Page 119

CLAIR

By the time we make it back to camp, the kiss has become a living thing under my skin.

I feel it in my lips every time I press them together. In my hands every time I remember gripping Leon’s jacket. In the sore place between my shoulder blades where the shelf bit into me while his mouth gave my body something new to remember.

I want to talk to him.

Actually talk.

Preferably somewhere dark, private, and far away from Joanie’s eyes, Lyla’s smirk, and whatever horrifying commentary Trish has been saving since she found us standing between two dead men with swollen lips and matching guilty faces.

But Trish has other plans.

The second we get back, she herds me into the ER van with a finger pointed at my face and that no-nonsense EMT look that says arguing will only make her enjoy herself more. The van is more crowded now, with Carlos’s and Luis’s clothes folded into uneven piles along one bench, Wesker’s leash looped over a cabinet handle, and Trish’s medical supplies shoved into any open space she can find. It smells like antiseptic, canvas, old paperbacks, and teenage-boy laundry.

“Sit,” Trish orders.

“I’m fine.”

“Great. Then you can be fine while sitting.”

Leon gets the same treatment outside the van from Jacob, who checks his knuckles, his shoulder, and the white primer still dusting his jacket like evidence from the world’s weirdest crime scene. Every time I glance through the open doors, Leon’s eyes find mine. Heat flashes between us, sharp and immediate, and I have to look away before Trish notices.

The last time I caught his eye in the hardware store, he looked like he was bracing for something.

Regret, maybe.

Mine or his, I don’t know.

But he stepped away from me like it hurt, and then he didn’t look back. Not really. Not long enough for me to tell him that if our friends hadn’t crashed through the door, I would have climbed him like a tree and made several terrible life choices against that pegboard.

She cleans the cut at my throat, checks the bruise blooming along my shoulder, and makes me bend my knee until my bad leg screams enough that I consider biting her. By the time she finally lets me go, camp has settled into darkness and Leon is gone.

“Where is he?” I ask, too quickly.

Trish doesn’t even pretend not to know who I mean. “Woods. Patrol.”

Of course.

Of all the nights for him to take watch, it has to be the night I can still taste him.

Later, when camp finally goes quiet enough to hear the fire settle into itself, conversations taper off. Laughter fades. One by one, people drift toward their spots, toward sleep, toward whatever rest we can steal. Poppy and Joanie have already crawled into Max, with Poppy tucked under a blanket and Joanie snoring like a tiny, violent chainsaw.

I sit by the fire longer than I need to, letting the heat soak into my bones while my mind refuses to settle.

My lips still buzz.

My body still remembers.

I touch my mouth. The memory hits so hard I have to close my eyes. His hands at my waist. His beard against my skin. His mouth turning rougher when I kissed him back. The way he held me like I was precious and dangerous at the same time.

That man is made of lightning. There is no other explanation.

I push to my feet and brush dirt from my hands. “Night,” I murmur to no one in particular, then turn toward Max.

The air is cooler away from the fire. Sharper. Every sound carries farther out here, a branch creaking beyond the tree line, the rustle of leaves near the vehicles, Wesker shifting somewhere in the dark.

Leon is out there.