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This made me feel better about my part of this whole thing. There was nothing worse than his anger.
“That’s bullshit!”
I whirled around, seeing a pissed off Butcher walking away from Nyx. And then there was Cameron, diffusing the would-be situation as always. No doubt he’d just tried to convince her not to go, clearly failing.
“Aw, a lover’s quarrel,” Maliki fake sympathized from where he was standing.
I gave him a flat look and then headed back towards Nyx. Annie met me halfway, her steps falling in pace with mine.
“We should go. You know how that one tends to get,” she quietly said.
I nodded my agreement, though I was less concerned with Butcher’s temper tantrum and more with the fact the longer we waited the further my sister was getting away from me.
We finalized a few last details and then parted ways. I never thought I’d see the day Venom and Savages paired up for a similar cause, yet here we were.
After settling into the passenger seat of the XL, I pulled a map out of the glove box. The SUV had a navigation system but finding solid servers to connect to was a lot more difficult than finding a radio broadcast—those seemed to be on every channel these days, some full of false prophets preaching we had entered the end of days.
Spreading the tear resistant paper out before me, I scanned over it to find our location, flipping the middle console open to search for a pen.
“If you tell me how to get there I’ll trace a path,” I said when Annie climbed into the driver’s seat.
“You’re asking the wrong person, princess.”
Okay, that definitely wasn’t Annie.
I glanced up before slowly shifting my gaze to the seat beside me.
“Um, what exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“Driving,” he casually replied as everyone else piled into the back of the truck, Annie amongst them.
“And who decided this?”
He started the engine and adjusted the seat to his level of comfort before answering me.
“I did.”
I firmed my lips into a straight line and went back to reading the map—or pretending to read the map.
I knew we’d be riding together; it wasn’t as if his truck would be going anywhere anytime soon, but not right beside one another. Being close to him was like standing in front of a furnace.
At the very least I was glad he had a shirt on now. Not that I particularly cared. It’s not like I had been distracted by the perfect lines framing his eight-pack stomach or anything.
“Let me see,” Annie said, reaching for the map from the back.
I refolded it and passed it to her. Turning back around, I crossed my arms over my chest and stared out the window.
“This is a nice ride,” the woman with colorful hair said after we’d been on the road a few minutes.
Cam thanked her politely, and I smiled. He harbored hate or prejudice for rarely anyone.
If everyone were a bit more like him, maybe this wasteland wouldn’t be full of killers, though, that may not necessarily be true. Power was claimed in a variety of ways and bloodshed had been one even when the world was considered ‘good’.
Truthfully, it was hard for me to believe it ever was. History lessons taught me that there’d always been corruption, thievery, crime, murder, and an overall struggle to live a full, somewhat enjoyable life.
Nothing was any different now except we governed ourselves and anarchy controlled the masses. Rich versus poor had become strong versus weak. This place was beautiful to me regardless. Not even the dark presence of the man beside me could tarnish that.
The flick of a lighter pulled me from the bubble of thoughts I’d immersed myself in.
