“I want to hear whatever you want to tell me.”
They haven’t talked much about what happened to him. She hasn’t pushed even though her curiosity overwhelms her, and he hasn’t offered beyond sparse mentions, but they can’t move forward until he begins to exorcise these demons.
She knows all too well that pretending a wound will heal itself never leads anywhere good.
“One night sticks out more than the others. It’s in my dreams all the time, and it doesn’t make sense because it wasn’t the worst of it.”
Oh, he is right. She doesn’t want to hear this. Her imagination is already filling in the blanks of how he suffered.
“I spit in Silas’s face. He made some shit remark, I don’t even remember what he said. Knew I’d pay for it but didn’t care. Hacked up a ball of spit and got him square in the eyes.”
He pauses, and she waits, dreading what comes next.
“He didn’t do it himself. Had one of the others take over instead. I think maybe that guy fucked up somewhere, and this was a test for him to prove himself. I don’t know. Didn’t have anything with him except his pocket knife and I was already tied to the fucking floor. Hands in those cuffs, couldn’t move. Sliced my shirt off and opened up one of the scars I earned when I was a kid. Traced it like he was drawing on paper. Curved around my shoulder and across half my back, it bled for so long.”
She sucks in a shaky breath and takes a chance that could backfire. She’s seen that scar and finds it again, roaming a trail across the raised flesh over his shirt. “This one?”
“That one.” Wade shivers but doesn’t move, his next words coming out baffled. “It was so early after they grabbed me. Everything was chaos back then. No one knew what they were doing. It wasn’t the first time I realized how different they were from everyone else just trying to survive, but it was the first time I really understood how fucked I was. Now I can’t stop dreaming about it and I dunno why.”
“It makes sense to me. He broke open something you thought healed. Something from your past.”
“It ain’t just me, though, anymore. They’re not only hurting me in this stupid dream, they’re hurting…”
It’s her, too. That’s what he can’t say, but it’s simple to fill in the blank.
“And I can’t do anything to stop it,” he continues, monotone in a way that worries her. “Can’t do anything but watch and listen to you screaming like I did.”
“That’s never going to happen. No one’s ever going to hurt either of us like that again.”
“You don’t know that. I can’t protect you anymore. Not like I could have before.”
“You’re so much stronger than you know, Wade. Besides, I think I’ve proven I can protect myself.” She puts the slightest tease into that last comment and feels him huff against her.
The thing about Silas and his band of assholes is that there are plenty of rumors about what he does with his prisoners. Fighting pits or sexual favors for entertainment, extra labor to build outposts, distractions for the rotters, and anything in between. She’s heard stories from people who escaped, though those were always few. Kara has always tried not to fill in the blanks about where Wade would have fallen on that list, but now it’s all she can think about.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispers. “And you don’t have to answer. You don’t.”
He nods against her ribs.
“Do you know why Silas kept you even after he realized you weren’t who he was looking for? In the early days, they weren’t structured or organized like they are now.”
He grows quiet for a long while, the only sound coming from the crickets outside the window before he breaks the silence. “At first, they wanted me to join them. Build their numbers faster. I didn’t know where you were. My memory was spotty from when they knocked me out that first time. I figured taking a couple of days to regroup and then leaving in the middle of the night wouldn’t be a bad idea. So I lied and told them I would join them. But some of the things they were doing…I know we’ve all done things, Kara, but not like that. They had no souls.”
She waits with her breath in her lungs, holding tight, the anticipation of what she’s about to hear tingling her nerves.
“There was a family hold up one of the high rises downtown. All the rich people have supplies, Silas said. I didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late. They blew through that building like locusts. Killed everyone alive and I couldn’t do a thing about it, and then I saw this mother and her kid just huddled in the corner of their fancy kitchen, begging for their lives. He didn’t kill them, and that was worse. I could tell what he wanted them for just from the way he was smiling. It was so, so clear to me then. The two of them would wish they were dead by the time he was finished. So I took one of the small marble vases on a shelf and slammed it against his head. They ran. I hope they got out, I dunno. I took off two of Silas’s fingers with a butcher knife and left him with a crooked nose while we fought. I intended to kill him, but it was over when the others showed up after hearing all the noise.”
“He held a grudge all this time?”
“Oh hell yeah, he did. It was a betrayal, even though we barely knew each other. They found plenty of use for me afterthat. I was the first prisoner they kept. Showed them how practical it could be, I guess. You know what the worst part is?”
“What?”
In the years after, there were times when I regretted saving those people. How awful is that?”
“You can’t blame yourself for your thoughts, Wade. You did save them. That’s what matters.”
What she doesn’t tell him is that for a brief moment, she wishes he never saved that mother and her kid, either. Wishes he had never gotten on the wrong side of a monster and lost six years of his life over a brawl at the start of the apocalypse. Wishes it didn’t feel like he traded his freedom for strangers. It had such a ripple effect that tore both of them apart in the days since. None of that matters anymore. Of course, he saved them. That’s who he is, and part of why she’s loved him since they met.
