Page 80 of Doomsdate

“Do you like stir-fry?” Maisie asks, her hand lingering on a tall bottle of sesame oil. She looks up, suddenly shy. “I have a great recipe I could make for dinner tonight before we—um.” Her cheeks have gone full peach sherbet, and she turns away, scrunching up her face in mortification. “Settle in?”

I take the bottle of sesame oil and place it in the cart. “I love stir-fry. What’s your recipe?”

“It’s all about the sauce.” Her face smooths in instant relief at the out I’ve given her. “Sesame oil, freshly grated ginger, some garlic, rice vinegar—”

A former man in an apron stiff with dried blood lurches out from behind the bakery counter. I zap him in the heart as we stroll by. “Anything for sweetness?” I ask as the zombie collapses in the sprouted-grain loaves he probably baked last week.

“Usually honey,” Maisie says, steering the cart around his sprawled legs. “But what really makes it is the orange zest.”

“Mm, that sounds amazing.”

“Did you grab the lemongrass, by the way?”

“Sure did.”

Maisie smiles, pleased, as we fill the cart with the rest of our items and leave the store without paying.

Still feels weird.

She checks the sun’s position, then presses her lips together in a thoughtful line. “We can get another hour or two in today, probably, before we need to stop for the night. Then I could have you in West Point by the end of the day tomorrow.” Her voice wavers a bit at the end, like she wasn’t sure she should say all that but forced herself to anyway. “If all goes well, of course.”

We load the car with our provisions and climb in, both quiet beneath the weight of her pronouncement. With her hands gripping the steering wheel and eyes trained ahead, she waits for me to confirm this plan. One that necessarily means the end of our time together. That leaves me on my parents’ doorstep while she drives on to some bunker in the middle of nowhere, both of us spending the rest of this apocalypse and, maybe, our lives in the company of old folks who think they know better for us. Her jaw tightens, and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing.

I clear my throat. “What if…we didn’t do that?”

Our heads slowly turn to face each other. Her eyes glint in the soft light of the afternoon flooding the rig’s interior.

“What do you mean?”

“What if we took an extra day for ourselves? Hole up somewhere nice tonight and actually rest?” Heat flushes my neck, my cheeks, as Maisie’s eyes widen. “Or explore the area, or, I don’t know, I’m just not ready to say goodbye to you ye—”

She reaches over, grasps my chin, and cuts me off with a ferocious kiss. The shock of it nearly stops my heart altogether, but the tight grip of her fingers on my jaw brings me roaring back into the present, and then I’m grabbing her, too, my hands spanning her ribs, pulling, yanking until she slides over the console and onto my lap. The rig’s cabin is small, but somehow Maisie fits atop me just right, the apex of her legs sitting delicious and heavy against the long ridge of my aching cock, stiffening to fill her. This time, I’m the one groaning as she grinds against me, her hands clasped around the back of my neck as she kisses me harder. My fingers find the chassis of her hips, gripping her greedily and pinning her down for maximum friction, maximum contact, between us. Her skin pebbles beneath my touch as she gasps against my lips, then her whole body freezes.

My heart lurches. “What?” I whisper, too locked in her embrace to survey the parking lot. “Is something wrong?” My own eyes widen. “Oh, god, it’s not baby-sling zombie, is it?”

Maisie’s eyes, perfectly round, blink. “No, no, it’s not that.” She leans back suddenly, releasing my neck, and pushes backward butt-first over the console in one long stream of awkward, un-Maisie-like movements. “It’s just…I broke the rules. Again.”

“The rules?” I repeat dumbly, still dazed by the fierce press of Maisie’s lips, the hot tip of her tongue as it expertly met mine. No more practice needed for kissing, that’s for sure.

“We’re outside, thoroughly exposed! And it’s not lesson time.” Maisie’s head hangs down. “I’m sorry. I got—carried away.”

“Do not apologize.” I twist in my seat to face her fully, and when she still doesn’t look up, I gently lift her chin. Pooled in her eyes is such confusion and shame and guilty longing, it twists my insides, wringing empathy from me like water from a rag. Because I feel the same way. Every lesson that leaves me panting for more, every warm, sweet touch of her body against mine, every time she laughs and it lights up the gray, shadowed world I’ve haunted for the last three years with her bright, bizarre sunshine. Every time she looks and finds beauty that I’ve forgotten how to see, she helps me see it again. New and fresh and wonderfully vivid, just like her. I alternate between feeling so grateful I could cry and this crushing anxiety that I’m not supposed to feel this way again. I had my love, I had my life. It ended too soon when Louise died and left me stranded ashore in this world that no longer felt like it was mine to have. But I never looked to the horizon for a rescue. I didn’t think I deserved one, not when I could do nothing to save my Louise. But here is Maisie anyway, pulling me from the wreckage of my life aboard her own that, in so many ways, is just beginning. A second chance. And, like magic, I’ve started to feel again.

The truth teeters on my tongue. I want to tell her how much she’s done for me, list all the ways she’s saved me that she doesn’t even realize. I want to show her everything now, because she deserves more than her unfairly sparse life has given her, and because now I want to see it all again, too. With her. Beside her. On her team.

But I can’t say any of that. Gramps got it right this morning—I’m just her useless survival partner. The reason she’s been endangered over and over again. Who am I to ask for more from her? Who am I to believe I deserve any of this?

“Everett?” Maisie murmurs, her chin still resting in my hand.

“Your eyes are the exact color of the ocean on a still winter’s morning,” I say instead. I brush my thumb down the velvet of her cheek. “Can I show you?”

Chapter Eighteen

Maisie

We set off for the shore, winding through a stream of small townships until it’s nothing but open road lined with thick copses of trees. About twenty minutes from our destination, Everett lowers his window, takes a deep breath in, and sighs.

“Smell that?”