I had known Haley a very long time, but I had never seen her look like that. I had never seen her so completely adoring before. I couldn’t even see the baby yet, but I knew that he owned her heart, her mind and her soul.
This was what she lived for now. Nothing else mattered to her.
Okay, except maybe Nelson.
He sat next to her, with his arm around her shoulders and around her waist. He also looked down at the bundle. The only difference between the two of them was that Nelson also had a look of unwavering determination on his face.
It was like he was daring the world to try to harm his son. By the look on his face, I knew that nothing would be able to. Nelson had been a fierce protector before he had a child. Now? Now he would be unstoppable.
Haley’s eyes flickered to mine and she smiled so brightly at me, my heart expanded in my chest until it felt nearly bursting with happiness. “Come see your nephew,” she beckoned.
Tyler and Vaughan had been sitting on her other side, but when I moved to the bed, they got up and scooted out of the way. I filled their place and looked down at the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
He was tiny. So tiny. But he was perfection.
His little face peeked out of a blanket that dwarfed him. His eyes were closed with sleep and itty bitty, dark lashes rested on his cheeks. His nose was perfect and his lips were the sweetest things I had ever seen.
I fell in love with him the moment I whispered, “Lennon.”
I brushed the back of my fingers along his small cheek and loved how warm he felt beneath my touch.
“Do you want to hold him?” she whispered to me.
“Are you willing to give him up?” I sniffled. Tears started falling the instant I sat down with her and I tried to keep them away from the baby.
“For a few minutes,” she relented. “Just don’t walk off with him.”
She situated him in my arms and I instantly froze, not wanting to disturb him in any way. Back in my pre-Zombie life, I used to babysit on the weekends for a few families, but I had never held a baby this new or this small before. I was afraid the first wrong move I made, he would shatter in my arms.
“You did good, Mama,” I told her, still crying… still trying not to cry.
“Yeah and I’m never doing that again,” she groaned. “That was awful.”
“But so worth it,” Nelson murmured.
I had to agree. Sure, Haley had been through absolute hell with this untimely pregnancy and hours of painful labor. But this? How could you not want at least ten of these?
“Definitely worth it,” Haley whispered.
She rested her chin on my shoulder and together we watched her little boy sleep. I had never seen anything more lovely. He was everything this world wasn’t. He was every bit of hope that I had let die until now.
“You were right,” I laughed when I finally got hold of my emotions. “He was a boy.”
“I told you! I knew I couldn’t be dreaming that for nothing!”
“But Lennon?” Hendrix hovered over me and shot Nelson a look. “Seriously?”
“What’s wrong with Lennon?”
“You’re taking all the good guitars man. You’re going to leave the rest of us with names like Van Halen and Richard.” Hendrix swooped down and took the baby from me. I watched him cuddle the little guy as if he had done it a thousand times before.
It should be said, Hendrix was gorgeous. That was an indisputable fact.
But Hendrix with a baby? There were not adequate words to describe him.
I thought I would spontaneously combust watching him.
Nelson laughed at him though. “Why do you care? Thinking about giving him a cousin?”
“Yeah,” Hendrix said without missing a beat. “Eventually,” he added when everyone gaped at him. “Not like tomorrow. But yeah, some day, when we’re not running for our lives every minute, Lennon is going to get some cousins and I would like there to be names left to choose from. Good names.”
“Santana,” Harrison offered.
“Clapton,” Vaughan put in.
“Bieber!” King added.
We all glared at King.
Hendrix rubbed his nose against Lennon’s and I seriously melted into a puddle of goo. “My point,” he stated. “Leave the rest of us some of the greats.”
“Not a chance,” Nelson laughed. “If I’m having babies first, then I get first pick of the draft. That’s how it works.”
“You guys are good then?” Vaughan asked, pushing the conversation forward. He looked between us with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah,” Hendrix answered. “We’re good.”
His answer met a room full of relieved groans. We got to listen to how everyone had been waiting forever and how we’d both been stupid and blah, blah, blah.
Honestly, I tuned them all out in favor of watching Hendrix bond with his nephew. When he caught me looking at him, he just smiled before placing a couple kisses to Lennon’s forehead.
“Page,” he told me in a soft voice. “When mom had Page, she turned the rest of us into live-in babysitters. I’ve changed a lot of diapers in my life.”
“And watched a lot of Bubble Guppies,” Harrison added.
“She’s always been spoiled rotten,” Vaughan grinned at her.
She stuck her tongue out at him and crawled up on the bed with Haley and Nelson. Nelson helped her sit cross-legged and without being told what to do, Hendrix placed the baby in her lap and taught her how to hold his head.
The entire moment was too much for me. Hours ago I faced death and nearly lost and now I was overflowing with happiness.
I had no idea how to keep this little one safe from the evils of this world. I had no idea what would happen after today, but in this one moment it didn’t matter.
We had each other. We had found each other and stayed together.
And now we had added one more, but he was the most loved of us all.
We would figure out how to protect him. We would figure out how to keep him alive and how to teach him about the good things left in this world. We would show him how to be kind, gentle and loving. We would also teach him how to protect himself and the rest of this family.
Because this was what we did. We fought hard and we fought until we won.
And we would never stop fighting. We would never stop surviving.
We would never give up this beautiful community that we had built together.
I believed that with everything that I was. I believed it as we spent the next few hours together, just enjoying our fellowship.
I even believed it when Diego’s car pulled down the long drive as the sun set behind him.
Hendrix and I met him on the porch, anxious to keep him away from the baby. He slid out of his car with that feral grace that reminded me of a jungle cat. His dark eyes met mine and he nodded once.
“It’s time,” he told me. “He’s on his way.”
Matthias.
It was time to kill Matthias.
I looked back into the house, at my friends that had found such happiness today and at the baby that meant so much to me.
I couldn’t let Matthias touch this… them. I couldn’t let him anywhere near this.
I turned back to Diego and said, “Okay.” Because it really was time.
It was time I ended this once and for all.
Episode Eight
Chapter One
1074 Days after initial infection
Tyler
If I could pick a moment to relive in my life, this would not be that moment.
In fact, this moment right here, the one where I wait with bated breath and trembling hands, the one where my entire body is on fire with nerves and my mind is spinning with a thousand thoughts, the one where I could swear my little brother has become a sociopath and the man that I’m falling in love with is going to get himself killed, is probably my least favorite moment of all the moments in my entire life.
I looked over at Miller, pac
ing the length of our jail cell like a caged animal, and can’t help but compare him to my older brother, Kane. In fact, for the first time since his death, I really do miss my brother.
He would know what to do in this situation. He would know how to handle Matthias and how to calm Miller. He would have been an absolute bastard about it, but he would have kept Miller and me safe.
Just like he always did.
Now that monumental task was left up to me and I had never felt more ill-prepared.
I wasn’t a killer, but I wanted to end my father.
But not before he suffered.
I wondered what kind of person that made me. For the last twelve hours my soul had been waging a war of morality with my brain. My mind argued that it was wrong to want to kill the person who was responsible for giving me life, for raising me, for feeding and clothing me, and for keeping me safe from Zombies for a few years. But my soul argued that I deserved justice for the abuse I’d lived with my entire life, for the cruelty and madness my father forced on my siblings and me every single day we were with him and for Logan.
He killed Logan, the first man I had ever loved. In front of me. Matthias should burn for his crimes.
I wasn’t the only one to feel this way of course, but except for Miller, my friends had only just started to feel the oppression Matthias could wield, the utter destruction he was capable of.
Reagan and Vaughan had only known his tyranny for the last year and a half.
I had lived with it my entire life.
I didn’t want to be here right now, but I knew that it was time.
It was time to stop my sadistic father before his evil spread to every corner of the globe. He had already taken the former US. Every faction of Mexico was desperate to become his ally. How much longer before he crossed oceans with his domination? How must longer until Zombies were the least of our problems?
“You should have stayed with Haley,” Vaughan’s voice cut into my dark thoughts.
I hugged my knees tighter to my chest. We sat on the floor, against the back wall of our small prison cell. The floor was filthy, but it was our only option.
I looked over at Vaughan and had to fight a smile. His hair was wild with length and neglect. He needed a haircut, but that was fairly low on our priority list. His beard had filled out and darkened some. It was at odds with his hair that had lightened from the constant sunshine of the desert. His bright blue eyes were intensified against his darkly tanned skin. Sharp bones and cut muscle shaped his body. He was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
One of the only beautiful things left in this world.
“We’re trying to be believable,” I reminded him. The gun in the back of my pants jabbed into my spine and the two at both of my ankles, barely hidden beneath the hems of my cargo pants, were just as uncomfortable. We were locked away in Diego’s prison, but only for show. I didn’t know how Reagan managed to work out a deal with him, but here we were, whittling away the hours until we could kill my father. “Besides,” I told Vaughan, “someone has to make sure you don’t try to jump in front of any bullets or burn yourself at the stake.”
His lips twitched with surprised humor, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re as bad as Reagan when it comes to opportunities where you can martyr yourself. I’m not going to put up with your sacrificial death, so don’t even try it.”
This time his lips split into a huge grin and he let his fingers trail up my thigh. “Tyler Allen, are you saying that you would have negative feelings if something happened to me?”
I rolled my eyes, “Yes! It would majorly piss me off!”
I felt his deep chuckle low in my belly and I squirmed next to him. He had no idea what he did to me. Probably because I didn’t tell him very often.
“You know, this is going to get a little dangerous. If you have anything you want to say to me, now would be a really good time.” His fingers continued to move over my thigh and his eyes hooded with the sweetness of his expression.
I shook my head and smiled at him. “Things I want to say?”
“Feelings you want to confess, secrets you’ve been dying to get off your chest, eternal promises that I’ve been waiting to hear.”
I bit my bottom lip in an attempt to keep from laughing. “Eternal promises that you’ve been waiting to hear?”
His tender expression flashed with frustration. “How about instead of repeating everything I say, you just tell me you love me instead.”
My head jerked back and my body started tingling all over. “What?” Was my brilliant response in the form of a squeaky croak.
“Tell me you love me, Tyler. I think now is as good a time as any.”
“You’re so smug!” I threw out my hand and swatted him in the chest. “I cannot even believe you!”
“Yes, you can,” he grinned at me. “It’s time, Ty. We’ve been dancing around this long enough. Taking into account where we are, who we’re waiting on and the likelihood that even if we survive the day, things are not going to get better for us, it’s time to come clean. I want to hear you say the words that I already know you feel.”
“You don’t know anything.” I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling justifiably annoyed.
He leaned toward me, bringing his lips closer to mine. I was briefly distracted by their nearness. He did that a lot. I wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or if it was my personal issues with lust, specifically lusting after him, that continually sidetracked me, but just the closeness of his body, the familiarity of skin, his touch, his piercing blue eyes, the intimacy that we felt with each other… around him, I could easily lose focus.
“Would it help if I said it first?” he breathed.
I closed my eyes. I wasn’t ready for this. “Vaughan-”
“I love you, Tyler.”
People surrounded us all around. His brothers, my brother, Reagan and an entire army of Mexicans packed in this tiny jail. Not to mention this place was disgustingly filthy and smelled like an outhouse. My father was minutes away and when he got here, he intended to kill us. All of us.
And yet, Vaughan’s confession erased every single thing. We weren’t locked away in a dirty prison. There weren’t weapons digging into my back or rodents skittering around my feet. Our friends and family ceased to exist. The entire world disappeared until there was only him and me.
I looked up at him and tried to remember how to breathe. His lips lifted in a half-grin, one part cocky that would always define Vaughan, the other part unsure and nervous. His blue eyes watched me with careful persistence. The look on his face was so familiar that I wondered how long he had felt this way.
Longer than I wanted to admit.
“I’m not going to say it back,” I told him. I tried to keep my voice strong and confident, but the unfortunate wobble gave me away. And what was worse, I felt tears prick and poke at my eyes. I blinked them away, but they were insistent.
I watched him swallow and struggle for something to say. He hadn’t expected that from me.
“Is it because you don’t love me?” His low voice was carefully controlled, but the emotion swirling in his intense gaze gave him away.
I licked my dry lips and breathed through the harsh pain in my chest. I ignored his question and told him truth he needed to hear. “Vaughan, you don’t want to love me. I know that you… that this… that we seem worth it, but this isn’t what you think it is.”
“What do I think it is?”
I thought back over the last year. I thought about Vaughan becoming a part of my life and how I could not stand him at first. He drove me completely crazy. But then one day he didn’t.
One day he drove me crazy for a different reason.
Our relationship had been stunted by fear and stifled by my doubt. I had put up walls at every turn. I had my foot forever on the brakes and my heart eternally out of reach.
And yet that hadn’t stopped Vaughan.
He had taken my terms and
conditions and worked around them. He had torn down my walls and found a way to move us forward. He had sunk into my skin and embedded himself in my bones and made me fall for him despite everything inside of me fighting against him.
He had been the friend that helped me heal, the boyfriend that helped me move on and now he wanted to be the love that ended all of my running.
When Vaughan had first suggested a relationship, I had shut him down in every way. And yet, as the months went along, we had fallen into one anyway.
I wasn’t quite sure how it had happened or how we had gone from trying a friendship to talking about love.
But that was so quintessentially Vaughan. He decided what he wanted and then he took it. He saw the challenge and then he conquered it.
He did that with his family. I had never seen someone so fiercely determined to keep his brothers and sister and those that they’d collected along the way together. He did that with our survival. He was resolute that we would all live through this, that he would not lose one of the people that he loved. And his commitment to our survival was steadfast.
And now he was convinced that I should love him because he loved me.
Only, unlike with survival and his family, he did not use a firm hand and unyielding strength. Unlike with our enemies where he was ruthless with his judgment and fearless with his fist, he treated me with a gentleness that called to me in my darkest hour. He was relentless with his tenderness, unwavering with his patience.
He came in softly and never left. He demanded that I pay attention, that I lift my eyes from my own darkness and focus on the light in the distance. Slowly, over the time I’d known him, that light had come closer. I walked steadily away from the ghosts and horrors of my past and stepped into the brightest sunlight.
Even though there were monsters waiting for us around every turn and the darkness hunted as doggedly, I was firmly in the light.
And I didn’t plan to leave it.
Which meant I could not love Vaughan.
I could not let this thing between us become more than what it already was.
Love and Decay, Vol. Two Page 19
