Page 113 of My Undead Love Life

I hope you are okay. I am scared at night now. I do not like when Mom tells me I am remembering wrong. Please write back if you can. I still love you even if I am confused.

Olivia.

I covered my mouth with my hand. Luck cursed softly. Mad’s expression turned murderous in the dim light.

Jan wiped at her cheeks. “Victoria told Olivia he never wrote back.”

“He did,” I whispered. “He said he wrote back. That he kept writing her. He never stopped even when she did.”

Frank’s face twisted. “Then, she hid those, too.”

I looked at Oxi again, sleeping only because grief had exhausted him beyond his ability to stay conscious. He had carried that pain for years. He had thought his sister hated him completely, had stopped caring, and had forgotten him by choice.

But Olivia had written this. It was proof that Olivia had loved him. Victoria had taken that, too.

“Can he have this?” I asked.

Frank nodded immediately. “That’s why I kept it. I didn’t know if we’d ever meet him, but after today…” His voice roughened. “He should have it.”

Jan leaned forward, her eyes pleading. “Please tell him I’m sorry. Frank and I should’ve pushed harder. We should’ve questioned Victoria more.”

“You were surviving,” Mad said quietly.

Jan looked at him.

His voice was rough, but steady. “That doesn’t erase it, but survival makes cowards out of people who might have been braver with a full stomach and a locked door.”

Frank’s jaw tightened, but he nodded.

“Still,” Jan whispered. “Olivia deserved the truth sooner.”

I folded Olivia’s letter carefully and held it against my chest. “She knows now.” My gaze moved to Oxi again, and the ache inside me deepened. “And he’ll know she loved him.”

The storm screamed against the warehouse walls. Snow battered the windows. The old building creaked around us, but the barricade held.

Eventually, I lay back down beside Oxi. He stirred, reaching for me immediately, even half-asleep. I slid under his arm and pressed the folded letter between us, keeping it safe until morning. Mad curled in behind me. Luck’s hand found mine again.

Across the room, Frank and Jan settled into silence.

Exhaustion pulled at me harder than it had when we slept in the mall, but I didn’t fight it. For tonight, we were warm. And in the morning, Oxi would have one last piece of his sister.

20

SPENCER

The second night we spent inside the warehouse felt wrong. It wasn’t because the storm had let up, either. If anything, the quiet made it worse. The wind had died sometime after sunset, fading from a screaming force against the warehouse walls to an occasional low moan through cracks in the metal siding. Cold hadn’t eased at all. It clung to everything.

But it wasn’t the cold keeping me awake. It was something else.

My skin crawled because my instincts were screaming at me that something was terribly wrong, and no amount of staring into the dark office room convinced me otherwise.

I couldn’t sleep. None of us could.

We were all fully dressed, just in case. Coats, boots, gloves on, and weapons close. The blankets were around us, but even with Luck pressed against one side of me and Oxi on the other, I couldn’t relax.

Mad sat near the door with his axe across his lap. He’d been sitting that way for hours.

Frank and Jan were across the room, tucked close together beneath their blankets. Frank’s eyes kept drifting toward the barricaded door. Jan’s kept drifting toward Oxi, who hadn’t said much since we left the firehouse.