“What about physical changes?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did Miss LaRoux undergo any…physical changes to her person while in your company?”
“I think she got a little stronger from all the hiking.”
“Major, to what extent did you act upon your feelings for Miss LaRoux?”
“Medium.”
“Excuse me?”
“How am I supposed to answer that question?”
“We are attempting to discover what happened. It’s in the best interests of all concerned that you answer with the truth.”
THIRTY
LILAC
“YOU OKAY?” he lifts his head from my neck, lips grazing my jaw.
I shiver, choosing to answer with a small murmur, content. After a moment I open my eyes to find him watching me. His hair is stuck to his forehead, visible in the half-light from the dying fire.
“Happy,” I add, just to see the line of his mouth curve upward, highlighted by the dim glow of the coals.
“Good.” He leans down to kiss me, keeping his weight off on one elbow. I tilt my chin up, discovering the way it makes him lean into the kiss harder, uttering a sound of mixed satisfaction and surprise.
When he lifts his head again, he moves his hand from my waist to trail a fingertip along the edge of my brow, down across my cheek, nudging a few stray hairs away from my face.
“You’ve got no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” His voice is still a little hoarse, and my stomach lurches in response.
“You took your sweet time.” I try for airy and unconcerned, though I know my performance is not convincing.
He laughs, and I watch his mouth, distracted, and almost miss what he says next: “I’m pretty sure if I’d tried to kiss you while dragging you through the forest that first day, you would’ve thrown one of those ridiculous shoes at my head.”
I expect him to put up a fight when morning arrives and I suggest, a little wistfully, that we take a rest day. I don’t want to leave our bed, don’t want to find clothes, don’t want to be apart from him. The way he looks at me now is so different. Clear, unguarded, warm. I didn’t even know there’d been a wall between us, until now, seeing it gone.
Instead of putting on his soldier voice and saying something about getting a march on the day, he just stretches and gathers me against him with one arm. The other, he tucks behind his head, looking up at the ceiling of the cave, where a little daylight comes through a crack. The light plays over the cavern walls, revealing formations carved over the ages—stalagmites reaching up from the ground for their twins overhead, vast curtains of gleaming limestone dripping down from the ceiling.
“I can’t think of any way inside that building. For now, there’s nothing we have to do that requires immediate attention.”
I prop myself on my elbow, staring at him. “What do you mean, nothing we have to do?”
“Just what I said, beautiful.” He grins at me, making my stomach flutter. No one in my old life would be permitted to grin at me like that. “You think I have any burning desire to get out of bed today?”
I can’t help but smile back at him. He leans up and kisses me, a brief thing before he starts to pull away again. He pauses, eyes half closed, thoughtful, before leaning up once more, taking his time, his mouth warm against mine. By the time he pulls away, my heart is pounding.
“I’ll get us some breakfast,” he says, slipping out of our nest and tucking the blankets back around me. He hauls his pants on but doesn’t bother with his belt, letting them hang low on his hips. I curl into the warm space beside me that he left behind and watch him as he moves around the camp. How is it that I can want him so badly when he’s only been gone from me for a minute?
He rummages in his pack, searching for ration bars. After a moment he pauses, staring down at something in the bag. I see only a flash of silver as he picks it up, closing his hand around it, but I know what it is—the case containing the picture of his family.
It’s then that I realize something that began to take root the day we climbed the wreck, looking for our next move. When I discovered that the thought of living here didn’t hurt. The truth is that I don’t want us to be rescued. I wish I could stay here, with Tarver, forever—even if forever is only a few short years, or months, or days, before the savageness of the planet overcomes us. Because the moment the rescue ships touch down, I’ll never see Tarver Merendsen again.
And this is the thing I’ve been trying to fight, because I know it’s not the same for him. I know he couldn’t be happy here, not when his heart is in a little garden cottage with a teacher and a poet and the memory of his brother.
I watch as he sets the silver case aside, carefully, tenderly. He returns to his search, but I can see the grief lingering in his expression.
It doesn’t matter that being rescued means the end of us—that it means a return, for me, to a life unlived, watched every moment and kept apart from anything that could touch me. All that matters is that he gets home. That his parents don’t have to suffer the loss of their second child.
We have to get inside that building. By the time Tarver returns to me, I am smiling, and I wrap myself around him. But even as he murmurs in my ear, kisses my shoulder, twines his fingers in my hair, my mind is working. I’ll think of a way.
It isn’t until late afternoon that we finally drag ourselves from bed, and only then because we need to refill the canteen from the spring. We locate clothes and take a walk through the woods afterward, making our way back toward the building.