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“How did you know?”
He brushes my hair off my face, touches his lips to my temple, my cheek, the sensitive skin below my ear. My eyes close, my heart beating in my throat. “Because for all the ways you’ve changed, you’re still the same girl, Ivy, deep down. The one who says everything with her eyes, with her face, even when she refuses to speak. And I know that girl is brave enough to love me, no matter what it costs her.”
Are most people this lucky? To find someone who really understands them? Someone who accepts all their strange and foreign ways of looking at and approaching the world without constantly trying to change them into someone more like themselves? Letting me be Ivy, when so many others have tried to mold me into a different kind of girl, is the most valuable gift Bishop will ever give me.
Chapter Twelve
“I think I might actually prefer washing clothes to this,” Ash says, causing me to raise my eyebrows over the deer carcass we’re butchering. “I’m serious,” she says. “It feels like this is all we’ve been doing lately.”
“That’s good, though, right? The more meat now, the easier winter will be.”
“Yeah, I know.” Ash sighs. “I’m just sick of blood and guts.”
I huff out a sympathetic breath, thankful at least that the cold weather has eliminated the flies that used to collect around the dead animals in the heat of late summer. Back in Westfall I never got this close to the food I ate, never had to kill it myself or watch its blood soak into the dirt. Never carved it up and ate it later. I didn’t know what hard work it was or how innately satisfying it would be once I got past the gore. Leaning back on my heels, I swipe my hair off my face with the back of my hand.
“When we get done with this, we still need to check the snares,” Ash says.
“I’ll do it,” Bishop says from behind me. He’s getting as good at walking quietly as Caleb and Ash.
I look up at him with a smile, shading my eyes from the early winter sun with my bloody knife. “You’re finished already?”
“Yep, took down a couple trees and got them chopped up. Caleb’s finishing stacking the logs.”
“We’re almost done here,” I tell him. “If you want to wait, I’ll go with you.”
Bishop crouches down next to me, balancing one hand on his ax. With his free hand he brushes my ponytail off my shoulder, leans over, and kisses the tender skin below my ear. “I want to wait,” he says, voice low.
I tell myself it’s stupid to blush over a simple kiss even as my cheeks flame. “Okay,” I croak, clear my throat. “Give me ten minutes.”
“Oh my God,” Ash groans. “You two are so disgusting. I think I liked it better when you weren’t speaking.”
Bishop laughs, pushes himself to standing. “You did not.”
Ash smiles. “You’re right. I didn’t. But don’t let Caleb catch you doing that crap. He’ll give you an earful.”
I go back to carving the deer meat, tell myself I don’t still feel the imprint of Bishop’s lips on my skin. “He has been grouchy lately.”
“I think it’s the lack of walks,” Ash says with a meaningful glance in my direction. “We’ve been too busy for taking time off.” She wiggles her eyebrows up and down and I grin, shaking my head.
“I’m lost,” Bishop says. “He’s grumpy because he misses walking?”
“I’ll fill you in later,” I tell him around a smile.
As if on cue, Caleb rounds the side of the house and glares at Ash and me, stabs a pointing finger in our direction. “Less talking, more doing!” he shouts without breaking stride.
I catch Ash’s gaze, and we burst into laughter at the same moment. “See what I mean?” Ash says between giggles.
Ten minutes later I meet Bishop at the tree line behind the house, the worst of the blood scrubbed from my hands and an extra sweater layered over the one I’m already wearing. “You going to be warm enough?” Bishop asks.
“Sure. If we walk fast.” I’m only half kidding. Caleb’s been saying we’re going to get an early winter this year, and if the rapidly falling temperatures are any indication, he’s right. It’s no wonder he’s anxious about us stockpiling as much food as possible before the first snows hit. Winters now are harsher than they were before the war. It’s not uncommon for us to get more than a hundred inches of snow in a bad winter, and this one is promising to be bad. All the weather is more extreme since we blew the world apart. Hotter summers, colder winters, raging tornadoes, violent floods, unrelenting drought. I wonder what it used to be like, when the seasons didn’t feel like just one more form of violence.
Bishop zips my sweater up all the way to my chin. “We need to get you a warmer coat before it snows.”
“We’ll find something. Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Come on.” We lace our fingers together and head into the woods. I’m still getting used to the easy way we touch now, the way my hand seems to find his without my even thinking about it. These past few weeks have been the first time we’ve touched without the burden of secrets or fear.
The freedom of it has made me greedy.
“Caleb thinks it’s going to snow soon,” Bishop says.
