AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Really?”
I nodded again, willing it to be true. That thing could wait outside for us for a long time if it wanted to. It depended on how hungry it was, how serious it was about getting to us, and if it had had a taste of human meat before.
I didn’t say anything about that to Celine.
“Let’s prepare this thing,” I said, holding up the bird. “I’m going to teach you how to pluck it.”
Celine’s expression change from fear to horror. “What?”
I laughed. At least it took her mind off the mountain lion lying outside the door.
“It’s more fun than you think.”
She scrunched her nose. “I highly doubt that.”
19
CELINE
IhadtoadmitLorenzo’s idea to hunt had been a good one. The idea of killing something was horrible, and I didn’t even want to think about what needed to be done to get that thing on a plate. Plucking the bird was awful. Lorenzo showed me how but did most of it.
When he sliced up the meat, there was more blood than I’d ever seen in a lifetime and my stomach twisted and turned. There was no way in hell I would eat that thing at all. I’d decided then and there that I wouldn’t touch it, no matter how much Lorenzo told me that it was our only way to survive.
That was… until he cooked the meat over the small fire we were able to build, and it smelled divine. The cabin had a few kitchen utensils and a lot of large knives—clearly, Lorenzo wasn’t the only person to do something like that in this cabin—and by the time the meat was cooked, my mouth watered and my stomach rumbled so loudly, it was like thunder all over again.
“Here,” Lorenzo said, handing me a tin plate that he’d found in a cabinet. It was stacked with just meat. “Eat as much as you can. We’ll put the rest in the pack but it won’t last very long without a fridge.”
I took the plate from him, took a piece of meat, and bit off a small piece.
“Oh, God,” I groaned, my eyes rolling shut. “Are you kidding me?”
“Good?” Lorenzo asked with a chuckle.
“I didn’t think it could be, but this is better than anything I’ve eaten before.”
“I told you it would be fine,” Lorenzo said.
“Yeah, whatever.” I hated I-told-you-so’s. Besides, seeing something alive, killed, plucked, and cooked was one thing. I usually got food already prepared on my plate or ready-made so I could just heat it up myself.
Maybe it was because I was starving. Maybe grouse really was this good, even without spices.
I did what Lorenzo asked—I ate until I couldn’t eat anymore. It wassogood to have food in my stomach again after we hadn’t eaten for so long.
“You and your brother hunted together?” I asked while we ate.
Lorenzo nodded. “When you’re young and bored, you start looking for things to do. My parents worked a lot, and we were left to our own devices. We did a lot of things together—hunting, setting traps, collecting different kinds of rocks, stuff like that.”
“You’re very close to your brother.”
Lorenzo nodded. “Yeah, he’s my best friend in so many ways.”
I nodded, starting on a new piece of meat. Noah and I had grown up together, but our lives had been very distant from each other. We’d stayed in the same house, but it had always felt like we were worlds apart, fighting our own battles.
“You’re very lucky to have such a close family,” I said.
“Yeah, I realize it more and more now that I see others don’t have the same. When we were younger, it was all I knew. You tend to take things for granted when you don’t have anything different to compare it to.”
That was a good point. Was that what my life had been like? Maybe… but I didn’t compare myself to anyone else. We were always raised as being above others, so we didn’t compare. We judged.
