Wilder Girls(36)

And maybe she has. Every time she cut me down, every time I couldn’t reach her, all because she wanted me, and she thought I’d never want her back. And if there’s anything Reese does well, it’s self-defense.

But I can see through it, now, and I know what we’ve done for each other, the concessions we’ve made, the slights we’ve swallowed. Neither of us able to let go, no matter how much the holding on hurts.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’m here too.”

   For a moment we don’t move, and all I can hear is my heart marking time. Until Reese lets out a shaky breath, and then we’re both laughing, leaning into each other, practically giddy with relief.

“Okay, good,” she says, her silver fingers careful as she traces the line of my jaw. So soft I barely feel it, but I do, I do, and it lights me up like a match to paper. Our laughter falls away as the curve of her body fits to mine. She’s still smiling when she kisses me.

So am I.





CHAPTER 10


Evening, and we’re back up in our room. After leaving the barn we snuck the shotgun out to the spruce copse by the fence, buried it there under a layer of rotting leaves. Reese next to me like always, nothing different between us but the look in her eyes and the heat in my veins.

Now she’s sprawled on my bunk, watching me as I pace from one end of the room to the other. Every inch the sun sets is another notch of dread, a spring coiling in my gut. Closer and closer, the gate swinging open and Welch taking Byatt out into the woods.

Out in the hallway the other girls are drifting upstairs, back to their rooms in time for bed check. We stayed in the spruce copse clear through dinner, neither of us speaking, the iron bars of the fence looming larger and larger. I’m not hungry—just thinking of food still makes me sick with guilt—but Reese’s stomach picks that moment to grumble so loudly I can hear it from across the room.

   I stop pacing and watch as Reese sits up, takes the leftover jerky from breakfast out of her pocket and crams most of it into her mouth.

There should be more food here for us, I think, trying not to flinch. And there would be if I hadn’t helped Welch on the pier.

When she sees me watching, Reese swallows thickly and holds out what’s left, barely a bite. “Sorry,” she says. “Did you want some?”

I let out a wheezing laugh. This is ridiculous. Welch took my best friend from me, and here I am still keeping her secret. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.

And then I describe it as simply as I can. The bags, overflowing with food in its strange packaging, and the way Welch rested her hand so casually on her gun as she asked whether she’d made the right choice. Reese’s mouth goes slack as I talk. Dark eyes looking up at me from the bed, wide and incredulous.

“You’re serious,” she says when I finish.

I nod. I haven’t told her about the chocolate, but I can’t see what good it would do. And some part of me wants to keep it for myself. “Yeah,” I say. “And we just tossed it over.” She doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window, fists clenched, and I feel a gnawing in my gut. I can’t have ruined things with us. Not already, not before it’s barely even started. “Are you angry?”

She scoffs. “Of course I’m angry.”

“But I mean with me.”

   She looks at me then, and tentatively hooks her fingers through one of my belt loops. How could I have missed it? The warmth in her eyes, just mine and nobody else’s. “You didn’t have much of a choice, did you?”

It shouldn’t, but it makes me feel better.

Outside I can hear Julia making her way down the hallway, stopping at each room for bed check. Reese and I exchange glances, and by the time Julia pokes her head inside our room, we’re side by side on my bunk. Right where we should be, two girls following the rules.

“Three,” Julia says, and then she coughs delicately. “Sorry. Two.”

I stare at the floor after she goes, let my world narrow down to the slivers of dark between each floorboard. Welch will go out to the Harker house in a few hours, and so will we. Picking our way through the woods, breaking the quarantine. Fighting for our lives and Byatt’s too.

I can do this for her. I have to.

Reese’s cold, scaled fingers close around my wrist. The dark deepening around us, and when I turn to her, the aura of her hair is skimming over our skin, the pattern of her braid playing on the ceiling.

“You should get some rest,” she says, so gently I barely recognize her. “You’ll need it out there.”

“I can’t.” Out the window, the moon is rising, and I only have the memory of how it lit the sky last night to mark the hours. I choke back the worry throttling me. “What if we miss it?”

   “I’ll stay up.” The mattress shifts as she moves, and she drapes her jacket over my shoulders. “Go on.”

At least if I’m asleep, I can’t worry over what we’re about to do. I let her urge me back, toward the wall, and stretch out on my side, leaving half the bed open for her. They’re narrow, the Raxter bunks, built only for one, but I’ve shared one with Byatt since the first day of the Tox. I’m used to it.

Or I thought I was. Reese lies down next to me, her shoulder pressed to my chest, and it’s nothing like that. Nothing like Byatt, whose body felt almost like my own. I can feel even the slightest spot where I’m touching Reese, can hear every breath she takes like it’s the only sound in the world.