Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(33)

I looked at Leisel, who was sitting on the forest floor, her back against a thick tree trunk, staring off into the distance again. It was something she’d always done, but she’d been doing it a lot more lately, her mind going elsewhere for hours at a time. Once she came back to us, it was usually with a start, as if she’d forgotten for a moment where she was. She’d been like this for a while now, ever since Alex had left to check his traps for food, and I couldn’t help but think that if I couldn’t hold it together, it wouldn’t be Leisel who would save me. Not with her being so emotionally wrecked. My gaze dropped to her wrists, noting that they were healing well after her skin had nearly been scraped completely off. Thankfully, scabs were beginning to form, easing my worries that she might develop an infection from the wounds.

As my stomach began to growl, I placed my hand over it and turned away from Leisel, searching out the woods for any sign of Alex. We’d been lucky so far, with plenty of squirrels and snakes as our food source, and even a bush with some edible berries to give us more variety in our diet. In fact, we’d been very lucky, probably luckier than most. Luckier than Jami had been, anyway. That thought made my stomach twist painfully, and I purposely forced all thoughts of him away.

Focusing back on Leisel, I found her looking at me, her eyes wide.

“Did I do it again?” she said, her cheeks flushed.

Nodding, I smiled at her. This was the first time that she’d acknowledged she did that—disappeared into herself. Maybe it was because Alex wasn’t around, and she felt somewhat comfortable to speak of it.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

Cocking her head to one side, she raised an eyebrow in question.

I shrugged. “I hate to say this, Lei, but you killed a man this week, and that’s a new record for you.” I purposely kept my voice light to show her that I wasn’t judging her. Being a murderer myself, I had no room to judge her or anyone, but more so because I thought what she did—killing Lawrence—was pretty amazing, and she was coping with the aftermath better than I would have expected her to.

“He wasn’t a man,” she said, sucking in a sharp breath. “He was a monster.”

I nodded fervently in agreement. “Can’t argue with that.”

“Real men were people like Thomas and Shawn,” she continued. “And I haven’t seen a man like that…” Her words drifted off, her eyes glossing over, her expression growing sad at the memory of our first husbands, our husbands before everything was destroyed.

“Where do you go?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject. “When you zone out?” Picking up a twig, I began breaking it into small pieces, tossing each one aside.

“To the past,” she said without hesitation. “I go back to the past.”

I shook my head, unsure of what to say to that. I never thought of it—the past. Once a day, I would close my eyes and try to envision Shawn’s face, only so that I didn’t forget him, but I refused to think back to the happy times, to birthdays and barbeques, to Christmases and vacations. Thinking about better days just made reality that much harder to live through.

“What?” she asked, looking surprised. “You don’t? Not ever?”

“Why torture yourself?” I retorted, hearing the annoyance in my tone, and then wincing in regret.

“Because.” Averting her eyes from me, she looked at the ground. “I don’t know…”

“It’s okay,” I said hurriedly. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Mostly because I didn’t want to talk about it, couldn’t actually bring myself to talk about it. And I couldn’t fathom any reason why she would want to talk about it either. It was far too much pain for any one person to have to think on. How much pain could one person live through? But to purposely dredge up the past, knowing full well you were never going to have that life back? No, I couldn’t. It would break me completely, drive me insane with sadness. I couldn’t think of those days, those lost lives, because I wouldn’t want to come back from those beautiful memories. Not ever.

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said. “I want to. Actually, I think I need to.” Her eyes flitted to mine and I found her smiling, the smile distorted among the many bruises still visible on her pretty face. “If that’s okay?”

I shrugged noncommittally, silently hoping she wouldn’t force me back there. “Sure, if you think you’re up to it.”

Leisel’s smile grew wider, her eyes lighting up from within. “I think about it all the time. Things like the first Christmas we all shared together. You and Shawn came over, you brought me that awful chocolate cake—your first attempt at baking, remember?”

She started to laugh and it was such a foreign sound, an infectious one. Despite myself, despite now vividly recalling the memory of that very Christmas that had just forced itself out of the dark recesses of my mind, I found myself chuckling with her.

“It was disgusting,” I said, still laughing. “Why would you think about that?”

“Because it makes me smile, and because it was that day that I knew we’d be friends forever.” Her words were spoken with so much conviction that tears suddenly sprang to my eyes.

Biting down on my bottom lip as a dull pain sprang to life inside my chest, I shook my head. “A shitty chocolate cake makes you think the weirdest of things, Lei. Maybe you’re just being overly emotional—you’re probably about to get your period or something.”