Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(90)

what my mom wanted. He couldn’t … and look what happened. Mom’s dead.” She pounded her fists on the metal rail, and the echo bounced off the night-black trees. Benny heard the echo and

quickly grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t,” he said. “Not out here. The noise …”

She wheeled on him. “Are you afraid too?” she mocked.

“Yes,” he said. “I am. There are zoms out there, Nix. Zoms and them. Sound carries.”

But her hurt and anger still needed a target. “You’re just as bad as Tom. You and Morgie and Chong. You worship Charlie and the other bounty hunters. You think he’s cool.” She injected

that word with so much venom that Benny knew he would never allow himself to speak it again. It sounded hollow and immature and stupid.

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Oh, sure. Now that it’s too late to do anything, you act all wise and noble. Please.”

Her voice was drenched with bile, and it was getting louder. Benny tried to read her face by starlight, but all he saw were harsh lines.

“And about Tom … I’m not sure what I feel about him anymore. I mean, I miss him. A lot. More than I thought I would.” He shook his head. “Ever since he first took me out to the Ruin,

everything’s different. I don’t understand him. I don’t know if I ever did.”

She shoved him hard in the chest. “Who cares? He didn’t save my mom and he could have.”

“Nix, I know you’re hurt. I wish I could fix it, I swear to God. I wish I could make it all different, make what happened not true. If I could … I’d give anything. I’d die to make it

right for you and for your mom.”

She started to say something, but he touched her arm.

“If you need to lash out at me, if you need to do anything to me—say anything, throw me off this tower—if it will help even a little, then do it. I don’t care what happens to me anymore.

I got what I wanted.”

“What’s that?” she demanded.

“You,” he said. “I got you back safe. The monsters didn’t get you.”

Nix stared at him, unable to speak even though she tried.

Benny tugged the worn leather diary out of his back pocket and pressed it into her hands. “I found this on the floor in your room. I kept it. I … haven’t opened it, haven’t read it. I

kept it, because as long as I had it, I knew I’d find you again.”

Nix took the diary, and in the pale light from stars and moon, she ran her fingers across the cover and along the binding. When she raised her eyes to look at Benny, her eyes were wet with

new tears.

“Benny, I—,” she began, but before she could say anything more, he bent forward and kissed her. It was the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong circumstances. There was nothing right in

their whole world.

Except that kiss.





40


NIX FELL ASLEEP WITH HER HEAD IN HIS LAP. BENNY STAYED AWAKE for another couple of hours, stroking her hair and staring into the infinite star field that stretched above him. After that

first scalding kiss, there had been others. And then there had been more tears as the full reality of her loss hit Nix. These tears were quieter, though. They weren’t the tears of shock and

denial. They’d already been through that storm. These were the deep, heartbroken tears of acceptance.

Their lives had changed. Their worlds had changed. As he sat there stroking Nix’s hair, Benny had the weird feeling that if he turned around, he would be able to see yesterday and the day

before that, all the way back to the point where he had decided to apprentice with Tom. It had been at that moment that his footfalls had diverged from the sane and predictable course of his

life. He wished he could call out to the Benny of ten days ago and shout a warning not to come this way. Take the job at the pit, work for the German locksmith, get a tower job with Chong.

Anything but this.

As he thought about it, Benny felt sickness creeping into his mind, making ugly questions form like tumors.

Would all of this have happened if I hadn’t taken that damn job with Tom?

And worse yet …

Would any of it have happened?

On a deep level he knew that these thoughts were stupid and wrong. Charlie and the Hammer would have still come after Tom and Sacchetto and Nix’s mom.

Wouldn’t they?

He also knew that the guilt he felt was no different than the guilt Nix felt for having told Zak about her mother knowing Lilah. Things said and done innocently should never be used as

weapons. There was guilt here, he finally decided, but it all belonged to Charlie.

Just thinking that name made fires ignite in the pit of his stomach.

For the first time in his life he wished that Tom was here to help him make sense of it. Tom. Benny had hated him most of his life and had just started to like him—even if he didn’t quite

understand him—and now the zoms had gotten him.

The sudden realization that Tom was not only dead but was probably a zom was like a punch in the face. Benny closed his eyes and found that old, old memory of Mom in her white dress with red

sleeves, handing him to Tom, screaming at Tom to run, and Tom running away, leaving her behind. Tom the zombie hunter. Tom the coward.