Article 5

There were four cars in the lot. All of them looked abandoned.

“Can you hotwire any of those?” I asked immediately.

Chase snorted. “We’ll wait until closer to dawn. We can’t drive now, and I don’t want to be pinned out in the open if the MM show up.”

I nodded in grudging agreement. There were still several hours until sunrise.

Far to our left was a great hulking shadow. An old, rusted semitruck bed without the cab. I didn’t like how it blocked the woods behind it. It made me feel too exposed, which reminded me that we shouldn’t have still been out in the open. That we should have been with my mother by now. I twisted my heel into the soil.

“Hey, forget about Lewisburg,” Chase said, not unkindly. “I said I’d get you to the safe house, and I will. I promise.”

Tears I didn’t know had gathered spilled down my cheeks. How? I wanted to scream. How will we get there? How can you promise that? You don’t even know the way! But I knew he didn’t have answers, and asking him would only make us both feel worse. I grabbed for the bag, searching through the darkness for the zipper, and covertly wiped my eyes.

The other clothes we’d stolen from the sporting goods store were near the top. They were still damp from the weather and would be bitingly uncomfortable in the low temperature, but it didn’t matter. We had to change. I handed Chase another flannel, wishing we could ditch our jackets, but it was too cold.

“What happened back at the house?” I asked, after the knot in my throat had gone down. As quickly as I could, I stripped down to my thermal and replaced my sweater with the pink fleece I’d picked up for my mother. The instant the coat was back on, my chin was tucked inside the neck, stifling the cold air that had been needling my face.

“Patrick rode my heels like a lapdog,” answered Chase. “I was trying to pull him away from the back of the house, maybe get him down in the basement with his wife. That’s when the guys he called busted through the front door. Billings, I guess, and three others. I got one good hit in before—”

“You hit a soldier?” I squeaked. This could mean terrible consequences if we were caught.

“Didn’t see too many other options,” he said. I heard him change shirts and grunt as the fabric scraped the wound on his arm. “One of them said, ‘It’s him,’ and reached for his weapon. That bastard and his wife must have known it was us before the news report.”

I nodded but then realized he couldn’t see me. “They thought they’d get a reward,” I said aloud. We got a thousand dollars for the last soldier, Patrick had said. Who knows? Maybe they’ll kick in a bonus for the girl. Knowing our lives had a price tag, one that could keep a family housed and fed, made me nauseous.

Chase swore softly, and I could feel this fact settle on him, sink into his pores. When he continued, his tone was bleak.

“One of them shut the lights off. It didn’t work out like they hoped. I took off out the back, and that’s when I found you.”

“I shut the lights off,” I confessed.

“You what?”

“I cut the power to the generator.”

“You…” A long beat passed before he slowly approached and placed his hands on my shoulders. The confusion reflecting from his dark eyes made me uncomfortable. Here he was again, touching me while his mind disagreed with his actions.

“You’re shivering,” he said anxiously. I shook out of his grip, but it was too late. All the feelings I’d been trying to stuff away since his good-bye kiss came pouring back. The longing and the hope. The rejection. All magnified by the fact that we were now barred from Lewisburg and, it felt, my mother, too. He seemed to sense something was off and lowered his face to mine.

“Hey, are you —”

I slapped him.

We sat in stunned silence for a full three seconds before he spoke.

“Damn. That was fast.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?” I nearly shouted at him. My hand stung just enough to tell me it hadn’t shattered in the cold.

He floundered. “I… I guess. What exactly was that for?”

“You know what it’s for,” I accused furiously. “How dare you do… that… after… you know!”

“I don’t know,” he said bluntly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You kissed me!”

He faltered back a step, and I heard the breath whistle through his teeth.

“You didn’t seem to mind so much at the time.”

I growled at him and then grabbed the bag and violently zipped it shut. “I was thinking you were someone else.” The old you.

He snatched the bag out of my hands and shoved it onto his back. Then he shook it off, remembering we weren’t going anywhere, and slammed it down on the ground.

“I told you,” he said in a low voice. “He’s gone. That’s over.”

I fought back the tears and spun away from him. Chase’s acknowledgment of the two separate entities within himself should have made me feel better, but it only made me feel worse. I couldn’t stand being near him any longer. Dawn couldn’t come fast enough.

“Ember, wait,” Chase called. He snagged my arm and held fast. Reluctantly, I turned, but I refused to look up and meet his eyes.

“Look… I know you’re torn up about him. He’s probably fine,” he said, frustrated.

He’s probably fine?

“What do you… who are you talking about?” I thought he’d understood that we were talking about the Chase who cared for me and the Chase who didn’t, but he was referring to someone else entirely. I felt the slow burn of oncoming humiliation.

“The guard from reform school. Isn’t that who you’re talking about?”

“Sean?” I asked, baffled. And then I remembered. Randolph, in the shack, had insinuated that I’d messed around with a guard when Chase had inquired, and then later I’d reinforced that fallacy when I’d asked Chase what would happen to a soldier caught with a resident. With everything that had happened, he remembered that?

I felt only a breath of embarrassment, because immediately after that came my awareness of the insult.

“You think I would have let you kiss me if I was with somebody else?”

“It’s not like you had much of a choice,” he said indignantly.

“I’m not some three-dollar hooker!” I blurted. “I don’t know who you’re used to spending your time with, but—”

“Hold on—”

“You! You kissed me thinking I was with someone else! What kind of person does that make you, huh?”

“Hold on!” he interrupted. I had encroached on his personal space in my anger, and now we were only inches apart. “First, I know you’re not easy; you’re actually the most difficult person I’ve ever met. Second, I never claimed to be a good person. And third, if you weren’t talking about Sean, who the hell were you talking about?”

“That’s…” I stammered. “That’s none of your business,” I said evasively.

“If you’re thinking of another guy while I’m kissing you, I’m pretty sure it is my business,” he said heatedly.

“Not anymore it’s not! Why do you care anyway?”

He straightened, making me look up nearly a foot to see his eyes.

“I don’t.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”