“He doesn’t…it’s complicated.”
“Well, you’re lucky you have each other either way. I keep hoping that it ain’t all bad, you know? To be honest, some of my best moments have happened once the world ended. Got married again to someone who loves me, got pregnant, settled down. I don’t know that any of that coulda happened before. Is that wrong? To feel like maybe some good came of it all?”
“I know exactly what you mean. Being out here with Wade is the happiest I’ve been in so long.”
Kara thinks he’s attractive.
She’s the happiest she’s been out here with him.
She feels lucky to have him.
She thinks he doesn’t….something. What exactly, he has no idea, but he tries to focus on the first three instead. Those are more than enough to sustain him. He’s starting to feel guilty for not announcing himself, so rather than risk regretting it even further, he makes as much noise as one person can in an empty hallway and calls out for Kara.
Anything else he needs to know, he’ll have to hear it directly from her. Eventually.
* * *
After a quick lunch, it’s time to leave the farm behind, and they get plenty of sightseeing suggestions before they go. Everything from a ball of twine, to dick shaped mushroom rocks and a bluff overlook that Addison describes asvery romantic.
“Y’all have safe travels now,” Wyatt calls out as they head down the driveway. “Swing back here again someday!”
They offer waves and smiles, then they’re on the road again, and Kara curls around him like she never left.
“See, no cannibals this time,” she jokes. “Are we gonna see those mushroom rocks?”
“Pfft. Thought you’d be all about that ball of twine.”
“I’m not a cat, Wade.”
“Alright, the dick rocks, then?”
“Maybe. Or the bluff?”
“We’ll rock, paper, scissors it soon.” He taps her knuckles with his hand and grins when she nuzzles her face between his shoulders.
They’ve done a good deed and made new friends. Not a bad day’s work on the road.
Chapter 27
They pass the ball of twine on the way to the bluff and it looks exactly how Kara expected. A giant ball of twine nearly as tall as her.
Wade says they should set it rolling and see how far it goes down the hill they drove up to reach it. She nudges him with a shake of her head and they both laugh, continuing their journey from something only mildly exciting to what she hopes might be…very romantic.
Addison said that about the bluff, and if Kara’s being honest with herself, she’s ready to take any sort of assistance she can get in that area. She’s better off forgetting it entirely, but things have shifted in a way that has her pleasantly puzzled. Wade’s been more tactile than ever. She doesn’t know how to encourage him beyond the obvious jump from where they are now to pushing a limit they’ve silently set in stone.
Why aren’t you together?Addison asked, like it wasn’t the most complicated question.
Wade doesn’t feel that way about her. Never has. If he did, something would have come of it long ago. He’d have made a move, even a small one. He’d have made it explicitly clear that his I Love You meant he wasin love with her.
He’d have said something when she asked before the turn why it didn’t work out with every other woman he dated.
‘Just wasn’t meant to be,’he used to say after every breakup. Never once did he say‘Because she’s not you.’
Then again, Kara is in love with him and she’s never said it out loud.
She hid it deep inside of herself as if it would tear them apart should he ever get a hint of her true feelings.
She hasn’t made an overt move in all this time. So really, what does she know? Maybe he shares her same fears, and that’s kept them both locked in limbo for an eternity.
