Page 62
Water. Always drink the water.
Until it melts to nothing.
“You have no clean source of water here,” I point out. “You know you can’t last much longer in this place. Once the snow melts, you have to go back. You can’t hide from Micah forever.”
He answers with a grumbling stomach.
Awkwardly, he lies down beside me, close enough to provide a blanket of warmth, but far enough to be appropriate given the circumstances.
“Get some sleep. We’re hunting tomorrow.”
I huff. “I can barely move, Ezra. My hand is…”
He reaches for it, and I wince. He slowly unwraps the bandage and inspects it, shaking his head. “He did this to you, didn’t he?”
I don’t respond. I don’t want him to know what Micah did to me. I’ve been trying to downplay it since it happened. I hoped he wouldn’t care enough to look.
He grabs what’s left of the clean water and washes the scrapes and the bits of hanging skin. I haven’t wanted to see how bad it is, but the discoloration says enough.
The swelling, the bruising, the cuts… It’s bad.
He wraps it back up without asking any more questions.
He knows… He senses how toxic Micah and I are.
I wipe the sweat dripping from my forehead. “I need to eat, Ezra. Please, can I have something?”
A pause, and his entire body goes rigid. “There is no more food, London. It’s gone… all of it.
My breath hitches. I knew they were low, but out? Completely?
I blow out a breath. “Is that why Naomi left?” She was clearly here; her mark is all over this place. The two of them spent the winter in this very spot. Surviving, relying on each other, easing their pain, loss, and suffering, just like Micah and I did. Yet, both decided to leave us…
His mouth curls. “She said she was going to see what she could find and come right back. We both knew the others wouldn’t welcome me back, so we couldn’t go together. We knew I’d ruin any chance we’d have of living. So she left, and she never came back… so fuck her.”
Traitorous bitch.
“I’m sorry, Ezra. You didn’t deserve to be abandoned like that.”
He scoffs. “So, if you want to eat, you have to help me hunt. There is no fucking choice. Either that, or you die.”
He must have something… anything.
“If you want me to have any fucking strength to hunt, I need something now…”
I can imagine his eyes rolling. “Fucking chicks, man,” he mutters but hands me a piece of dried meat he had hidden.
I knew it.
He pulls a blanket over him and rolls over in the other direction. “This is the last of it. There is no more fucking food, London.”
I take a small bite and savor the taste, swallowing it slowly.
He’s wrong… It’s not the last of it. I know exactly where more food is—a whole pile of it. Am I capable of betraying Micah by telling Ezra where the cabin is? Micah seems to have no problem betraying me.
“Ezra, I…”
“Go the fuck to sleep before I throw you back in that hole. And if you fucking snore or do any more of that weird laughing shit, I’m going to gag you.”
