Euan shook his head, nodded. ‘And now?’
‘And now we leave to where we’ve been preparing. All this time, I knew Nirvana couldn’t protect us, you, for long.’ He lifted his chin as another man approached.
The enormous powerhouse moved like a panther. Grace, agility, strength was encased in every lithe limb, every bunched muscle. The scar that bisected his lip was almost as gruesome as Euan’s. His eyes were flinting coals, his hair a short hint of black against his skull. His enormous hands held three rifles over his broad shoulder. He’d had to take clothes from Euan’s small stock to dress himself in black fatigues.
Euan nodded to Matthew Knight. The man that had orchestrated the rescue mission to save him, the man that Nick had found hidden in the mountains, who Mickey-O had tasked with building the fortified shelter that would keep them safe for eternity. The man that had stood at the edge of a pit in the ground and watched as Euan had fought men that had tortured an innocent.
‘You’re looking good, McKay. Nice to see you standing. I was not looking forward to having to dig a grave big enough to bury you.’
Euan’s face was deadpan. ‘I’m accommodating like that.’
Knight laughed, his white teeth flashed in the sunlight. ‘I bet you are.’
‘How are the preparations going?’ Mickey-O’s request cut through.
Knight’s smile didn’t fade. ‘Good, we should be able to head out in the next few days. A week at most.’ He turned to Euan, his black eyes alight with humour. ‘There are sixteen cartons of toothpaste. Sixteen.’
Euan nodded, his face expressionless. ‘And twenty-eight boxes of lubricant. I want them all.’
Knight cocked his head back and hooted towards a bright blue sky. ‘I’ll fight you for them. Winner takes all.’
Euan shook his head. Winner takes all. A motto to take to heart, to allow to brand him. The winds were changing, another monumental shift of the tectonic plates of his mind and thoughts. Mickey-O was not a rival; he was an ally. One they needed. He was healing, but he was not yet healed. The severed connection between himself and Nick needed to be reconnected. Kira was an equal member now, a concept he was to embrace, lest he lose her too. He would get his shit together. He would help them in this endeavour.
Because the winner, took all.
Chapter 3
Euan
Euan understood torment. He knew what it was to be tortured. To have your cognitive thought eradicated by pain and despair. That keen sense of isolation, to call and cry and know that no one he loved would hear. To beg for mercy, to beg forgiveness, to go beyond the need for tears, because the body could not spare the effort to make them. He had endured living nightmares, yet, the horrors hidden behind whisky-coloured eyes, told him that Lily had suffered through more.
‘You’re going to have to learn to feed yourself again,’ she rasped. ‘Your depth perception is gone. You must concentrate, otherwise you’ll stab yourself in the eye.’
Lily’s words were a whisper on the wind, impersonal, a wall to safeguard the broken pieces of her soul so high that even her voice struggled to overcome it. Pallid skin, a heart that was shattered behind red-rimmed eyes, shoulders that only moved out of a hunch to stretch. She was broken, so broken, and Euan couldn’t fix her.
He brought the fork to his lips with care. Laden with roasted vegetables from their greenhouse, made by Nick’s hand, it looked as though it was going to easily go into his mouth. It was the first meal he was to consume that was in solid form. Broth and soup had sustained him until now. This ascension back to manhood was going to be a triumph—until the sharp tines stabbed him in the nose. ‘Motherfu—’
‘Told you.’ Devoid of emotion, Lily emanated no ire or condemnation. Euan was tempted to stab himself again to see if he could tempt a response. But he knew that it would be an effort lost.
Instead he said, ‘I didn’t get my eye.’
A tiny twitch in the right side of her lips. ‘Close enough.’
Euan took that tilt as a win. He turned his focus once again to the vegetables. Would they still eat with such variety in the place that Mickey-O intended to keep them? Would Nick be able to indulge in one of the few joys he had and prepare meals that were both flavourful and nutritionally adequate? Euan’s gaze flicked towards the kitchen. Most of the underutilised utensils had been stored for transport. Only the essentials to cook their last meals still laden the shelves. His eyes traversed the rest of the bunker. Kira’s toss pillows were packed, along with the photographs and even his hand-drawn landscapes. The buffet, where her rudimentary artwork had lived was gone. The shelves empty, circles of dustless space the only remnant of the beauty that had been showcased there. The teacups, their coffee, everything was packed for travel. To leave.
The lump in his throat was manageable. He ran his palm over his shortly cropped hair and found comfort in the rasp. He tongued the hole in his teeth and reassessed the meal in front of him.
Lily was a silent mouse beside him, her unobtrusive manner allowed Euan to relax. He had the urge to reach out to her, touch the chapped hand that rested on the table in comfort, solidarity, thanks. He just looked at it instead.
Her focus was also on her hand, as if she understood Euan’s thoughts and lamented the loss of physical touch as much as he did.
They both flinched when they heard loud, booted feet begin to descend the ladder. A single eye of molasses and two of whisky-gold snapped towards
