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"Eh, fuck off," Rafe growls. "Let me coddle my pregnant mate, okay?"
"Shit, dude--what?" Olivia's mate Liam says. "Y'all are having a kid?"
"Yup," Rafe says. "Remember that when you're out there fighting for us tomorrow--there's a wholeass future riding on this rebellion."
"Pressure's on, I guess," Maddox says, and I can somehow sense that hemeans it.
Maybe he's not all bad.
"I'm gonna go down to a less heavily populated stretch of the bar and grab some beers," I say roughly. "Anyone want one?"
A few people raise their hands, and I kiss Kendra on the forehead before I part ways with them. I don't want to loom over her time with her friends; she deserves time to herself, and I just feel like a third wheel.
Plus...this is painful.
I worked with the Enclave when the Raft got started, and the last time I was here I was with Eve. She and her brother Diego were old school friends of mine from before the contagion, before the war...and it had been a rough transition.
I remember the first time Eve went through a heat, and we had to lock a door between each other to keep ourselves safe. I'd always been able to control myself around her, but her heat had made it too dangerous.
Kendra reminds me so much of her.
I'm standing at the bar waiting for my beers when I hear a familiar voice beside me, a voice I haven't heard in years and didn't think I ever would again. The last time I heard that voice, we were being separated and he was being taken in to ACB custody over his sister's still-warm corpse.
I turn and look at him.
He meets my eye.
"Zane?" he says, his jaw dropping.
I frown and shake my head, barely able to comprehend what I'm seeing. "Diego?"
He forgets about the beer in front of him, and I forget I was supposed to be placing an order, and I'm wrapping him in a big bear hug before I even realize what I'm doing. I legitimately thought he was a goner--that he was just as dead as Eve. But here he is, living and breathing in front of me.
Kendra has brought so much back to me that I thought I'd lost for good.
"Shit man," Diego says, shaking my hand as we pull away from the hug. "I thought you were dead."
"Likewise," I tell him. "Last time I saw you, you were getting trundled off in an ACB van. What the hell happened?"
"Well...I got out for good behavior after feeding them some fake intel," he says. "And of course, I came right back here."
I nod. "After Eve..."
"After Eve, I was always going to come back here." His eyes harden. "So the question is, why didn't you?"
Shame hits me like a fucking baseball bat, the realization of what an asshole I've been hitting home. There's so much I could have done in the interim.
I gulp.
"I was fucking scared," I admit. "Eve was gone...I thoughtyouwere gone--"
"So you gave up the good fight?" he asks. "Shit...you're a big guy, strong and tough. Imagine what you could have accomplished."
I didn't come over expecting to be reamed by a ghost, but here we are. I struggle for the right words, but they completely fail me.
And then a small voice pipes up from beside me.
"If he hadn't been in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, he wouldn't have been there to help me," Kendra says.
