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He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Good.” He tilts my head back with a soft touch of my jaw and kisses my lips. I can taste myself on him. “We should get you back there before someone wakes up and realizes you’re gone.”
“Why?” I whisper, my brain unable to form the complete question.
“Because they’ll worry and come looking for you.”
“Not what I mean.”
“I know.” Still holding me up with one arm, he helps me pull my pants back up before guiding me back to the campfire. He stands back and waits for me to crawl back onto William’s chest, whose arms wrap instinctively around me, before disappearing into the shadows again.
19
GRIFFIN
The sun is practically blinding, as though I haven’t seen it in days. I feel like I’ve slept for weeks and could still use more sleep, but I can’t stand being so immobile. So vulnerable. Emily will yell at me if she finds me off the couch and moving around. So I’m going to go find her.
William is tending to the fire, and he looks up when he sees me, but he doesn’t scold. He simply nods and throws on another log, so I keep walking, following the sound of grunting.
Piles of dirt soar into the air out of a large hole. I walk around to the side and look down to see Max digging. “Don’t tell me these are our graves,” I grind out. “I’m not dead yet.”
Max looks up with a manic grin. “I can dig one especially for you if you say please.”
I roll my eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Those bodies next door will get pretty ripe soon. Since we don’t know how long we’ll be here for, I figured I’d take care of it.”
“Have you been digging all night?”
He sticks the shovel into the ground and leans on it, wiping sweat from his brow. “Not all night. I got bored watching everyone sleep, so I figured hey, why not dig some graves to pass the time? I’m spontaneous like that.”
“Need any help?”
He lets out a laugh. “Emily will skin me alive if she finds out I put you to manual labor your first day on your feet. She can be scarier than you.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Care to put that to the test?”
“Should you even be moving around so much? I know nothing about stitches, but I know she doesn’t like it when we go around opening our own wounds and all. Especially right after she went through all the effort of patching us up. Something about wanting us to stay alive for whatever reason.”
“Yeah, imagine that. Have you seen her?”
He points his thumb in a direction and then gets back to work digging, so I walk away. I don’t like that neither of them have an eye on her. She could be miles away by now. She could’ve changed the tire and driven the next state over, leaving us in the dust. She could be—right in front of me, cradling a flower?
I walk up behind her as silent as can be and observe. She’s sitting next to a small patch of crushed flowers like someone stepped on them, and she’s trying to get them to stand upright. She’s even using water from her own water bottle, sprinkling it over them to get them to pep back up. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t confuse the ever-loving fuck out of me.
“For a woman who claims to be so badass and doesn’t flinch in the face of death, you’ve got a surprisingly soft side.”
She squeals and turns around, falling over onto her butt. Then she panics and looks down, but when she sees she landed on grass and not the precious flowers, she turns a scowl onto me. “Don’t sneak up like that. Shouldn’t you be resting? Go back to bed.”
“I’m rested enough,” I lie. Truth is, I could still use a lot more sleep and I might fall over soon, but I can’t make myself lie back down. I’m tired of everyone telling me to rest. That’s getting old real fast. Plus, I’m too interested in what she’s up to. “What are you doing?”
Motioning to the little patch of flowers, she follows my sight. William had told me about her being a botanist before the dead rose, and last night she regaled us with stories as a florist, but I’m still surprised to see her tending to some random flowers in the middle of nowhere.
“Do you know what this is?”
Frowning, I shake my head. “Weird looking flowers?”
She scoffs at me.
“Hate to break it to you, princess, but I haven’t carved out time in my day-to-day survival to learn about plants, unless you count what berries we can eat and which to avoid.”
