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Unsurprisingly, Ezra says nothing.

I watch James, who has displayed no emotion from losing Ollie. Deep down, it’s as if he already knew the outcome and had come to terms with it. All those days he spent searching for him only to end up finding me.

Micah walks over and slaps a hand on Thomas’s back. Only yesterday, Thomas might have tried to pull that hand out of its socket, but now it’s like nothing happened. “Stay here, man. You’re not in any condition to find her, and I need someone to watch over the girls.”

“We can finish the signal fire,” Serena offers.

“Signal fire?” I ask, finally putting the pieces together. All the wood, the flippant comment Micah made earlier about not getting rescued…

“Why are we suddenly building a signal fire?” I ask. The sky is cloudy—heavy and dense. We’ve been stranded for months without using a signal fire as a means of getting located. We even have a flare gun we didn’t bother using because we haven’t seen signs of humanity beyond this group.

James looks at me, his eyes sullen. “Thomas saw an airplane a couple of days ago. It was flying low, like it was looking for something. We want to be prepared in case it comes back.”

Looking for something? The fire?

Or a group of missing teens, perhaps? A plane wreckage deep in the forest? Perhaps the world hasn’t forgotten about us after all.

My mouth gapes open. Micah knew this and didn’t think to tell me? Dread settles in my stomach. I want to have hope, but based on Micah’s reaction, he doesn’t think it matters.

“And you didn’t think to say anything?” I say to no one in particular, but my question is directed at Micah.

“You seemed a bit distracted, London,” James says, glancing between Micah and me.

So he did hear us.

James thinks I’m weak with Micah. He heard me firmly reject him last night, only to hear the passionate sounds of our fucking an hour later.

Thomas continues his pacing around the fire. “Can we talk about this later? We need to find Jade. She’s probably dead already.”

Micah rises and grabs his weaponry, throwing it in a pile, then grabs some canned food and opens it. “We all need to eat. Trust me, we’ll need the upper hand on him.”

Finally, he’s not underestimating him. Nigel is smart, just as Jade had warned us and like I knew the whole time.

Even though I emptied the contents of my stomach mere moments earlier, the sight of that food awakens my hunger. We all help prepare the food and eat it in an unspoken agreement that our time here is ending.

We are clinging to that hope, shoving the food into us as fast as we can. When we finish, Micah flits his eyes to Ezra, who’s busy wiping his mouth.

“Ezra, get ready. You’re coming with James and me. You need to show us where that fucking shithole cave you lived in is.”

Ezra nods, keeping his face neutral. A flash of sorrow hits his eyes—finally, the Ezra I saw back in his cave. His humanity is returning now that he’s among his peers. “Yeah, I’ll show you. Anything I can do to help.”

Unsurprisingly, we all still defer to Micah. Even Ezra doesn’t put up an argument. It makes me so proud to know that despite the darkness inside, his first instinct is to protect people. Even if he doesn’t believe he’s a good person, his actions from the beginning ultimately prove it.

Thomas sits, placing his head in his only hand, looking utterly defeated. All 220 pounds of pure muscle, and Jade has him soft as a puddle. His eyes find his former friend. “She’s probably already dead.”

Micah pulls his pack containing freshwater bottles over his back. “She’s still alive,” he says with confidence of steel.

“How do you know that?” Thomas asks, his eyes red and sullen.

Micah pulls his hood up, shadows haunting his face and every motion tight. “If you were Nigel right now, wouldn’t you want to keep her?”

A shiver courses up my spine, shuddering at the thought of Nigel keeping her.

Micah’s eyes find mine. “London, you good, baby?”

I stand, the canned food helping me regain my strength, and at least for the moment, my mind is clear. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m coming with you. I’m not leaving Jade again.” To my extreme relief, he doesn’t put up an argument. I grab my spear and stand next to him, trying to ignore the wobble in my knees. There is no fucking way I’m separating from him again.

Not ever.