Humanity (14 page)

I suppressed a giggle; this was way too
much proximity for me to be taking interest in his personality. I tried to
relax my thoughts, but it was difficult with his heart beating right under my
cheek. How had I gone to sleep so easily the night before? I definitely felt
less exhausted tonight. Though I hadn’t spent as much time shivering before
giving in to the option Gideon offered.

“Not tired?” he asked.

“I’ll get there.”

“You could tell me why you touch that
bracelet so much.”

I bit my lip before speaking. “My mom.
She gave it to me before . . .”

“Before I killed her.”
“Uh, yes. She said she’d always wanted to give her daughter something
beautiful. I thought it was ridiculous because she’d traded something valuable
for something worthless.”

“What had she traded?”

“The prenatal vitamins.” I could sense
him pulling out the memory of the bottle he’d found while rifling through my
bag; it felt like forever ago.

“Why do you still have them, then?”

I squirmed. “The couple who’d traded for
them were part of our hunting party; they died, and I’d felt like the trade
should have never happened, so I took them back. I couldn’t help it, especially
since my mom was dead, too.”

“You took them off the pregnant woman’s
dead body.”

“It just . . . it felt like the vitamins
were a part of my mother – her final act was to trade them. For this,” I
reached into my sleeve and pulled out the bracelet, letting it catch the
firelight. I watched Gideon’s eyes go to the bracelet, though I was pretty sure
he’d looked at it up close before. “I know it was selfish, but I wanted both. I
guess it goes with your previous accusation. That I’m selfish.”

“I didn’t mean that
you
were selfish. I was counteracting your accusation of
me
being selfish. Remember?”

“I guess so.” I hid the bracelet back in
my sleeve.

“So you made a point of grabbing the
pills, but didn’t think to grab more ammunition? Or to even check that you had
enough before going after me?”

“I was obviously not thinking clearly.” I
squirmed some more. “But . . . I’m kind of glad I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you dead.”

I craned my neck to peek up at him, my
eyes first meeting his stubbled jaw before seeing the expression on his face;
his eyebrows were furrowed as he stared up at the trees.

“Candace, that might be the nicest thing
you’ve ever said to me.”

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m sure that’s not the biggest
compliment you could get, me not wanting you dead.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Such as?”

“Well, your first words to me were ‘I’m
going to kill you.’ I think we’re on the road to vast improvement.”

“I’m glad you think so.” I settled back
against his chest.

“I think I could get used to this,” he
murmured.

I might have thought up a reply, but I
was already losing myself to sleep.

~ * ~

“Here we go, how about this?” Gideon
asked, holding up another frilly pink shirt. Why he thought I liked pink, I
have no idea. Maybe I did like pink; I’d never had the luxury of deciding.

“We still have the same problem,” I
noted, touching one of the spaghetti straps. “It’s not going to keep me warm.”
I turned away from it, continuing to rifle through the large pile of remaining
merchandise that we’d found at the Medford mall. Unfortunately, none of it was
made for cold weather, which was precisely the reason any of it remained.

Gideon dropped the shirt back onto the
pile and walked away, leaving me to my fruitless search. He went over to the
cashier table and began opening and closing drawers. After a few minutes of
this, there was silence, and I looked up to find him missing. I didn’t bother
panicking, since he’d most likely just stepped into the stockroom to search
there.

“There’s. Nothing. Here,” I muttered in
frustration, sifting through several girly shirts that no one in this decade
would have created – not because fashions had changed, but because practicality
and survival were the new black.

“There’s this,” Gideon murmured,
reappearing at my elbow and holding out what looked to be a small mending kit;
it was complete with several needles and several colors of thread.

“I don’t know how to sew,” I said,
staring at it. “And I’m not sure how much use it would be if I did.”

“
I
know how to sew. We can stitch together several shirts to make something warm
for you.”

“What about you?”

“If there’s enough thread, I don’t think
I look too shabby in purple. We’ll hope for better options elsewhere, but it’s
getting a little too cold to wait. Now, I think the best option for starting is
to add onto the shirt you’re currently wearing, since it already has one
sleeve.”

“I’m not taking my shirt off,” I told
him, hugging my chest; the shirt underneath my top layer was way too thin and
revealing for me to comfortably remove it in front of him.

“I would never ask you to; just step into
the back and change into one of these so I can work.” He lifted up the pink
frilly shirt again, even though it was a little out of his way.

I took it by the strap, holding it up
suspiciously. “You don’t happen to like pink, do you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Just go change.”

Chapter 13

Watching Gideon work was fascinating; he
bent over the fabric, very carefully pushing and pulling the small needle in
and out. The needle looked very tiny between his calloused thumb and finger,
and yet his stitches were so small.

I crouched beside him, taking careful
note of what he was doing to my shirt. When I had come back from changing, he’d
already started in on sewing a sleeve out of one of the sleeveless shirts we’d
found, and now he was attaching it to my original shirt, right where I had
ripped away the previous sleeve.

“It’s still not going to be very warm,” I
noted.

“We’re going to pad it; you don’t mind
being bulky, do you?”

“Not if it keeps me warm.”

“Good. Then choose which shirts you want
me to sew as the top layer. We’re going to use this,” he indicated my shirt,
“as the bottom layer, and then we’ll stick more fabric in between the two.”

“How many do I need for the top layer?”

“Just two. One as the body, and then
another for the sleeves.”

I went back to the pile of shirts,
sorting through them some more until I found a deep brown shirt, and then a
forest green shirt. I brought them over to Gideon.

He arched an eyebrow. “Like a tree?” he
asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll blend in.”

“Is that the only reason you chose those
colors?”

“I like them. They’re very earthy.”
“Yes, I know,” he replied wryly. “Which do you want as the body?”

“Green,” I decided.

He nodded once and kept working.

“Will there be much forest in the south?”

“Gotten quite attached, haven’t you?”

“Well, it does feel safer. And alive.”

“Have you always felt that way, or just
since my tree analogy?”

“I’d never had an opportunity to think
about it before. I went where my parents went.”

“But you feel that way now, despite the
fact that the forest is no safer than anywhere else.”

“Well. . .” I thought about this. “I
guess my feeling safer there relates to my association of it with you. You make
me feel safe.”

“Didn’t your parents make you feel safe?”

“Yes, but I also felt trapped with them.
Not that I wanted to leave them at all, but they were really my only option.
Now, they’re gone, and I have two very clear options: go off on my own, or stay
with you. Staying with you feels safe.”

“Yes, I am definitely the safe option.”
He chuckled.

“What about you? Why are you choosing
purple?”

“I thought it was the least feminine
option, until I saw your brown and green. Is there any black in there?”

I went back to the pile and searched some
more, coming up with a few cotton black tops. “These look good?” I asked,
holding them up.

“Perfect. Black is definitely my color.”

“I guess I’ll have to wait and see.” The
shirt he’d been wearing since we met was a deep beige.

Just then, a woman around the age of
thirty appeared in the doorway of the store we sat; I jumped to my feet,
pointing my gun at her.She raised her hands above her head in surrender, though
she had a gun held loosely in one of them.

Gideon had his gun pointed at her from
beside me, and she looked worriedly between the two of us.

“I just need some clothes,” she murmured.

“Candace,” Gideon said, his eyes not
leaving her. “Can you grab what we need? She can have whatever she wants from
what’s left.”

“Why don’t
you
grab what we need? You’re the seamstress.”

“I trust my coordination a little better
than I trust yours. Can you just do what I say for now?”

I lowered my gun, breaking eye contact
with the woman to walk over to the pile. “What, exactly, do we need?”

“I’d say eighteen more shirts.” I watched
the woman raise her eyebrow at this number.

“There’ll still be plenty here for you,”
I assured her, hurriedly picking the specified number of shirts at random;
they’d be inside cushion, so there was no reason for us to care what they
looked like, and all the warmer fabrics had long since been claimed by others.

“Can you grab the rest of our stuff?”
Gideon asked me. “I think we might as well leave her to it.”

I shot a glare at him before leaning over
and scooping up our possessions, including the shirt of mine he was working on;
I stalked out of the store, into the main area of the mall, passing the woman
as I went. Gideon followed, all the while keeping his gun on the woman, turning
and backing out. He kept his gun on her until she was out of our line of
vision.

He grabbed my arm, turning to face
forward, though keeping his eyes focused over his shoulder. He hauled me
onward, toward the mall entrance we had gone in through.

“Gideon, let go,” I hissed, tugging.

He did as I said, still on edge.

“Quit acting like that. She’s not
following us.”

“I don’t trust humans – that’s one of the
reasons I stay away from areas where they congregate.”

“Except me.”

“What?” he glanced at me.

“You don’t trust humans, except me.”

“Yes, except you, and that’s because I
started our acquaintanceship with a well-defined knowledge about your wish for
my death, and it was a very clear change when you no longer felt that way.”

“So you trust me not to kill you.”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you trust my
‘coordination,’ as you put it? What does that even mean?”

“I meant your ability to keep an eye on
her without getting distracted
and
your ability to shoot her if she became a threat.”

“I could have shot her, easily,” I
retorted.

“I know. I just wanted to be in control
of the situation.”

“Well, I suppose that’s understandable,
but I hope you don’t think you’re in control of
our
situation.”

“What are you talking about?” We were
through the doors and making a beeline for the trees a quarter of a mile away.

“You’re not my leader – you’re not in
charge. I don’t have to do anything you say.”

“I never said you did.”

“I want a fair partnership. There’s two
of us, and we’re a partnership.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” I peeked at him. Why was he
smirking? “Let’s get our shirts finished; it is
definitely
not spaghetti strap weather.” I shivered in the wind.

“Definitely. Whatever you say.”

“Good.”
Why was he smirking?
It was infuriating!

We hit the trees a few moments later, and
Gideon immediately took a seat on a rock to finish my shirt. When he was done,
I ducked behind a tree to change, and was immediately relieved by the warmth
that enveloped me.

“How is it?” Gideon asked as I came back
out; he stood up from his rock just a couple feet away from where I appeared.

I tried to hold in my happy warmth for
only three seconds before giving up and letting it gush out. “Perfect,” I said,
grinning as widely as I could remember grinning for a long time. In fact, I was
so happy to finally be warm that I threw my arms around him.

His arms immediately returned the hug,
pressing me into his chest and causing me to feel even more warmth course
through my body.

“I’m glad,” he murmured, resting his chin
on my head.

We stood there for a moment before I
slowly backed away. I cleared my throat. “Your turn?” I asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” He reached for his beltline,
then immediately pulled his shirt up and over his head.

I whipped my hand over my eyes. “Whoa!”
“Well,
I’m
not wearing that frilly
pink shirt while I wait,” he stated. I could hear him shuffling around,
reclaiming his position on his rock and settling in to do more sewing.

I kept my hand over my eyes, standing
there awkwardly but refusing to remove it. It wasn’t so much because I felt
like it was immodest for Gideon to be walking around without a shirt – plenty
of males did it on warmer days. It was more because of what I’d seen
before
I’d covered my eyes, and I just
couldn’t handle it.

The skin under his shirt was pale in
comparison to the skin I was used to being exposed to, as if he tried never to
take his shirt off, even in warm weather. I thought I understood why,
considering his past, but it might have been for another reason entirely.

The problem was, the pale skin wasn’t a
deterrent from the way he looked. He was perfectly sculpted, full in all the
right areas, with the small scar from his bullet wound directly under his right
breast. And I couldn’t handle what it made me feel.

How could I feel so possessive toward my
parents’ killer? How could I want him so much? And I didn’t even want him in
the way I had set out to want him several weeks before – almost two months
before.

Before, I had felt possessive over his
death. Now, I felt possessive over his being. How could that be right?

I took a deep breath, then slowly lifted
my hand away from my eyes just enough to see the ground at my feet. I carefully
crept back to my tree, then removed my hand and settled down against its trunk
with Gideon out of sight. I kept listening for him though – listening for the
faint sound of thread traveling through fabric, and his deep, slow breaths.

Finally, about an hour later, he called
out to me. “You can come out now, Candace. I’m decent.”

I stood and peeked around the tree trunk.
There he stood, wearing his new, bulky black shirt.

“What do you think? Is black my color?”
He waggled his eyebrows at me.

After seeing so much of his shape, of his
definition, the bulky shirt was a relief. “Yes,” I replied, letting out a
breath and relaxing my shoulders. “Black is definitely your color.”

~ * ~

That night, we had a fire burning again.
Gideon rested a few feet away, the usual distance he set between us. Except. .
.

Except I’d been sleeping wrapped in his
arms for over a week, and I could feel the tension coating the air between us.
Why was he so far away?

I peeked over at him and caught his eye;
he quickly rolled away from me, facing his back to me.

Why, why,
why
? I
knew
he was
feeling the same thing I was feeling. It was the desire to be closer. Why had
he rolled away from me? Why did I have to feel so conflicted? Why
him
?

That was exactly the answer. He wasn’t
going to push things unless I wanted him to, and there was no longer a physical
need to be close at night; we had warm clothes, so that was done.

He knew I felt conflicted. I didn’t know
if he knew exactly how I felt, but he definitely understood a lot. He knew
there was something sitting in front of me, a
big
something – two somethings, actually: my parents.

I sighed, sitting up and crossing my legs
as I stared into the fire. Then, after another moment, I pushed away all
thoughts of my parents and crawled around to Gideon’s other side. His eyes were
open, and they immediately met mine; they were full of longing.

Heart beating hard, like it so often did
when it came to Gideon, I pulled apart his crossed arms, and then arranged
myself in them. His embrace was welcoming, and he tightened his hold on me as I
settled in.

“Comfortable?” he asked, exhaling against
my scalp.

“Yes, thank you,” I replied primly,
closing my eyes. What I really wanted to say, though, was
Did you really have to make our shirts
quite
this bulky? This is
nothing
like
how you felt last night. I can’t feel anything! Can’t you just take that shirt
off?

It didn’t take too long, however, for me
to fall deeply asleep.

~ * ~

We kept walking. We were managing ten
miles a day now, and had crossed the state line into California. The next day,
snowflakes began to fall.

“Does it snow in California?” I murmured,
studying the flakes on my sleeve.

“Yes, but not much. It’s abnormal for it
to snow at all in November.” Gideon looked up at the sky, frowning. “But it
probably won’t last.” He smiled at me. “Enjoy it while you can.” His thumb
gently skated over my knuckles, and we kept walking.

Two hours later, the snow began sticking
as it came down in gusts.

I shivered. “Not much,” I repeated.

Gideon glanced down at me, looking
worried, before studying the clouds some more. “I think we should take cover,”
he finally said.

“Sounds great to me,” I replied,
attempting to keep my teeth from chattering. What had happened to the lightly
cold air we’d experienced just this morning?

Gideon took my other hand and rubbed his
against mine, trying to create some warmth. It helped, but not nearly enough.
He pulled us along in a southwest direction, a little off course.