Page 127 of What Remains

"Keep it that way."

"Is she funny?"

Seth smiled. "Yeah."

"Will she like me?"

The question arrived so innocently that his chest tightened around it. He met Layla's eyes in the mirror and held them.

"She's going to love you. She used to be a school teacher and she’s going to love having a kid to teach.”

Layla seemed satisfied. "What about the goats?"

"Unfortunately..." Seth looked toward Josie. "She's probably going to love them more than all of us combined."

Another goat screamed from the trailer, and Josie leaned toward the side mirror.

"That one sounds angry."

"They're all angry."

"They've been in a trailer for hours."

"They're goats."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't trust anything that can escape that much.”

Josie stared at him. "You've fought infected people who tried to eat you."

"Exactly."

"And goats scare you?"

"I didn't say scare."

"You implied it."

"They're unsettling."

Layla giggled from her nest of blankets. "Seth's scared of Pickles."

"I am not scared of Pickles."

"Pickles is tiny."

"That's how they get you."

Josie laughed so hard she had to wipe tears from her eyes. Seth's gaze lingered, his hands tight on the wheel. It wasn't her beauty, though that always ambushed him; it was the sound itself. How could she laugh like that after yesterday—dragged through the woods, her home abandoned, nearly everything lost? He watched the tears spill down her cheeks and felt a profound shift in his chest. She could still throw her head back and laugh, and the fact that she could felt more important than anything else in the world.

Josie caught him looking. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

Her eyes narrowed. "That definitely counted as something."

Seth reached across the center console and held out his hand. After a moment, she slipped hers into it, and he intertwined their fingers, his thumb tracing slowly across her knuckles.