Chaos: Love After the Apocalypse (After the Plague Book 6) by Imogen Keeper

Author:Imogen Keeper [Keeper, Imogen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mindless Muse Publishing, LCC
Published: 2024-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

17 | Between my spine and his

FRANKIE

THIS ISN’T WHAT I WANTED.

At all.

I came down here to look at Ben’s cell, to get Tani to look in the window. I was going to ask how she got around the resort when she was pretending to be a ghost, and see if there was a way to get inside.

I expected to look in and see Ben in his cell and feel righteous, but I didn’t expect to get slapped with memories.

The dark.

The cold.

The everywhere people with guns.

The smell of the cellar rises up, the sounds, but this time, faced with the onslaught of it all, more vivid than a nightmare, I can’t climb on top of Yorke and fuck the memories away.

And worse, Ben says a word, a precious word from his profane lips. Fatherhood.

Yorke’s face registers horror, and I can’t unsee it.

But what comes up is rage. Pure, violet hot rage.

I find myself screaming my throat raw, my right hand slamming into Ben’s stupid face, and I go in for another one, and I connect with that one, too.

And it feels so good, like the best thing, the only thing, the right thing.

I pull back my leg to kick him, and he’s cowering now, back against the wall, his handcuffed hands up in front of his face, trying to dodge me as I aim for his ribs.

Yorke grabs me by the hips and hauls me back, and my sneaker finds only air as Ben’s shiny red blood pours from his nose like a waterfall.

As his awful face recedes, the echo of his words grows.

Fatherhood. Fatherhood. Fatherhood.

Yorke, who never knew his father, who had a series of shitty men in and out of his life, who tries with everything he has to be good to Auden and Shane. This moment right here, this is how he’s learning of his baby’s existence?

With blood and shouting, violence and stupid, fucking Ben.

Jacquetta and a few other soldiers jog into the room to subdue Ben. I think one of them is Rey.

Yorke hauls me past a gobsmacked Church, Tani peering like a terrified kitten with wide eyes from around his shoulder. Shasta’s shouting obscenities toward Ben who’s continuously hollering from the floor like an angry pig.

Wendell is against the wall to avoid getting in anyone’s way, his crutch pulled tight, staring from me to Yorke and back again.

My cheeks go angrily hot as Yorke drags me into an empty room off the prison hallway.

He hits the switch, the lights wash over us, revealing dank walls that were once painted a deep black, and a ceiling that, while dusty and at least a hundred years old, runs with pipes and ducts.

He closes the door behind us, motions slow, overly deliberate in a way I always associate with him. The more he feels, the slower he moves. Like he’s fully aware of the power and force of his own body and is taking pains not to throw his weight around. His shoulders give him away, though. They’re round and rigid, and a strawberry of blood blooms over his wound, a ripped open stitch.

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