Page 35 of Ash Fall

He clears his throat. "Mrs. Cowen asked me to go find Luna's Jeep. It's still sitting where she left it when the soldiers took her, so I'm going to head out now and bring it back for loading." His thumb drags along the rim of his mug, and his eyes come up to mine, braced. "I know I don't have a right to ask you for anything. But do me a favor? Don't leave without me?"

The urge to punch him again flares up hot and familiar. It doubles when I think about him and Luna together, all those months of history he kept buried while the rest of us grieved beside her. My fist actually curls against my leg. Then the rest of it rises up behind the anger, two years of this man carrying her family's deaths on his shoulders. He punished himself in some lonely exile for an accident that was never his to own and that has the anger cooling.

Setting my coffee down on the counter takes one second. Crossing the kitchen and yanking him into a hug takes two more.

Mars goes completely rigid against me, his body stiff with surprise but I just hold on. Three heartbeats pass before the tension breaks in him and his arms come up to grip me back, hard, his forehead dropping briefly against my shoulder.

Stepping back, I roll my eyes at him to keep this from getting any weirder than it already is. "You're a fucking idiot, man. But we'll be here when you get back. Don't take too long."

His throat works, and he opens his mouth, but whatever he's trying to say won't come out. Finally, he just nods, sets his mug in the sink, and walks out the front door.

The deck door slides open behind me, and Elenor steps into the kitchen trailing the faint mix of Chanel and cigarettes that's been her signature for as long as I’ve known her. Her hand comes to rest on my arm.

"Well done, Gage." Her eyes twinkle up at me with entirely too much knowing in them. "A lesser man would have found a way to eliminate even more competition for his heart's desire."

She winks and carries on toward the fridge before I can form one word of a reply.

"I'm going to put together a breakfast with the last of the fresh food in here. Luna and I either canned or freeze dried almost everything else, so it'll be a hodgepodge meal, and nobody gets to complain about my combinations."

Kara chooses that moment to sweep into the kitchen, looking as polished as ever. There's not one golden hair out of place at dawn on moving day at the end of the world. She heads straight for the coffee maker without so much as a whisper of ‘Good morning’.

"Please tell me you looted all the coffee you could find."

"It's going to run out eventually, Kara." Leaning back against the counter, I let the tease stretch out slow. "Good thing you don't need coffee to survive."

She takes a long, unhurried sip and sends me a wicked smirk over the rim of her cup. "Oh, silly boy. Coffee isn't for my survival. It's for everyone else's."

Elenor's laugh rings out as she starts pulling containers from the fridge. "Don't worry, it was at the top of my list when we hit SaveMart." She turns and levels a finger at me, eyes narrowing into a look I've seen make grown men apologize just for being alive. "And if you know what's good for you, coffee and cigarettes will be at the top of your list every single time you all go out to scavenge in the future."

The dubious look escapes my face before I can stop it, and her arms cross over her chest.

"Don't test me, boy. I put the bitch in obituary."

Another wink and a chuckle soften it before she turns back to the stove. Kara lifts her mug in a silent toast to the scariest woman either of us knows.

Two hours later, the loading is done, and my back knows all about it.

The motorhome swallowed most of it. Case after case of canned food came from the stockpile in the garage, plus bins of freeze-dried meals that had my jaw hanging. Luna and Elenor didn't just stock up for the end of the world, it looks like they were preparing to restart it too. Every man in this house owes his future full stomach to those two. The Escalade took the bags and bedding. Mars made it back with the Jeep in time to pack it to the roof, and Torrin's truck is filled with tools, fuel cans, and everything with sharp edges.

Leaving breaks something in Luna.

She holds it together the whole time we work. When the last bin is strapped down, she goes back inside on her own, and I give her a minute before I follow. I find her in the hallway with two fingers resting in the dents Atlas left in the wall with his hockey sticks. Her thumb moves over the deepest one. She doesn't cry or say anything at all, but I feel the pain radiating off of her.

Nobody rushes her. I stay in the doorway until she's ready, and when she finally turns around, she walks straight into my chest. My arms come around her and hold on while she breathes through it.

The click of the latch makes her flinch when she pulls the front door shut behind us. Penny presses against her legs the whole way down the walk. Torrin holds her hand in the truck while our little convoy rolls out of the only neighborhood most of us ever called home.

Now the convoy idles at the gates of a house that should have its own postal code. Reid and Kara's parents built a mega mansion on the ridge east of town, all glass, stone, and cold angles. The place manages to look down on everything around it exactly the way its owners always did. We drop the twins at the front entry to raid what's worth taking. Jules then directs me next door, where an equally excessive monument to money stands behind a long circular driveway.

"Home sweet mausoleum," Jules says sarcastically as we climb the front steps.

Inside, our footsteps echo off marble, and my eyes don't know where to look from so much space. Who needs this much house? There are chandeliers the size of a truck, hallways wide enough to drive that truck down and entire rooms furnished for nobody. Jules moves through all of it fast and unbothered, taking the curving staircase two steps at a time. He leads me down a corridor toward the back of the second level.

"My parents' wing is this way."

My feet actually stop. "Are you kidding me? Who builds a house with fucking wings?"

"People who need a separate zip code from their own children." He throws it over his shoulder without slowing down. "Trust me, the distance was mutually desired and cherished."