone in the room.
“Uh, Hello. I’m Riley. And you are…?” I arched an eyebrow at the boy, despite trying not to look too intimidating.
He laughed nervously. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve heard a lot about you, Riley. I’m Colton.” The boy set down his tray and reached a hand across the table, extending it toward me. His shy smile broke wide open, and I could almost see my reflection on his teeth. His parents must have spent big bucks on his dental work. No one was born with teeth like his. Aside from his stunningly expensive smile, the rest of him was rather average. He was taller than Winchester and Skip, not quite as tall as Drake and Jacks, and nearly half their weight. I guessed him to be in his early 20’s, though he still had a baby face. His voice was low, but inviting in a warm way. It was immediately clear where Kris had been the night before when he looked at her.
I hated him.
Reluctantly, my hand reached out to meet his. “Colton,” I repeated with exaggerated care. I wanted the word to roll around my tongue, as if his identity would give me some sort of insight into his intentions with my surrogate charge.
Without an invitation, Colton took a seat beside Drake and turned his tray around until the food on the plate faced him. He took a sip of red juice - cranberry, maybe? - then smiled his shy grin at Kris, who had suddenly become a mute.
“Yeah,” he said. “But you can call me Cole. That’s what my friends do.” His spoon clanked against his bowl while he ate his oatmeal. I felt my eyes narrow as I inspected his table manners. When a swift kick under the table from Drake snapped me out of my stupor, I glared at him then at Kris. She hadn’t once looked at me. Her body language was stiff, though she looked up from her tray every few seconds to smile at Cole.
“Nice to meet you, Cole,” Winchester said, offering his hand to shake. The rest of the table greeted him kindly, asked him the basics, including how he came to arrive at the Ark, but I heard none of it. I just wanted to know his age, because he was obviously too mature for Kris.
“How old are you, Colton?” I wasn’t going to use his nickname. I refused to get that comfortable with the kid.
The table fell into a sort of awkward silence, with only Lily having a noisy conversation with her right hand. Colton swallowed what was in his mouth and sent a nervous glance at Kris, who had finally looked up to glare at me. The heat from her stare burned into my face, but I didn’t take my eyes off the boy across from us.
“Um, I’m twenty. But my birthday is in a month, so I guess I’m almost twenty-one…” his uncertain voice trailed off as he glanced from me to his tray.
I set my spoon down and folded my hands on the table in front of me. “Are you telling us, or asking?”
“Riley, jeez,” Kris said. A quick glance at her was enough to see she was mortified. She had her hand on her cheek again, covering the scar that ran the length of her jaw.
“I know you didn’t come home last night, and now I understand why. But this is the first I’ve heard of your friend. Is it too much to assume I might want to know a little about him?”
Kris looked like she wanted to shrivel up in her clothes and die. I had a flashback of being sixteen and introducing my parents to one of my new guy friends. It went like more of an interrogation than a friendly meeting. Of course, my mother knew the moment she met the boy that we wanted to be more than just friends.
I sucked in air and blew it out slowly, picking up my spoon again and forcing myself to relax. “Sorry. I’m just curious,” I said to Colton.
“It’s okay,” he laughed.
Winchester cleared his throat loudly and stood from the table. “I’m uh…going to get to work. You all have a great morning!”
“Yeah, me too. I mean, I got stuff to do,” Drake said, also standing with his tray, even though I knew he didn’t have a title like Winchester did yet. Like me, he was avoiding being assigned a job.
Jacks bent down to adjust Lily in her seat. “Wait for me.”
Within a handful of seconds, the table cleared and the only ones left were me, Kris and her new admirer.
Colton ran his hand along the side of his tray and offered up a quick smile. “Guess I’m done.”
“I’m done, too,” she said, moving to get up.
“Wait, Kris…” I started, but she shot me a warning glance that we’d have a nice and loud fight – later.
As the two sauntered off, I called after them, “It was nice to meet you, Colton! See you tonight, Kris!”
When I looked down at my oatmeal, any semblance of hunger had passed. No matter how much people try to be different, it seems whether we liked it or not, we all became some version of our own parents.
* * *
“Riley, excuse me…Riley?” I came to a reluctant stop in the dirt, with Zoey sniffing at my feet as Ryder ran up to us. His hands were empty, which was rare for him. He was a list kind of guy, and seemed to go everywhere with his clipboard of To-Do’s.
“Morning, Ryder,” I said with a forced smile.
“Morning! Beautiful day, isn’t it? I just love this breeze! Really keeps things fresh, doesn’t it?” He jammed his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out, cracked his knuckles and jammed them back into his jeans.
“Sure,” I answered.
I untangled Zoey from her leash and continued walking back toward the lodge. My hope was that I’d stumble upon Kris, but Ryder fell in line beside us, seemingly interested in continuing with a conversation.
“Anyway,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you and your friend Drake…about something important?”
With a soft yank, I pulled on Zoey’s leash and she pivoted to a stop. “About what? Are you kicking us out?” I said it with a wink, intending it to be a joke, but inside I was hoping he would say, Yep! We don’t want you here! Pack your bags and leave at once! But he didn’t. Shame.
With a small laugh, he said, “Of course not! Actually, I have a job for both of you, if you’ll take it.”
“What kind of job?” The sun was already beating down on my neck, and I reached up to move my hair and cover the spot that was getting too warm. The cool breeze did little to soften the heat from the sun if you stood still for too long.
“Well, you don’t seem very interested in working around here,” he said.
I nodded, agreeing with him. “Sorry. Some of us aren’t exactly fit for domestic work.” Again, it was meant to be a joke, but Ryder appeared to take my comment quite seriously based on his stiff nod and stern expression.
“Yes, I noticed. We thought…I mean, this is only if you are interested, of course…that you might be better suited with a job outside of the Ark.”
“So, you are kicking us out?” It wasn’t a joke anymore.
He gawked at me before giving his shirt collar a quick tug. “No, no, of course not! See, we need scouts – runners. Usually we send them out in pairs to look for supplies we don’t have here or to restock…canned goods, water, always, of course. Oh, and batteries, that sort of thing. Anyway, one of our scouting pairs is down to one. We thought…I mean, the leaders thought, that you and Drake might be interested in the job.” He paused, put on his serious face once again and tapped my arm with one narrow finger-tip. “It would start as a trial period, of course.”
“Of course,” I repeated his words back at him, while mentally counting how many times he’d used them in the last three minutes.
“So, are you? Interested, I mean.” He smiled, then frowned, chewed on his lip, and smiled again.
A job that took me out of the Ark on a regular basis? I couldn’t say no to that. But I wasn’t entirely sure Drake would be interested. I imagined him splitting the moment he stepped away from the Ark’s borders. In fact, I was so positive that was exactly what he’d do, that I was afraid to ask him.
“I’ll have to talk to Drake. See if he’s interested in helping out,” I said carefully.
“Great! Of course, that’s totally fine!
No rush, just let me know by the end of the day what you guys decide, okay?”
End of the day? That seemed pretty rushed to me. “Sure. I’ll just have to go find Drake then.”
“Of course,” he said again with a smile.
I laughed, but Ryder seemed concerned about what I found funny. Rather than lecture him on his lack of a vocabulary, I tugged on Zoey’s leash, giving her clear to stand. “Okay, I’ll find you later?”
He nodded. “Yep! I’ll be around. You have a fantastic morning, Riley!” He waved as he walked away with what I thought was an extra bounce in his step. Perhaps I’d fixed a problem he had by offering to consider the job. I didn’t know, but regardless, he seemed happy I didn’t immediately turn it down.
When I went inside and downstairs, I found the room empty. No sign of Kris, or our freeloading roommate, Drake, so I decided to check in on Skip like I had promised at breakfast. He wasn’t in his room either, however.
Standing in the hallway with Zoey still attached to her leash, I spoke to the empty walls. “Where the hell did everybody go?”
CHAPTER SIX
It took half an hour of wandering the grounds to find a face I recognized. It was rare to see Fern down on the ground. In fact, the more I thought about it as she waved me over to a drinking station once she caught sight of me, I realized I’d only ever seen her on the roof-top gardens.
“Riley, right?” she asked with a big smile. She was wearing a long and loose-fitting dress with a braided belt cinched tightly around her soft midsection. The days were quickly cooling, so in replacement of her sleeveless top, she had on a layer of shirts, topped with a crocheted sweater. Her feet were clad in gladiator sandals, showing off her unpainted toes.
I returned a grin of my own and shook her hand. “Nice to see you again, Fern.”
When she was done drinking from the large filtered water jug, she offered me her tin cup. When I passed, she set it back on a makeshift bench and wiped her hands on the side of her long skirt.
Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Page 5
