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Lifting myself out of the water, I sit on the edge, wringing steaming water out my tank top. “The only time in my life I ever didn’t feel free was when I was Leon’s captive. And the freest I’ve ever felt has been in the last month. With my guys.” I smile, but it’s a small smile. It will be bigger when Jud is better. But even with one of my seven practically ignoring me, I’m just so thankful we’re all together again.
Even if we haven’t exactly had the privacy for the intimate moments I long for. They long for those moments too. I see it in their eyes when I pass by, arm-in-arm with Hope, and when I curl up beside my sometimes-corporeal brother on the porch swing. But soon enough, we’ll be back in Montana, making up for lost time. These autumn days with Justin and Hope are a limited luxury, and I’m soaking up every second.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Hope rushes to say. “I don’t think you’re weak for loving your men. You just lucked out and got good ones.”
I raise my eyebrows at her, leaving it unsaid that the soldiers are good men, too.
She shakes her head with a rueful grin and lifts herself out of the bubbling water to join me on the edge. “Yeah, yeah. You don’t have to say it. I mean, they are fine to look at, that’s for sure. And they helped your men get Jud back. That’s admirable. If I were looking for a man, I’d start here.” She waves the concession away with a graceful hand. “But I’ve never needed or wanted a man, and that’s not going to change just because the world has ended.”
“But you’ll take Justin with you wherever you go,” I point out. She’s told me how she wants to study to be a veterinarian, but how she’s learned her lesson about going it alone. The world was never a perfectly safe place for a woman, but now, it’s downright dangerous. She’s come to rely on my brother and his Gift to help her avoid precarious situations.
“Well, yeah,” she says. “But we’re not like that. We’re just friends.”
I let my smarmy grin say what I’m thinking.
She kicks water at me, and we both laugh.
Later, after I kiss everyone goodnight, even Jud with a peck on his cheek, Hope and I snuggle down in the queen-sized bed I got familiar with before New Orleans. I’ll only sleep in this bed another night or two. The guys have started packing up for our trip home. It’s almost time to say goodbye to Soldier Ranch. I’ll miss it, for sure, but I’m homesick for Eagle Peak. Like, literally homesick. Sometimes, for no good reason, I get a nauseous feeling and have to run to the bathroom to puke.
I talked to Doc about it, and he thinks maybe it’s all the rich food we’ve been having, so I’ve tried piling my plate slightly less high. His other theory is that my body is getting back into a regular menstrual cycle. I still haven’t had a period since being so sick on Week Zero. If I had, I might think I was pregnant. But you kind of need working plumbing for that, so at this point, pregnancy is just a wishful thought.
“You know, you don’t have to stay with me,” Hope says, but her head resting on my shoulder tells another story. Even though she had her sister with her in body, thanks to Lazarus’s defiling Gift, she wasn’t able to talk with Faith or have any kind of relationship with her. Except for Justin, Hope was alone. She’s thirsty for touch, like I was when I arrived at Eagle Peak. It’s why I used my agency to follow Jud’s rules and sleep in a bed with a different stranger every night of the week.
Their touch healed me. Touch holds life. Even if it’s not romantic in nature, it’s still intimate. A gentle touch is an expression of caring. It’s an acknowledgement of need and a request for that need to be fulfilled.
Now that Justin is gaining control of his Gift, maybe he and Hope will be able to experience that healing together. If she’ll allow it. I know Justin would be game. I can tell from the way his eyes follow her everywhere she goes.
“I’ll only have you a little while longer,” I say. “You’re going to go off on your great learning quest to become the world’s best veterinarian.”
Hope giggles. “And I’ll come visit you in Montana. Maybe I’ll even start my quest there. I know Ghost wants to see where you live.”
“The soldiers will be very sad when you leave.” I make light of the heavy truth by making my tone playful. “You’re going to take their Hope away.”
“They’ll get over it,” she says. But I’m not so sure.
When Sarge, Recon, and Steel discovered Hope alive after the other women had decomposed, I think their minds immediately latched onto her as potential girlfriend for some or all of them. It’s nothing they’ve said or done, specifically, but it’s in the glances they give her. It’s in the way their faces brighten when she walks in the room. It’s in the way X-Ray showed her how to trim the horses’ hooves and Target includes her when he cares for the livestock and Sarge makes sure she has everything she needs. It’s in the way Recon and Steel dug a grave for her sister’s remains beneath a dogwood tree by the horse barn and how Stealth invites himself along when she goes for a walk to the pond, even when she huffs with frustration at being “babysat twenty-four-seven.”
“What’s it like?” Hope asks in the darkness.
I’m almost asleep. “What’s what like?”
“Having sex?”
My eyes pop open. Hope is a virgin? Wow. I mean, I don’t know why that’s a wow moment. It’s just, she’s so sure of herself, so strong. And she’s Justin’s age, twenty-three to my twenty. She carries herself with the confidence of a woman who’s explored everything her body can do.
“Um, it’s—” I don’t know what to say. Or rather, I’m not sure where to start because it’s so wonderful with my guys.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s upsetting.”
“It’s not. It’s okay.” She knows my history as Leon’s captive. She knows I was his plaything, and she has vowed many times that if anyone ever brings him back from the dead, she’ll kill him with her bare hands for what he did to me. I told her not to worry. Jud made sure he was good and dead. There’s one corpse that’s not coming back. Ever.
“It’s just,” Hope rolls to face me. Moonlight through the gauzy curtains puts a silver streak in her hair. “It’s always seemed so invasive to me. This breaching of your body by another. It puts you so close to a person. They’re literally inside of you. I guess, I’ve just never been able to wrap my head around that. Like, why people do it.”
“People do it because it feels good,” I say with a grin. “Reeeaalgood.”
“Shut up,” she giggles. But then she asks, “Like, how does it feel good?”
Before my guys, I used to wonder the same thing. I’d touched myself before, but never experienced the pleasure I’d heard so much about.
