❝ You're caught in my crosshairs again. ❞
In which a Navy SEAL,
a doomsday prepper,
and an extroverted
12-year-old find life in the
apocalypse alongside a
group of...
𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐒. chapter forty; Us Against The World " You are never going to feel unloved or alone or scared again. "
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VEX AND DEAN had made good progress, but they were still a ways off from Terminus. They had a good system, waking up at dawn, making as much movement as they could, and resting just as it became too dark to be safe.
But Dean was still worried about his sister.
He couldn't forget what she had, or perhaps what she hadn't, said in the bathroom days ago, but she wasn't exactly reciprocative to his gentle nudges.
"Has it been that way this whole time?"
"You should be asleep, Dean."
Dean frowned, sitting up to face his sister's back, outlined only by the dim moonlight.
"I just wanna talk to you, V."
"We always talk about me," Vex mumbled, irritation clear, "What about you?"
"What about me?" Dean laughed.
The woman turned toward him, resting an arm over her legs as she leaned toward him.
"What did you do with your life?" She questioned, "In New York, in Georgia. . . you only ever talk about that damn school."
"Maybe that's a story for another time."
"Oh, so I have to tell you about my entire life and every emotion I ever have but you won't even tell me about your college experience?" She scoffed.
"You get one card, you wanna pull it now?"
Vex twisted her lips, staring at the index finger her brother held up to show his seriousness. Part of it was wishing for Dean to take the damn spotlight off of her, the other part was genuine curiosity.
He had scarcely spoken of anything, except the school he went to and the farm he'd purchased.
So Vex nodded, settling in for a story.
Dean pursed his lips, sighing deeply in defeat.
"Well, I moved onto campus my freshman year, had a cool roommate, his name was Lou; funny guy, laid back, loved computers, his family, and Cherry Cola," Dean nodded, "Got a girlfriend in second semester, Lyla— she was real sweet, her whole family, too. Spent all the holidays with her and stayed at Lou's over the summer— I couldn't go back to Dad after knowing what it was like to not be judged."
Vex frowned, resting her chin on her knee.
"Broke up with Lyla my Junior year, was still friends with Lou, though. He helped me through it, his parents too. Senior year came, and Lou showed up for my exhibition— I gave him my biggest piece as a present; it was a painting of his family at Thanksgiving, they did that bigger than any other holiday, with me at the table in between two of his cousins. 'Course, I'm sticking out like a sore thumb, only white kid in the room; a lotta people thought it was a piece on race or some shit. . . it was just about a group of people accepting someone different without batting an eye. New Yorkers and a Georgia kid, a book-smart family with an artist, football people, and a baseball guy. . . they never cared. I showed up, I helped, I ate— they became my family."
