Love in the Time of the Dead

by Tera Shanley

  Mitchell stood, completely unconcerned with his lack of clothing. His hand hung in the air between them. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means I thought you could be unaffected by this like you are with every other woman you take to bed!”

  “How many women do you think I’ve taken to bed?” His eyes flashed dangerously, and his cheeks grew redder by the second.

  “Forget it,” she said. Backpedal. Backpedal!

  “No! I really am curious. How many?”

  “I don’t know. Two dozen? Give or take.”

  Mitchell shook his head slightly and pulled back like he’d been slapped. He laughed and then ran his hands through his hair until he could talk again. “Two. I’ve slept with two women since the outbreak, and that was just because I was so damned lonely watching you pine for Adam. I waited for years for you to see that what you wanted, what you needed, was right in front of you the whole time.”

  She shook her head in denial. How could he have been hiding all this emotion for so long? “I’m not even your type! I see the girls hanging all over you at the colonies. The only ones you give attention to are frail. Sweet. Weak. I’m none of those things!”

  “And why is it, do you think, it’s so easy for me to leave them when it is time? Hell, I even told most of them I belong to someone else. I know it’s stupid. I know it is! But when I brought those girls around it was to see if you’d get jealous. And you never did—until Vanessa. And then you came in tonight.” He paused, his voice softening. “You came in tonight and it was everything I’ve waited for and more than I could’ve imagined.”

  He held his hands out pleadingly, as if he were begging her to understand. Begging her to return his feelings. She couldn’t. Her feelings were unreadable, a jumbled mass of hurt and disappointment and hope all rolled into three different men’s names. Adam, Sean, Mitchell. It was too much. She needed time and space to sort everything out.

  “I can’t. I can’t right now, Mitchell.”

  “Please don’t call me that,” he whispered.

  Her heart was in her throat. It was too much information on top of her confused feelings for other men. How could she tell him what he wanted to hear when she’d come to him out of anger over another? He’d find out and never forgive her and she wouldn’t expect him to.

  “I need some time,” she said, dragging her face away from the disappointment on his. She pulled on her shirt and walked out of his room, more broken than when she’d entered it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A THUNDEROUS KNOCK on her door woke her early.

  “Laney!” Eloise shouted excitedly.

  She opened the door, uncaring that she was in her underwear and tank top once again. Sooner rather than later, she really needed to get to the general store and spend some of her hard-earned money on flannel pajamas.

  Eloise’s bright eyes focused on Laney’s hair, and with one side of her lip curled she said, “Ugh!”

  Laney swung the door wider for her to enter and padded off toward the sink as Eloise danced into the room and plopped onto the bed.

  Laney brushed her teeth at the sink as Eloise talked.

  “I guess I have you to thank,” she said.

  At Laney’s confused look, she continued. “Guist told me you and Mitchell needed some privacy so he came and spent the night in my room.” Eloise waited with a frozen, open-mouthed grin. “Did you hear me? I said he spent the night in my room!”

  Laney spit her toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. She wasn’t responding well, but her own encounter of that nature had left her raw. Being reminded of it first thing in the morning hadn’t been on her to-do list for the day. Time to rally. She smiled in apology and sat on the bed. She hadn’t had a close girlfriend in so long and was rusty at girl talk. “How was it?” she asked, hoping the question wasn’t too weird. Apparently it wasn’t.

  “Amazing,” Eloise sang. “He was so sweet and gentle with me. And he told me he loved me. Not even before or during. He said it afterward, when he could have just left instead.”

  Laney tried to maintain an interested smile. The same thing had basically happened to her the night before too.

  “So, Mitchell, huh?” Eloise said, elbowing her smartly in the arm and waggling her eyebrows. “We’re some very lucky girls.” Eloise must’ve read something worrisome in her face because she stopped mid-elbow. “Oh, sweetie. What happened?”

  “El, I messed up so bad with him.” Laney told her what had happened, and about her mixed-up feelings with Sean. She told her what Mitchell had said to her and how she’d panicked and hadn’t been able to sleep for hours thinking about him and his unexpected confession.

  “I’m sure he understands about you needing time. That was a lot to put on you when you didn’t expect it. How are you feeling about everything this morning?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t even really processed it all. It’s like, this relationship I thought I knew for all of these years wasn’t what I thought at all. I used to be infatuated with him when I was in high school. Every girl was, and he was older, and hung out with my brother, and all of that made him really attractive to me. But then I met Adam and my heart hasn’t been open since. Not until recently when I threw it at Sean.” She fidgeted with the edge of her blanket. “I have no idea how to handle this. I know I feel something for Mitchell. Something bigger than I’d like to admit, but is it partly because of this perfect night we spent together? Intimacy is so new and confusing to me. And even if it isn’t only that, how can I tell him about any of what I’m feeling for him until I get all of my feelings sorted out with Sean?”

  Eloise shrugged sympathetically. “I don’t know. Probably sorting this Sean issue out first would help. Come on. Let’s hit the showers. Who knows? Maybe Mitchell will be totally normal to you this morning at breakfast.”

  “Maybe.” The sinking feeling in her gut said otherwise. She’d hurt him, and the thought of the disappointment on his face the night before was a knife in her.

  She left her hair down, but the reasons she did were confounding. She kept messing with the dark, damp tresses with nervous fingers. Did she leave it down because Mitchell had seemed to like it that way the night before? What was wrong with her? She bit her lip in frustration and pointed her breakfast tray toward the table the group was sitting at.

  Guist’s face lit up like the morning sun when he saw Eloise trailing behind. Speeding around her, Eloise plopped down beside him before they started chattering happily. Finn waved a greeting, Vanessa glared at her as per usual, and Mitchell looked glumly at his food as he stabbed at some eggs with his fork.

  She sighed and sat on the other side of him. “Hey,” she said as cheerily as she could manage. When he didn’t respond, she bumped him gently with her arm.

  “Don’t,” he said quietly.

  “Come on. Please don’t be mad at me,” she begged in a whisper.

  Vanessa put a protective hand through his arm and leaned over him. “I think he just told you to piss off.”

  In a burst of fury, Laney stabbed her metal fork forcefully into the wooden table right beside Vanessa’s hand. She felt bad, and wondered what had possessed her instincts to want to press fear into the little she-weasel, but her regret was quickly overshadowed by jubilation as Vanessa paled and pulled her hand away with a gasp.

  Mitchell stood and left without another word. The sinking in her gut grew into a physical ache.

  Heavy silence blanketed the table. Eloise recovered first and shoved a giant bite of eggs into her mouth before nodding toward the exit. Around her breakfast, she said, “Let’s get you out of here before you maim someone, hmm?”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. With a lost appetite and time to spare before their shift started, Laney followed Eloise through the door and up a winding path, past a sign with an arrow and the words “General Store” painted in drippy white letters. “Store” was an overstatement. It was more like a booth she’d seen at a flea market or one of those stands
people used to sell firecrackers out of during the fourth of July—back before the end of the world. Every square inch of wall space was taken up with goods to trade or buy. There were canteens, sweatshirts, homemade jars of jams and salsas, bag chairs, binoculars, and beadwork necklaces sitting on shelves. Rows of clothes and winter shoes filled two tables out front. A gangly, redheaded man sat behind an old-timey cash register and tipped his baseball cap at them before he went back to reading a battered paperback.

  Laney purchased a dark gray long-sleeved T-shirt with a light pink moose on the back, a nicely fitting pair of blue jeans, a light blue hoodie with a Breckenridge ski logo on it, and a pair of flannel pajama pants. As a last-minute decision, she purchased a deep purple fitted cotton shirt with silver and gold sequins around the low cut neckline. She couldn’t explain why she’d suddenly wanted it so badly, nor did she want to delve into the list of possible reasons. There was no time to go back to their rooms to store their loot, so she and Eloise carried cloth bags of clothing along with their sack lunches to the gardens.

  She grew excited at the possibility of Mitchell guarding the garden gates, but when they arrived, two guards she’d never met before stood watch.

  Nelson waved after they received their gardening assignments from a woman named Athelda.

  “Where’s your sister?” Laney asked, failing to muster any actual interest.

  “It’s her day off. She’s probably hanging out with her new boyfriend.”

  The warmth drained from her face. When was Mitchell’s other day off? Was it on Saturday?

  The boy gave her a quizzical look. “Hey, thanks for the other day.”

  “Huh?” she asked, not even pretending she’d been paying attention.

  “You know. For saving our lives from that Dead and all. That was pretty intense. You were kind of amazing.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” she said. She muttered a goodbye and went to work by herself preparing another piece of land for winter.

  She worked at a feverish pace. It was in her makeup to work hard, but that day she was also desperate to escape thoughts of Mitchell and Vanessa together doing goodness knows what. Unfortunately, she had a very creative imagination when it came to matters of the heart. The light snowfall that came down at lunchtime only served to add to her melancholy mood. As she and Eloise ate their lunch, the girl seemed to know Laney didn’t feel like talking. She didn’t seem to mind either. Instead she happily ate in silence and gave small smiles to faraway places. Probably thinking about her night with Guist.

  Laney squinted at a figure approaching from the gates. Was it him? She groaned internally as the man came close enough to reveal Sean The-Last-Person-She-Wanted-To-See-On-Earth Daniels. His eyes landed on her, and he headed in her direction.

  “Perfect,” she grumbled.

  Eloise looked up from her daydream. “Good luck,” she said as she scurried off.

  “Hey. You got a minute?” he asked.

  She chewed a huge bite of sandwich slowly. He didn’t seem quite as attractive to her any more. He was still an extraordinarily handsome man, but she suspected he had disappointed her too many times and her heart had reached for something besides him. Something more fulfilling. She squinted up at his face. Dark eyes really did have a much more subtle sexiness than crystal blue ones.

  “What do you want?” she asked, gulping the last of her meal down.

  Sean sat beside her. “To apologize.”

  “Again?”

  “What do you mean again?”

  “I mean, you’re always apologizing. Isn’t that exhausting?”

  He stared at her, his brows drawn together in question.

  “Blech, apology accepted. You know what I’ve decided?” Honesty was the best policy. “We should just be friends.”

  Sean chuckled. “Oh you’ve decided this? All on your own?”

  “Yeah. I think you stood me up one too many times. I want a man who wants me back, you know?”

  Sean nodded thoughtfully. “You deserve that.”

  He was quiet for a while, and she leaned back against the building.

  “What if I could be better for you later?” he asked.

  “I think that is a crafty way of trying to keep me hooked. There’s something about me that scares you, Sean. And if you add that on to not being well matched in the first place, I don’t think it would ever work.”

  “But you don’t know that. What if I worked through that stuff and realized you’re the one for me? Would you give me another chance?”

  She dipped her head and sighed. “I don’t think so. You’re a good man, Sean, but you aren’t a good man for me. I need more.”

  An air of disappointment lingered in his hesitation. “Why the change? Is there someone else?”

  She kicked a small rock with the toe of her boot and nodded.

  “Mitchell?”

  She nodded again.

  “I thought so. His feelings for you are kind of obvious.”

  “Not to me. It may be too late anyway. He’s really upset with me. But he showed me how someone could treat me. I don’t think I want any more mean boys,” she said, rocking her weight enough to bump his side slightly.

  Sean walked away, and where she’d expected sadness, relief comforted her instead. Her heart was ready to let someone in; it had simply latched on to the wrong person for a time. And that attachment had been a poison in her veins she hadn’t realized. She’d tell Mitchell how she felt after work. They could start slow and build up together. The more she thought about his confession, the more of a mystery he became. How could he have bottled up all of that feeling for so long? Only the strongest could do something so chronically painstaking, and he’d done it for her. He hadn’t forced her, or sheltered her. He waited patiently for her to mourn her loss. To realize how it could be between them.

  He’d helped her tirelessly search for Adam without hesitation, despite his feelings for her. He hadn’t done it to suck up to her. She hadn’t even found out he cared until it was finished. He helped because he wanted her to be happy. Where Sean smothered her to keep her safe, Mitchell had always trusted her to handle her own fights and ask for help when needed. Though he’d stood up for her countless times, Mitchell found her capable of protecting herself and he had no problem taking orders from her in the field. She couldn’t deny how he made her feel when he touched her body. Being with him was unlike any experience she’d ever had before. He made her feel as if she were the only woman that mattered, and though she was strong and capable on her own, leaning on a man such as him was intoxicating. She marveled at how drastically her feelings had changed for him since their hunting trip the day before. The strange sequence of events that had plucked her heart strings neatly from Sean and placed them onto a man more deserving was dizzying.

  When the day came to an end, her impatience to find Mitchell had her wound tighter than a bow string. Eloise caught up at the gate. She was chugging breath to try to keep up.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” she asked excitedly.

  “Yep.”

  “So you’ve decided?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sean’s out?”

  “Yep.”

  Eloise squealed.

  She smelled Deads as soon as they left the gate. She put a hand in front of Eloise and sniffed at the air to track a direction. She pulled her Mini around to the front and readied her weapon. The scent was faint. The Deads were farther off, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  She turned to the guards who held the garden gate open for them. “There’re Deads out here. Can you call it in?”

  “I don’t see any,” the guard said primly.

  Laney growled and grabbed the walkie from his hand.

  “We’ve got Deads near the garden gates. Advise.”

  “Laney?” Guist’s voice crackled over the small speaker.

  “Guist? I tried to tell this guy there are Deads out here.” Laney sniffed the air again. “Smells like they’re getting closer.
”

  “Is Eloise with you?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I got your girl.”

  “Good. Put Klein back on.”

  She handed the guard the walkie.

  “If Laney says there are Deads, there’s a hundred percent chance there’re Deads. Mark is calling it in to Mel. Laney, do you think it’s worth a run for it?”

  She considered it. She was so ready to find Mitchell. A look at the scared faces of Eloise, Nelson, and Athelda had her shaking her head. “Nope. Not worth it,” she said into the offered walkie.

  Guist sighed. “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t either, but you know I’ll take care of her,” she promised. His worry wasn’t for Laney. Not this time.

  “I know. Lock up the gates until we get rid of them, okay?”

  Laney herded everyone back inside the safety of the gardens, and three hours later the gunfire that signified the final ending for the large herd of gathered Deads rang out. She felt sure she was going to lose her mind before they cleared them to run for the safety of the colony gates. She used the time to teach Eloise and Nelson how to load, aim, and fire her nine millimeter, but it still wasn’t enough to keep her racing mind off thoughts of Mitchell. All the safety obstacle had managed to do was give Vanessa more time with him. Fury pounded her blood at the thought of them together.

  When the gates finally opened, she dragged Eloise by the hand, ignoring the piles of Deads a handful of the guards were loading into the back of a flatbed trailer. Eloise couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of the carnage.

  “Don’t look,” Laney advised.

  Back at the colony gates they had to do a quick bite check, which she didn’t even mind in her haste, and when Eloise was safe and sound in Guist’s embrace, she scurried off to find Mitchell.

  She checked the mess hall first, but dinner had long since ended and only a few stragglers were still chatting at one of the tables. She tried Mitchell and Guist’s cabin, but no one answered her incessant knocking. She even tried the showers, but he wasn’t there. Puzzled, frustrated, and out of ideas, she headed for her own room. A lot of people were bustling about at that time of the night, and she had to dodge a few rambunctious groups of kids horsing around. She stepped up onto the porch, and a teenaged boy ran into her by accident. Grunting, she dropped her bag of new clothes onto the wooden floorboards. As she stooped to pick them up, a familiar grating giggle rang out and she looked up. Vanessa was placed delicately between Mitchell’s legs as he leaned against the railing in front of her room, and she was laughing obnoxiously loud at something he was saying.