Page 34 of Ash Fall

"Yes and no." Turning my head, I press the words softly into her hair. "You're saying goodbye to the rooms, and that's real, and it's allowed to hurt. But you're not saying goodbye to them, Luna. You carry them inside you. You have since the day we lost them, and so do the rest of us. Atlas taught me how to throw a punch in that backyard right there. Your mom fed me at that table more times than my own mother ever did at home." Her breath hitches, and my arm wraps around her shoulders to pull her in closer. "Wherever we go, they go. The mine, the farm, the end of the world. Your family comes with us, because we're bringing them."

She doesn't answer with words. Her arm just slides across my stomach, and she holds on, and I hold her right back while the broken moon looks down on us.

The deck door slides open sometime later, and Jules pokes his head out.

"There you two are." He takes in the way we're wrapped together, and something pleased flickers behind his eyes before the easy grin covers it. "Come on, it's bedtime. Executive decision has been made. Sleepover in Gage's room, since he has the biggest bed, and we're dog piling tonight. Nobody sleeps alone. Boss's orders."

Luna lifts her head from my shoulder, and a real smile breaks across her face. "Yeah, okay. That sounds perfect, actually."

Inside, the house has gone soft and dim, and we file up the stairs to Gage's room in a shuffling, exhausted parade. The arranging takes some negotiating, but we end up in a sprawl across the big mattress. I take the outside edge with Jules beside me, and Luna settles into the middle with Gage stretched out along her other side. Torrin crawls up from the foot of the bed, mumbles something that's barely English, and settles his head on Luna's stomach with a sigh that empties his whole body. Her fingers immediately start moving through his hair.

Then her other hand stretches across Jules to find mine, and our fingers lace together on top of his chest.

"I'm just a bridge now, apparently." Jules stares at the ceiling as he says it, but his hand comes up to rest over our joined ones anyway. "The best-dressed hand bridge in Alberta, mind you."

"Shut up and sleep, Jules." Gage's voice rumbles from the far side, already half gone.

The room settles into breathing and warmth, and Penny's whisper drifts up from where she's curled at the foot of the bed.

"Goodnight, deck friend. Goodnight all my lovies. I am whispering. I am here with you all so the mouse can have the deck for tonight only, wait, where is my ball?"

Sleep starts pulling me under in slow, heavy waves, and I'm almost gone when the soft click of the door opening drags my eyes halfway open.

Mars stands in the doorway with the hall light behind him, looking at all of us tangled together around her. His face does something complicated and I can see the longing and pain, but there is something else too. Something too raw to have a name. Then he steps back without a sound and eases the door shut.

Staring at the dark ceiling, I listen to Luna breathe, her fingers still woven through mine across Jules’s stomach. My mind refuses to let go of what I just saw in his face. Every one of us wants her. Gage, Jules, Torrin, me, and now his name gets added back to that list, a name with history I can't compete with. He loved her first, and she loved him back.

Her thumb moves against mine in her sleep, one small unconscious sweep, and my heart squeezes around a question that follows me all the way down into the dark. When it all shakes out, will I have any kind of chance of her picking me?

Chapter 17 - Gage

Dawn is barely breaking through the curtains when I surface from the best sleep I've had since the moon cracked.

Luna is the reason why. She's tucked back against my chest with my arm draped over her waist, her breathing slow and even. Warmth that has nothing to do with the blankets covering us spreads through me. This is what I want, waking up curled around this woman every single morning for the rest of my life, however long that life turns out to be. Once we're settled at the mine and the world stops trying to kill us, I'm going to tell her exactly that.

Lifting my head carefully, I take stock of the bed, and what I see has the complications to that surging because every one of them is touching her. Reid sleeps on the far edge with her small fingers still woven through his, their joined hands resting on Jules's chest. Jules has one hand wrapped loosely around both of theirs. Torrin migrated in the night from her stomach to her hip, one arm hooked over her legs, holding on even in his sleep. Four grown men, and not one of us could drift off without some piece of her under our hands.

That realization sets my thoughts churning down a road I've been avoiding.

They all want her. That truth came out into the open before the world ended, along with the fact that every one of them has kissed her. Now there's Mars on top of it. Mars didn't just kiss her, he had her, loved her, planned a whole future with her that none of us knew anything about. Nervous or conflicted aren’t words I would use about myself normally but lying here watching her fingers flex around Reid's in her sleep, both of those are what’s filling me up.

Would she choose me over any of them?

I've wanted her for so long that the wanting is just part of who I am now, worked into me the same way the calluses on my hands are. The plan was always simple because I'm a simple man. It was to love her, build a life with her, fill a house with family and noise and Sunday dinners. Fuck, that's all I ever wanted. The wanting was already complicated before you factor in an apocalypse, a broken moon, and four other men who would each take a bullet for her.

Her fingers tighten around Reid's again, and the truth settles into me like a hard punch. That simple future doesn't exist anymore.

That drags up the other thing, the thing Jules alluded to at the BBQ. Back then, the worst problem we had was hiding how we felt from her. His idea was that somehow we could all be with her, all of us together, making it work as some new shape of family that sure didn’t exist in the world I grew up in. My teeth clench just thinking about it. Sharing her that way goes against every instinct I own, and I honestly don't know if I'm man enough to settle for a piece of something when I want it all.

Closing my eyes, I breathe in the lilac and lavender scent of her hair, and the question rewrites itself against my will. Would having a piece of her be better than having none of her at all?

I just don’t now the answer to that right now. I do know that dawn keeps getting brighter, and a loaded caravan won't build itself. Those questions get a pin in them for now. Easing my arm out from under the blankets, I slide off the bed one careful inch at a time, holding my breath when Torrin stirs. My feet carry me to the door without waking a single one of them.

The smell of fresh coffee hits me halfway down the stairs. Mars stands at the counter with a mug in his hand and the pot already full beside him. Through the glass of the deck door, Elenor's silhouette leans against the railing with a thin curl of cigarette smoke rising past her head.

"There's coffee." Mars nods at the pot, careful and quiet like a man walking on ice he expects to break under him.

"Thanks." Pouring myself a cup buys us both a few seconds of not talking.