Love and Decay (2 page)

If he wanted something, he got it. If he
wanted to sit by me, inevitably I would have to give in and let him
sit by me. Or walk by me. Or fight with me. Or talk to me. Or
whatever it was.

The resilient little boy I’d known better
than anyone else once upon a time had grown up into a relentless,
driven, unstoppable man. With Feeders he used his impressive force
and powerful muscles. With my brothers he used the quiet command
he’d collected over the years. With my sisters and his sister he
used playful charm and those lost little boy eyes he’d never
lost.

With me, he used something else. Something I
wasn’t even sure I could name.

He didn’t ask my opinion or my permission. He
just took.

He just did.

And I let him.

Every single time.

“Page,” his rough voice grated over my skin,
pulling goose bumps and shivers out of me. “Where did you go?”

Bravely meeting his dark eyes, I took a deep
breath and told him. “Lennon and I were talking about the day he
was born.”

Miller leaned in. It wasn’t fluid or smooth.
His entire body jerked forward as if even the mention of that day
forced him into action. “I remember that day,” he rasped, “but I
always forget it’s his birthday.”

“How do you remember it then?” I asked the
question but I already knew. He remembered it the same way I
did.

“As the day they took you from me.”

His words pushed into the air like an
explosion. I felt the force of them all the way to my toes. They
wrapped around me and whispered danger and fear. They whispered
protection and courage.

I let myself smile casually. “You got me
back. It was just a short glitch in time. Nothing that bothers me
today.”

“Liar,” he growled. “I can see that it
bothers you. It’s all over your face.”

I shrugged, trying to play it off. “Of
course, it bothers me. It was traumatic. I didn’t know if I would
see my brothers again. Or you. Or anyone I knew. I was terrified.
But it all worked out. You guys saved me. The men that took me paid
for their sins. I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

I hated the sincerity in his voice. I would
have preferred sarcasm or a demand or anything but the gentle
probing that dug deeper than it should have. I felt ripped open by
his soft question. Laid bare.

Raw and vulnerable and weak.

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Miller.
Nobody just takes me anymore. I can fight. I can wound. I can kill.
I’m not going to get locked up in a slaver’s house ever again
because I am strong enough and able enough to take care of
myself.”

I looked away from him, unable to deal with
his reaction. I didn’t want to see pity because he didn’t believe
me. Or fear because he wondered if maybe I wasn’t strong
enough.

Or worse, I didn’t want to see him laughing
at me. Even though I’d just asked for sarcasm, I needed him to take
this…
me
seriously.

I needed him to think of me as an equal… as a
warrior… as a woman capable of surviving whatever this world had to
throw at her.

The back of his fingers glanced under my
chin, coaxing my gaze to his. When at last I looked up in to his
unreadable eyes I didn’t see disbelief or pity or laughter or
anything but heat and light and fire.

“Are you afraid to go back there?” he asked
gently.

“No,” I answered immediately. “The men that
hurt me are dead. The only things I have left to face are
ghosts.”

I watched him swallow and fight to hold onto
his calm. “Did they hurt you, Page? You’ve always said that-”

“No, not like that.” I hadn’t meant to admit
that much. Whenever somebody had asked me about my time in
captivity, I’d played it off or given basic answers. I’d never told
anyone the truth.

I never planned to tell anyone the truth.

“Like how?” He wouldn’t give up on this. He
would push and push and push because that was all he knew how to
do. Especially with me. He never asked permission. He just took
what he wanted.

Even if I didn’t want to give it to him.

And yet I still didn’t fear him. Despite
logic and reason and experience, I wasn’t afraid of him or what he
would do.

“Fine, they hurt me. But it’s what they did.
They hurt everybody. And I was just a little girl, so yeah, they
hurt me. But, Miller, it’s over. Forever. I’m not scared anymore.
And I’ve done everything I could to make sure it would never happen
again. Stop worrying so much.”

“Is that why you fought so hard to be a
killer? Because of that memory?”

I turned my head and buried my chin in my
shoulder. “It’s one of the reasons.”

He stepped into me and his hands landed on my
shoulders. I heard his intake of breath and realized he was about
to say something or do something or… hug me?

“Why do you hate this place?” I asked
quickly, deflecting the focus off me.

I felt him withdraw a bit. It wasn’t so much
that he visibly pulled back, but the tension in the air lessened. I
could breathe easier. I could stand straighter without the crushing
force of his aura wrapping so around me. I could look at him
without feeling like I was about to go blind.

But even as he pulled back, my spirit
deflated and I hated myself just a little bit for ruining the
moment.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be close to
Miller again or touch him or talk to him or open up to him. I just
didn’t trust him. Miller had been my world once upon a time. He had
been my only friend and my only confidant. He had been the only
thing in my life that wasn’t family. And I had cherished him…
worshipped him… counted on him.

Then he disappeared and I was left alone for
the first time in my life. It didn’t make sense since nobody else I
loved had abandoned me. In fact they were these super human
caretakers that would have done anything for me. I knew that. I
felt it in their love for me. I felt it daily.

But without Miller I didn’t have a friend. I
had family that was obligated to love me and scientists that wanted
to experiment on me. I had Santi, but that wasn’t even close to
what Miller and I had. And everybody else in my life were either
grownups or babies. I was alone in this middle of the road, a place
that felt lonelier than anything else in my life.

And besides that, Miller had been different.
I had loved him just as fiercely. I had expected to always love him
that intensely. And when he pulled back and abandoned me, it was
the first time I had ever felt that kind of neglect.

It was the first time I had ever truly been
shown the harsh realities of life.

I had seen plenty of bad things over my life
time, but what Miller did wasn’t born from an infection or evil men
or the elements.

That had been Miller’s choice.

Miller had chosen to leave me.

He had betrayed me in a way.

And I wouldn’t trust him again.

I could not.

Because if he did it to me a second time… If
I gave him my trust and my friendship and whatever else he was
demanding from me and he left me again… I would never come back
from that.

He looked over my head at the expansive
valley of desert beyond. Speckled hills dotted the landscape and
horizon. To the left a wild cacti field painted the ground with the
palest green. To the right rocky, lay uneven ground and tumbling
vegetation.

A shaky breath left his chest before he
answered, “This place is full of my biggest regrets. My dad should
have died here. And I should never have let you go. I should never
have let those men take you from me.” His gaze returned to mine.
“This place is like one giant failure for me. Failure after
failure.”

I shook my head, shocked that he felt this
weight of responsibility. “Miller, there was nothing you could have
done. In either scenario. You thought your dad
was
dead. And
as for me… I… I… I wasn’t your responsibility-”

His fingers landed on my lips, silencing me.
“I’m going to stop you right there because that’s just not true.”
He leaned in until I felt his breath on my cheeks… on my lips. “You
are my responsibility, Page. You’ve always been. Since the very
first time I saw you.”

I shook my head, unsure what any of his words
meant.

His lips brushed my forehead, just above my
eyebrow. I shivered in the cooling night air and tried to remember
how to swallow. “You were so innocent that first night. So pure.
Young. Tiny.
Good
. And you were so sick. Everything that I
wasn’t. And your brothers… I had never seen anything like it
before. They would have done anything for you. They would have died
for you. I decided that night I would die for you, too. If those
guys, your brothers, if they thought you were worth dying for, then
I wanted to know that kind of dedication, too. I wanted to care for
something that much. I wanted to protect something other than me
for once. And I did.”

“What are you talking about?” I whispered
against his fingers.

“You were at my old house,” he explained.
“Your brothers had found it somehow. And you were sick. You were so
sick. I thought… I thought if I could just make you better, if I
could just get you medicine then maybe I wasn’t as worthless as my
dad thought I was. Maybe I would make a difference. Maybe… maybe I
would matter.”

Hot tears pricked against my eyes so suddenly
I didn’t have a chance to stop them from falling. Miller noticed
them immediately. I could never hide them from his sharp gaze.

I couldn’t hide anything from him.

He cradled my face in his hands and wiped
them away with his thumbs. “Why are you crying?”

His question only made me cry more because he
didn’t know. Even after so much time with my family, he still
didn’t know. “Miller, you do matter.” I sniffled and held his cagey
gaze. He was trying to pull away again, recede back to that dark
place he’d convinced himself owned him. But it didn’t. He was
light. He was filled with light and goodness. “You matter to
me.”

My words seemed to shock him. He jerked back
while his expression flickered with confusion and disbelief.
“Page,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t let you go back there. He’s
going to try to take you from me.” He dropped his forehead to mine
and the heat of his body penetrated every one of my pores. His
eyelids slammed shut, shuttering his expression. “I won’t let him.
You need to know that I won’t let him.”

“Matthias?” I asked because I wasn’t quite
sure. “He won’t do anything to me, Miller. I promise.”

Miller shook his head and pain flashed over
him. “Not Matthias.”

I wanted to keep pushing him. If he could
demand answers from me, I could do the same. I needed to know what
he was thinking or what he was so concerned with. Urgency pulsed
through me even while my body reacted to Miller’s touch as though
it had been waiting for this all along.

As if I was finally waking up…

As if I was finally coming alive.

I wanted to sigh into him. I wanted to throw
my arms around his neck and press myself against him until I
couldn’t tell where I ended and he began.

This was everything I had been missing for
years and I couldn’t believe he’d kept it from me for so long.

I lifted shaky hands to press them against
his chest. He flinched at my touch, the thin material of his shirt
barely a barrier against the combined heat of our skin.

He leaned down, skimming his face against
mine. I felt everything in that moment, his heat, the rough scrape
of his longer-than-usual beard, the corner of his lips, the
pressure of his fingers as he held me tighter, closer…

“Save me, Page Parker,” he whispered.

My heart stopped. My breath caught. I thought
for a heady second I would just burst into flames. This was a
cataclysmic moment between us and I knew nothing would ever be the
same after it. It was like the entire world stopped in orbit… in
its very rotation and we were suspended in time… in this moment… in
each other.

And I never wanted to leave.

I could have stayed like that forever.

Instead, the reality of our broken world came
crashing back. Painfully.

Something sharp and heavy hit the back of my
head. I made an inelegant grunting noise and fell against Miller.
His entire body snapped to attention.

Gone was the softer side of him.

Gone was our intimate moment.

Back was the warrior that would protect me
and my family no matter what the cost.

“Page, can you stand?” he gritted through his
teeth.

I made another sound that wasn’t quite a
word, but I managed to stand up. My vision blurred from the
piercing pain in the back of my head and I felt the warm flow of
blood trickle through my braid and down my neck.

Damn it.

I pulled my blade free of my harness before I
even turned around. Miller did the same thing, cursing low and
threateningly.

I spun around expecting a Zombie horde. Or at
least one Zombie.

“What the hell?” I gasped, unprepared for the
rotting humanity in front of us.

“My thoughts exactly,” Miller growled. To the
line of bedraggled humans in front of us, he shouted, “Stand down
or I will kill you.”

They held fist-size rocks in their pasty
hands and stared at us like they couldn’t wait to murder us. Their
once tanned skin had been discolored and now turned sickly. It
looked paper-thin from where I stood, as if I could just brush my
hand over it and it would turn to ash. The rich coffee color had
turned a weak pale and sallow.

This fierce bunch in ragged, filthy clothing,
despite their trembling, looked able to murder anyone that opposed
them. There were at least fifteen of them in front of us. I didn’t
know if they’d found the others yet, but this didn’t look good.

For us.

“They are human, right?” I asked Miller.