Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan Page A

stop it.” He swallowed hard and shook
his head as his nostrils flared, his gaze unfocused. “Weak people
do nothing. Weak people let life happen to them, and I was weak. I
knew what it was like out here, knew the kind of shit people were
doing just to live another day, and I didn’t want to come back to
it, to this. So I let him hurt you, didn’t say a word, didn’t try
to stop it, because I was goddamn weak.”
    My lower lip began to quiver as my eyes
filled with tears. One blink and they spilled over, running down my
cheeks faster than I could catch the breath I needed to stop them.
Who was this man? This wasn’t the Alex I knew, the silent,
stone-faced, emotionless Alex who’d been by my side this entire
time, and yet the same I’d thought had never really seen me
before.
    I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Whereas
Lawrence had appeared easygoing, always had a smile on his face,
was well spoken, and moved in a way that wasn’t at all threatening,
he’d actually been the very opposite.
    People, I’d come to learn, were rarely
congruent to the face they put on. Lawrence certainly hadn’t been,
and Alex wasn’t either. Evelyn, however, Evelyn was always herself.
The one person I could always count on for honesty, the one person
I could always trust. She was my constant, my rock, my heart, and I
loved her for that.
    “You have nothing to apologize for,” I
whispered tearfully. “I don’t blame you for taking care of
yourself. You didn’t owe me anything.”
    “But I did—I do,” he said, his jaw clenched
tight, his eyes flashing fire.
    I watched him internally battle his anger,
and yet I was strangely not afraid of him. It was the smiles that
now worried me, the gentle touches and the softly spoken words that
turned into something much more horrifying. Thanks to
Lawrence —who had been at
his most calm and his happiest when hurting me—Alex’s sharper, much
harsher demeanor was almost comforting.
    “I owe you my humanity, Leisel. Or what the
hell is the point? What are we trying to survive for?”
    I opened my mouth, an instinctual response
when someone asks you a question, only to realize I didn’t have a
ready answer, and more tears fell. Through blurry eyes I saw Alex’s
hand rise, and for the first time in three years, I didn’t flinch
at the sight of it. But before it could reach me, his hand suddenly
stilled a hairbreadth away from my cheek, and hovered for a moment
before falling away.
    “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, all the anger
now drained from his expression.
    I didn’t want to repeat myself, to tell him
again that he had nothing to be sorry for, not after he’d confessed
what appeared to be something that had been weighing so heavily on
his mind for some time now. To do so would be to dismiss his pain,
and I knew better than anyone what that felt like. Never would I
wish the same on another person, to ignore the wounds they carried
within them.
    “Nothing,” Evelyn announced, and we turned to
her, finding her expression crestfallen. Kicking at some debris in
her path, she made her way toward us. “Not a single thing.”
    The three of us stood there for a moment, not
looking at one another, not looking at anything in particular. We
were all hungry, dirty, and the weather was quickly turning. Soon
the days would no longer be warm, and the nights even colder.
    “Without gas, we’ll be traveling on foot
soon,” Alex said, both sounding and looking grim. “And dead if we
don’t find anything to eat.”
    “ What about other people?” Evelyn asked.
“There must be other survivors.”
    Alex turned his hard stare on Evelyn. “Trust
me, we don’t want to find other survivors. You think Whitney was a
ba—”
    “Evenin’, friends.”
    My head spun left toward the new voice just
as Alex grabbed my arm. I barely had time to see who it was that
had spoken, only getting a glimpse of a dark figure that looked
decidedly male, before Alex yanked me backward and nearly threw