“Chivalry has no place in a world where the dead walk,” I say. “This bed is large and the floor is disgusting.”

“I’m not being chivalrous,” he says. “I just feel weird about sharing a bed is all.”

“In this world, you take what you can get, and I’m offering a spot next to me. That’s all.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Goodnight, Waverly.”

I try to sleep, but nightmares consume my mind. All I see is Lucas’ head shattering from the bullet impact, his body falling to the ground next to me. I wake up crying out in my sleep, but I calm down when I feel a pair of strong arms wrap around me.

“Lucas,” I whisper.

“I know, I know,” a voice says to me. “It’s hard. I know it is.”

It’s Ethan. 

“Cry as much as you need to,” he says as he rocks me, my head resting against his chest.

He sets his cheek on the top of my head. I don’t know if he kisses my hair or not, but his embrace is enough to make me feel safe. He somehow makes the pain lessen.

I feel for the chain at my neck and follow it down to the diamond ring at the end. I fall asleep in his arms, but even his warm embrace cannot keep me from the nightmares that fill my mind.

Chapter 14 - Waverly

Three Years Ago

It was a month or two after Charles’ death when Hattie was infected by a greyskin. There was a deep bite in her shoulder and scratches all along her back. The hour was late and the three of us sat in an abandoned fast food restaurant, not knowing what to do.

She was beyond coherency and probably only a few minutes from dying. Her skin had already turned ashy, and her eyes looked like pieces of wet coal. I didn’t know what was more difficult to watch: the pain on Lucas’ face, or Hattie struggling to stay alive. We both knew she was suffering, but while she was still able to talk to us, she told us not to kill her. She told us just to leave her there in the building and run as far away as possible. But we had not been able to do the second part. It was easy for neither of us to kill her, but there was no way we could just leave her there. Neither one of us said it, but we knew we would never let her turn into a greyskin. She would die, and that would be it.

Lucas was confronting what I had already faced from the very beginning of the outbreak. Lucas was facing the death of his family.