Waste
Moonlight on an icy autumn night slipped like a silken sheet over his face, a welcome cold luminescence that he’d missed the last few nights. The storms had been constant, returning night after night, angry clouds roaring in the sky. The rainwater had been welcome—but the barrels had filled up fast on the first night, and still, the rain continued, overflowing, cascading down the Huckleberry Mountains of Stevens County, Washington.
Waste. Waste. Waste.
He didn’t like that, Logan. Fresh water was hard to come by with the government nearly shut down, barely surviving, and no infrastructure to support a world that was—dying. Nearly dead.
The pandemic had come so swiftly. One month CNN reporters were making jokes about another Covid-19-esque toilet paper shortage, and the next, entire empires were falling. Hospitals overflowed. Millions died in mere days, and it kept going for weeks. Logan remembered that all he could think was waste and more waste.
He’d bought this land before the first wave of the pandemic, all sixty acres of it. With his cabin situated on a hill, he could overlook the valley below, and the rushing Columbia River that flowed through his property could be heard on quiet nights. It had been safe then.
Before the world came crashing down. Before bandits and scavengers started picking through the wilderness. Before he’d had to put up high-voltage electric fences and trip wires around his cabin. Not to keep them out.
He was keeping himself in.
Logan had never planned to let anyone in. He’d planned to stay on his parcel and live out his days with the land sprawled out before him, beautiful sunrises and sunsets even though out there, everything had gone to shit. He’d planned to take Nightmare, his stubborn steed, out for rides in the craggy mountains, climbing between all the timber. Just his horse and the fresh air, his land an abundance of beauty to explore.
But he was lonely.
Isolation had become a part of him, strung like a thread through his soul until he knew nothing but the silence of solitude.
He truly hadn’t meant to let her in—but that was the thing about Sana. She didn’t ask permission. She broke in, just as she’d been born and bred to do. She was like the light between the curtains, running like a seam down his cheek, deceiving in its warmth.
It wasn’t until he got to know her that he found out she was just like him.
A waste.
And There She Was
He almost shot her.
Rifle pointed at her chest, his eyes wild with anger, glaring at her like she’d personally shat in his coffee that morning.
“Get off my land. Go back to where you came from.”
Easier said than done. Where she’d come from had just gone under. Vancouver Seclusion—VS—was overridden with hunger and the violence that stemmed from it was not pretty. The government had been overthrown, and the last of the remaining Seclusion Cities in Canada was officially down.
Just when the world felt like it had reached its lowest point, it dug just a little deeper and fell even lower.
She put her hands up in surrender. “Don’t shoot.”
The man’s jaw tensed. He lifted the rifle to aim it at her head.
“How did you get through my fence?”
She turned her hands so he could see her dirty fingernails.
“I dug under,” she said.
He tilted his head to the side, a curious expression on his face.
“What?”
He frowned. “The others never thought to dig.”
“I thought this place was deserted. Someone told me back in Spokane—”
“Seems like someone lied to you.” He pointed his rifle behind her. “Go back. And do not return here if you wish to live.”
“Then pull the trigger. I’d rather die than go back.”
He raised a brow. “This isn’t a fucking weekend getaway, woman. Get the fuck off my land.”
“There’s nothing to go back to,” she said in a harsh voice. “VS fell. Spokane is a scary place. The community in Wyoming—” The man snorted. “—it’s done for. Famine. War. Death.”
“Not disease,” the man said quietly.
“Not since—not for a while, no.”
“Thanks for the riveting chat. Now leave, or you will die.”
She backed away, grabbing her backpack straps.
“I’ll be by the river, if you change your mind.”
She was almost out of earshot when he replied.
“Change my mind about what?”
“Letting me stay,” she said over her shoulder.
Deafening Silence
Sleep evaded him that night.
He laid there all night—in the loft of his cabin with only a bed and a big slanted window on the roof that’d splurged on, doing his best not to look through it toward the river.
Logan hadn’t been very successful with that. He’d glanced more times than he’d care to admit, and each time, he’d seen her there by the river, huddled up with not a tent or a blanket to shield her from the bitter cold.
It was distressing how thin she was. He’d known it was bad out there, but the people he’d encountered in the mountains were wild yet well-fed from nature’s abundance in these parts. The woman was a rail of a thing, all bones and copper brown skin with high, round cheeks and big, sunken, mollifying eyes that made him wonder why he hadn’t just shot her.
It was tempting. He could end her and be done with it.
Then she’d be gone and the deafening silence would return to his soul.
To Feed the Wild Woman
“Here.”
The tin box rattled to the ground by her feet. It was a food container with a metal spoon stuck into an indent on the lid.
Sana plucked the spoon out and opened the box to find—beans! Barbecue baked beans. She hadn’t had any since … Well, a long time. Her memory wasn’t what it had once been. She wasn’t well. She hadn’t been well in a while.
“I’m feeding you so you’ll leave,” the man said.
Sana looked up at him as she shoveled a spoonful of beans into her mouth.
Oh, fuck. That was good. Really, really fucking good.
“Thank you,” she said between mouthfuls. “So, so much. This is great!”
The man frowned down at her. “You will leave my property.”
“You don’t own the fucking river.”
“I own the riverbed you’re sitting on.”
“What if I crossed to the other side?”
They both looked at the wide river and the rushing water and knew that she’d never make it.
“I own that, too,” he said.
Sana chuckled, throwing her head back as she nearly choked on the beans.
The man took a canister off his shoulder and threw it to her. Fresh water wasn’t an impossible find in a rainy place like Washington, but usually she was drinking out of rusty pipes or shallow puddles. A fresh sip of water—that was a real treat.
“Slow down. You’ll choke on that.”
Sana guzzled down the water, ignoring him.
The man crossed his arms. She liked his shoulders, how broad they were. And his face. She was certain she’d never seen another like it. His features were all hard yet soft, like he was both yielding and unyielding. His stare was hard, but his brows had softened. His lips were pressed into a line, but he didn’t look angry. Just concerned.
No one had been concerned about Sana in a long, long time.
She did not realize how quickly she would become addicted to it.
There were many things she did not know then.
The Hole
He meant to close the hole she’d dug up, but didn’t.
All day he listened for her. Wondered if she’d come crawling out of there and set off another trip wire.
But she didn’t come, and still, he waited.
When it got nearly dark, he climbed up to his loft and looked out the window. She was still there, standing straight and looking out at the river. It could swallow her up in an instant, and the thought alone made his chest constrict.
Maybe he hadn’t meant to close the hole, after all.
Never Friendly, Always Kind
“You’ll die of hypothermia.”
Sana turned around to find the man there.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Logan.”
“I’m Sana.”
“I don’t care,” he said, turning around. “Come, if you want a warm place to sleep.”
She followed him. “I think you do care.”
He turned to look at her and said in barely a whisper, “I wish I didn’t.”
Sana had made her way to the Huckleberry Mountains with the hopes of finding a group to join before winter creeped up on her. She’d expected to find a group of scavengers to join, if only to earn enough for a meal a day.
This man … He’d come without any warning.
His sharp eyes. Jaw always tense. Never friendly, but always kind.
In that world of war and famine and death, kindness was the most she could hope for.
The Gale
Sana. Sana. Sana.
He repeated her name in his mind over and over, tasting the word like a hard candy, sucking and sucking and never quite running out of the sweetness.
“This is cozy,” she said when he brought her inside his cabin. He’d never done that before. Never brought anyone inside his home. It was private, something he’d kept to himself like a dark little secret.
She touched his things. Drifted her fingertips over his dusty surfaces. She lifted her chin, catching his eye.
“You need a woman’s touch, I think,” she said.
“I don’t need anyone,” he replied gruffly.
She gave him a small, knowing smile. “Tell me I’m not wrong.”
Heat crawled up the nape of his neck. “You’re not entirely wrong. But you’re not right either.”
She smiled and—fuck. His heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t conventionally attractive. Too skinny. Nose with a noticeable dorsal hump. Eyebrows too thick and bushy.
But she had a brilliant fucking smile. High cheekbones. Long, fluttering lashes. Eyes warm as honey, brown as chocolate.
How could a person be so sweet? He hadn’t tasted her, and yet he felt like he knew all the flavors of her.
A night ago, he’d hated her eyes. Maybe it was because of how easily she could disarm him with just one look.
“Are you hungry?” Logan asked, struggling to make small talk.
“Starving.”
“I cooked us dinner.”
Her eyes trailed over to the kitchen, to the pot bubbling over the fire. She made her way there slowly, taking deep whiffs of the rich aroma.
“Is that meat?” she asked, glancing at him, eyes wide.
“Yes.”
“I haven’t had meat in … Well, I don’t know how long. I can’t remember the last time I had some.”
He nearly walked out to butcher one of the cattle for her. Nearly.
But that’d be absurd. This woman was nothing to him. Just a skinny thing that the gale had brought in.
He wouldn’t know for a while, but that was simply untrue.
Sana was the gale.
Desire in Her Bones
He smelled like the land. Woodsy and fresh and a little ancient, as if he’d been around a long, long time. There was a hint of spiciness as well—something she’d later learn was aftershave.
Sana was a pandemic orphan. She’d grown up in Vancouver Seclusion in the North Zone with all the rest of the kids in a society that would’ve very much preferred to have forgotten them.
There was never enough of anything there. Never enough supplies. Never enough food. Never enough medical care.
When she’d run away, she’d left with the knowledge that she was dying. The doctors had diagnosed her with their limited equipment, but they said they couldn’t be sure.
Sana knew they were right. The cancer was inside her and she could feel it. She was dying.
She’d accepted it. There wasn’t much to live for, anyway.
Not until she met him.
Desire sprung in her bones. For the first time in her life, she wanted something that was attainable. She wanted the hardened, rugged man that stood before her to want her the way women needed to be wanted.
She wanted him for herself, and something deep in her chest told her that he would let her.
An Exchange
Logan fed the girl.
She ate like an animal. No table manners, outside of the “thanks” that she’d mumbled with a mouth full of stew. She ate one bowl, then another, and when he offered her a third, her eyes went wide.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
Ah. So maybe she had some manners.
“Why not? I’m offering you more,” Logan said, reaching for her bowl. She handed it to him with a sheepish smile.
“I can’t be sure, but I think I’m full,” she replied.
“Why can’t you be sure?”
“I’ve never been full before.”
It was quiet in the cabin. The fire crackled and fresh rain pattered down on the roof.
Logan took her bowl to the sink, his heart hammering in his chest. This girl had never known the comfort of a full belly. She’d been hungry her entire life. That made him deeply sad, and he was surprised how much it gutted him to think about it.
“Do you want to take a shower? I have hot water.”
The chair scraped behind him. Sana walked over to him, placing her palms down on the counter beside him. She leaned against it and looked up at him.
“What do you want in exchange?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Logan washed her bowl. “I don’t care what you think.”
She snorted. “That’s not true.”
She was right, of course. He already cared too deeply what she thought.
“I have a loft bed. The sheets are clean and white. If you want to sleep there, you’ll need to be clean,” he said. “You can borrow some of my clean clothes.”
“And where will you sleep?”
“I have a couch.”
Sana tilted her head up and down, checking him out.
“You’ll never fit in that couch,” she said with a little giggle. “What were you, built in a lab or something?”
Logan shut off the water and set the bowl down on the drying rack and turned to face her. The light from the fire gave her brown skin a beautiful copper glow. Nothing about her should be as appealing as it was, and yet he was enamored with her. Her full lips. Those thick eyebrows. Deep-set, wide eyes. High cheekbones with a blush blooming.
“What?” he said, confused.
“You’re very handsome.”
Logan cleared his throat, walking toward the bathroom. A small hand closed around his wrist, tugging him to a stop. He looked over his shoulder.
“I know I’m not very pretty but—”
“You are,” he said immediately.
“Do you want to maybe take a shower with me?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes,” he said breathlessly. “I would like that very much.”
Damaged
It wasn’t that she’d never done this before. She’d brushed shoulders with rough men in the wilderness, and she’d learned to survive any way she could.
She knew this would bring her host pleasure, but she hadn’t known that it would bring her pleasure, too.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” Logan murmured, and she felt those words all the way to the pit of her belly.
They undressed slowly. There was no hurry in the cabin. With every piece of ratty fabric that fell away from her skin, Sana worried that maybe he wouldn’t like to see her naked. She had a body made up of scratches and cuts and bruises and scars. There was nothing pretty about her skin or her hair or her nails.
She was damaged. Broken. Dying, even.
“Can I touch you?” Logan asked. His voice was hoarse.
Sana blinked in surprise. She wasn’t used to anyone asking permission.
“Yes.”
His hands came to rest on her bare shoulders, trailing up her neck, her jaw, and cradling the back of her head. His hands were in her hair, tugging gently and tilting her head back. Sana’s belly fluttered with butterflies.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
“God, please.”
His lips flooded warmth into her body. He kissed her slowly and firmly, his mouth moving with hers, tasting all the pain she had tried so hard to hide from him. It burst through her, and before she knew it, she was crying.
He pulled back.
“We can stop.”
“No,” she said as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Kiss me, Logan. And please, for the love of God, don’t stop this time.”
Logan kissed her through the tears. Softly. Gently. His lips gave her comfort, and though the world was broken and she was dying and there was no one that had ever loved her, she felt hope.
Sana had never prayed for anything before, but standing there in that tight kitchen, she asked every power in the universe to let her have Logan.
Even if it was for just that one night.
Decay
Logan tasted a sea of sadness on her lips. Sadness and despair and pain, so much pain. And there, beneath her skin, he could sense the decay. He’d felt its presence the moment they had met, but he had ignored it as he’d ignored the ailments of all the other people he’d met in his time on Earth.
He supposed they called it cancer here.
Sana was dying.
A hole opened up in his chest, so wide and so deep that it could’ve filled with the entirety of the universe. It was cruel, so very cruel to take a gentle creature like her and allow death to be her destiny. It did not seem fair.
Logan did not think the end of the world was fair, period. Perhaps that was why he had unsaddled his horse all those years ago. His brothers continued their destruction of everything humanity had built while he’d chosen a patch of land and hid away.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it. He did. He understood his purpose. It was why he had been created, after all. When the Four Horsemen had been set loose to reclaim the Earth, he’d known what his objective was. He’d spread the plague. Laid waste to the lands with infection and disease.
Logan had wanted to complete his objective, but he just… couldn’t.
He’d killed millions before it occurred to him that, like the rest of humanity, he possessed free will. He didn’t have to cause pain. He did not have to make them suffer. He did not have to hear their agonized cries.
So he stopped. Retired, as the mortals called it. Retreated to the mountains and hung up his bow.
Sana was proof that his presence wasn’t necessary. The cancer that was inside her was not his doing. She would waste away as all the others before her.
He kissed her and hoped that she understood how very sorry he was. She did not deserve to die.
None of them did.
Only for a Night
He was so gentle with her—and she did not understand it. The way his palms flattened against her skin, hands trailing down her body, touching her with such tenderness that she felt she could cry again.
When he lifted her off her feet and carried her to the bathroom, she couldn’t help but tremble. She was not used to this; she did not know how to be cared for.
Sana knew that if things had been alright in the world, he might not have noticed her. In that world, she would’ve been like one transit on a bus; just a stop, easily left behind and forgotten.
A part of her was almost glad that she’d grown up in this broken world—because it had led her here, into Logan’s arms, with no other woman to compete with her for his affections.
Here, he was hers. Even if only for a night.
Settling her on the bathroom counter, he got the water started. By the time he’d stepped back to her, the room was already steaming. In that thick mist, their mouths met again, kissing away the last of their doubts.
“You don’t have to do this,” Logan said. “You can still have your shower. I can go. You don’t owe me anything, Sana.”
The way he said her name was beautiful. It was like the rich, beautiful tone of a bell being rung deep inside of her. His soul called to her, and she’d be damned if she didn’t make it clear that hers answered right back.
“Stay,” she said, sliding off the counter. She placed her hands on his chest and gently pushed him, guiding him into the shower stall with her.
“You don’t owe me,” he repeated.
They got under the hot water. It beat down on them, washing away the dirt and grime from Sana’s body. She looked up at Logan and gave him a small smile.
“If you want me, please take me. Neither of us are doing the other a favor. I don’t owe you—and you won’t owe me, Logan.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Logan said, and captured her lips in another kiss. It sent shivers running down her spine. She smiled against his mouth, amused by how odd he was. His strange way of speaking, coupled with the occasional vulgarity, was refreshing. Different.
Sana liked different. After a lifetime of repeating the same days in the North Zone back at VS, she was ready to rid herself of familiarity and monotony. Those gray walls at the facility she’d grown up in were probably destroyed by now, blown to bits by rioters. The same faces she’d grown accustomed to seeing every day had morphed into the wild people that ventured out of the Seclusion Cities.
Of course, there were no more of those left now. They’d all fallen in the months since she’d left VS for good. She’d been so young. Seventeen when she’d broken free of the North Zone, and twenty-six when she’d left the city altogether—and stupid; so, so unbelievably stupid. She’d had to learn to survive the hard way.
She had learned not to trust anyone—and yet here she was, baring herself to this strange man who spoke harshly yet touched with tenderness.
With gentle hands, Logan lathered up soap on a rag and scrubbed the dirt off her body. He murmured quietly about his life as he did it.
“I have a horse. Nightmare.”
“Why that name?” she asked.
“He was a nightmare to break. A very stubborn animal.”
As he lathered up her hair with soap, he grew more bold. Told her things she knew he’d never said out loud.
“It’s too quiet here.”
“Are you lonely?”
The answer was evident in his eyes. Yes.
“Sometimes,” he said gruffly.
“Maybe you need to make some friends.”
“No.”
She raised a brow. “No?”
“I make people … sick.”
Sana shrugged. “You don’t make me sick.”
His eyes darkened the slightest. “I could.”
She didn’t understand yet what he meant. In time, she would.
After he’d washed her, she returned the favor. She gathered up the soap on a rag and ran it over the hard planes of his body. He was unfairly good-looking, and it didn’t help that his muscles were perfection. Her hands lingered, taking her time, drinking in the moment with him that belonged to them and only them.
After Sana had washed his hair thoroughly, Logan put a hand down on the tile by her head, walking her back against the shower wall. She stared up at him, her lips parting, breaths coming out in short puffs.
It scared her how much she wanted this.
Wanted him.
The way he looked at her, she knew that he could destroy her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his face down. Their eyes locked.
“Do it,” she said, and let him destroy her.
Tenderness
Logan had existed for far longer than he could fully comprehend. That was how he thought of his time on Earth. An existence.
But as Sana spanned her hands over his chest, he felt something in him flicker to life, and suddenly he wasn’t just existing anymore.
He was alive.
Kissing her against the tile wall, all the feelings burst free from deep inside of him. Their connection was magnetic, pulling him closer and closer to her, until their bodies had lined up. He could’ve claimed her right then, but he did not want to be another taker in Sana’s life. He could tell from all the rough scars and marks that there had been a host of takers that had hurt her.
He would not do that. He would not hurt her.
“I need you inside me. Please.”
Their eyes locked.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, his tone a little hopeless.
Sana pressed her hand to his cheek.
“I want you, Logan.”
He blinked and water streaked down over his eyelids and down his face. The steam gathered around them, a thick mist that enveloped them. There was nothing he cared about in that moment except Sana.
He showed her tenderness. Slowly, hands roaming, lips kissing, his nose running a line up her throat and to her ear, whispering to her that she was beautiful, that she was wanted.
“I’m yours,” she whispered into the mist.
When he entered her, they both let out little moans of satisfaction. He was gentle, his movements all careful and slow, easing into her as though it were both of their first times.
Thunder rumbled in the sky, and rain pattered against the bathroom window. A storm brewed outside, but Logan felt that no amount of rainfall was going to douse the fire Sana had set to his heart. He felt the blaze of that heat, and it traveled to every inch of his skin, warming him as he’d never been warmed before.
Gathering her into his arms, he let out a groan. He was fully sheathed in her now, and she was hot and velvety and tight. He was certain he could live on until the very end of time, and he never would be able to recreate such perfection. This was the stuff of dreams.
Sana was the answer to a prayer he hadn’t even realized he’d made.
“Keep going,” she quietly urged him.
He did. Moving his hips with purpose, he brought them both pleasure. Neither had known that it could be like that—neither had ever been wanted in that way before.
They didn’t fuck. They could’ve, but they didn’t. They made love.
Logan chased her release, stroking in and out of her, quickening his pace as her breath shortened. She gasped and moaned in his arms, her spine curving against the tile.
He supposed he did kind of fuck her after that. Hard and fast, pounding into her until she was suddenly coming all over him, her body shaking as she called his name into the mist. It didn’t take him very long to follow. He gripped her hips, slamming into her before finding his release.
It was the most exquisite feeling he’d ever had the pleasure of feeling.
“Fuck, Logan,” Sana said, taking his face in her small hands. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“Saw it in a movie once.”
She threw her head back and laughed.
“I’ve only seen a couple movies in my life, but none that show those kind of moves,” she said, grinning.
“There are all types of movies. Even dirty ones.”
He did not know how she managed to blush after everything they’d just done together, but her cheeks tinged the slightest shade of red.
“You mean porn?”
Logan chuckled. “You’re telling me you’ve never seen porn?”
“I was a pandemic baby. Cut me a break.”
He stared down at her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Logan grimaced. “You are very young.”
“You don’t look much older than me.”
“I am much, much older than I look.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Can I guess?”
Logan shut off the water and grabbed a towel.
“No,” he said. “It’s best you know as little about me as possible.”
Sana stared up at him, and he wasn’t certain she understood.
“Don’t want me to get attached to you, huh?” she guessed.
No, he wanted to say. That was the very opposite of what he wanted. Attached, obsessed, enamored. He wanted her to want him in the wild way he already wanted her.
But the secrets he bore would destroy anything they could build. Her world was ending, and it was because of him and his brothers. He didn’t participate anymore, but he was a contributing factor to her being a pandemic baby. If he’d never existed, she might’ve had a normal life in a normal world.
“Yes,” he said curtly. “You can’t get attached to me.”
Strange Kindness
That night, Sana slept in the loft bed with the window on the roof showcasing the beautiful Huckleberry Mountains and the Columbia River rushing in the distance. Rain pattered on the roof all night, soothing her into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Logan did not sleep beside her. He’d drawn a line in the sand, told her that she’d come as close as he was comfortable with, and Sana supposed she better respect his boundaries. When he made his bed on the couch downstairs, all Sana had offered was switching places.
“No,” he’d replied. “You will sleep in the loft. I am fine here.”
“And they say chivalry is dead,” Sana said, trailing her hand up the banister.
“It is,” Logan said. “But I am not.”
She’d chuckled at that.
The man had nearly shot her for daring to set foot on his property mere days ago. Now, he was inviting her in, acting like a gentleman.
She’d read about men like him, but she’d never met anyone who’d treated her anything less than what she was. And she was as low as they got. A pandemic orphan with no real skills. The North Zone had taught her so little about life outside of the city.
Hunting, she’d picked up only in the recent months. She’d learned from the scavengers and vagabonds she’d brushed shoulders with in the wilderness. And even then, it was only traps. She couldn’t shoot straight for shit. She wasn’t a very good cook, either, and mostly, she barely got by on scraps, anyway.
It had been only a few months since she’d gotten her diagnosis from the free clinic in VS before the city had gone down. Only a few months since a doctor had taken her hand and gently advised her to stay close to those she loved because the end was near.
“How long?” she’d asked.
“The equipment is old and I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I’m guessing three to six months.”
Five and a half months had passed. The end had come sooner than she’d thought.
The next morning, Sana would wake and leave Logan and his strange kindness behind. She wanted to find somewhere beautiful in the mountains to live out her last few days. Somewhere that would remind her that beauty still existed in the world.
Quite the Problem
Logan woke before dawn, and considered letting Sana wake to the smell of sizzling sausages, but she was already gone. He wasn’t sure how she’d snuck out without disturbing him. He supposed he’d slept a little too well, knowing she was finally in the loft and not out shivering by the river again.
The second he’d stepped up to the loft and found it empty, he’d rushed downstairs, throwing open the front door, breathing harshly—just to find her by the edge of his fence, bent over and digging.
For the first time in a long time, Logan smiled.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he casually stepped up behind her.
“I didn’t want to disable your gate—”
“You don’t know how to disable my gate.”
“—Right, well. I’m going out the only way I know how.”
Logan crouched down beside her, until she was eye-level. Sana gazed back at him.
“I might have put too many sausages on the pan,” he said.
Sana swallowed. “Sounds like you have quite the problem.”
“I wondered if you could help me solve it.”
He saw her bite back a smile.
“Well, I’ve got a lot on my schedule, but I suppose I could take some time to help you with this … problem,” she said, getting to her feet.
“You can start by washing those dirty hands.”
“Yes, sir.”
Logan led her back into the house and went to go flip the sausages as Sana made her way to the sink. She washed her hands with his homemade soap, cleaning off all the dirt. When she turned around, Logan handed her a plate. Sausages, some hash browns, and a couple sprigs of parsley. She didn’t know a world that served meals with garnishes. It had ended long before she’d been born.
“Gross, this tastes like soap,” she said a few minutes later. She’d eaten the sausages and the potatoes with such speed that Logan feared she’d choke. The garnish had been the last thing on her plate. Sana had saved it for last because it was something green and fresh, but after tasting it, she wished she’d never touched it.
Logan chuckled. “It’s genetic.”
“What is?”
“Parsley isn’t tasty for a certain set of people. For others, it’s fine. I read an article about—”
“You read a what?”
“An article. It’s like a short piece of writing that you’d find in a newspaper or a magazine or online.”
Her eyes widened. “Online. You mean like the internet?”
Logan nodded.
She looked him up and down. “How do you know what the internet is like?”
“I’m older than I look.”
It had been nearly fifty years since the Four Horsemen had been set loose on the world. Fifty years since entire empires had come crashing down, taking the internet with them.
Logan knew he did not look over fifty. Hell, he hardly looked over thirty, most days. He was made to be flawless and beautiful, with skin polished like silver, so bright that he almost glowed. His hair had once been long, golden and tousled by the wind, flying behind him when he’d ridden Nightmare from city to city with his brothers.
It was cut shorter now, and the beard helped to hide his beauty. He did not have wrinkles or scars, and though he looked like a rough man upon first glance, anyone who looked too closely could easily put together that he was not of this world.
Anybody but Sana, apparently.
“I’m not asking how old you are,” she said, pushing her plate away from her. “You don’t want me to know you. And I guess that’s a good thing.”
“Why’s that?” Logan asked, curious.
She gave him a sad little smile. “Neither of us benefits from getting too attached.”
Logan understood then that she was aware of the cancer inside her.
“We don’t have to get attached. But if you need a place to stay, I—”
“Only if I can take the couch,” she said, cutting him off. “I’m small. You’re big. You get the bed. The couch is more than enough for me.”
Logan would be damned before he allowed her to spend her remaining days on the couch.
“We can take bets,” Logan said, knowing he’d always win.
“What kind of bets?”
“Betcha I can outrun you.”
She bit her lip as she smiled. “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“Isn’t that just the truth?”
“Yes,” Logan said. “It is.”
The Last Meal
Sana followed Logan as he did his chores. He tended the garden, yanking out weeds and watering his crops. Next, he checked on his chickens, letting them out of the coop and scattering feed for them to fight over. After that, he made his way to the large barn to let the cattle out to graze, explaining they were the Brangus breed. Sana liked their long, droopy ears and friendly, slightly sad faces. She patted her hand along the sleek coats as they grazed.
“They’re beautiful,” she whispered, but Logan heard her.
“They are.”
“How can you stand to butcher them?”
Logan’s eyes darkened the slightest.
“I can hardly stand it.”
“But I guess you need to eat,” Sana said.
“Vegetables alone can’t sustain me. The work I do is laborious.”
“What about the chickens?” she asked.
“When they stop laying…”
“Ah, I see.”
After that, they walked the perimeter of Logan’s fence. He tested it for weaknesses. Checked that it was still sturdy and keeping out what must be kept out, and keeping in what had to be kept in.
“You were smart to dig. Best not to touch those spikes up there,” he pointed to the top of his fence, “because it’s electrified.”
“How do you have electricity out here?”
“Solar panels.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
Logan led her back to the house for lunch. He made her a fried green tomato sandwich, and she had to admit, it was the best thing she’d ever tasted in her entire life.
“If I could eat my vegetables like this every single day, I’d die happy,” she said, wiping her fingers on a rag. Logan had slathered homemade mayonnaise on her sandwich, and that was something she’d never tasted before. She liked—maybe even loved it.
Logan brought her another plate of the remaining small green tomatoes cut into slices and fried in cornmeal batter.
“Dip it in this,” he said, bringing her a small bowl of something that looked like mayonnaise, but wasn’t. “It’s ranch.”
“What’s ranch?”
Logan smiled at her, amused. “Just try it.”
She tried it and decided she loved ranch, too. Especially with fried green tomatoes. Crunchy, a little sweet, the tiniest bit sour, and salted perfectly. Paired with the ranch, it was heavenly.
“I want this as my last meal,” she said, before she could stop herself.
“That can be arranged.”
“Of course, who knows when that’ll be?” she said nervously.
“Right.”
Fear
“Couldn’t we share the bed?” Sana suggested late that night.
Logan had sat there for a moment, quietly mulling over what to do. On one hand, he longed to climb into bed with her and just hold her for the night, and on the other, he knew she didn’t want him to get anymore attached to her than he did to her. There were things a person should know before getting into bed with somebody, and his secret was one of those things.
Shouldn’t a woman know upfront that she was getting into bed with a monster?
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said, raising his gaze to meet her eyes. She blinked in surprise, but composed herself quickly.
“Well, the offer stands if you change your mind,” she said, and turned around to trudge up the stairs.
“It’s not because of you,” he said.
She paused but didn’t turn around.
“There’s something I can’t tell you,” she said.
“There’s something I can’t tell you either,” he replied.
She finally looked over her shoulder.
“You keep your secret. I’ll keep mine. And in the meantime, help me keep your bed warm, Logan.”
He rose from his seat.
“Promise me you’ll never ask me what my secret is,” he said.
“Promise me you’ll never ask mine, either.”
“I promise.”
“Okay,” she said. “Come here.”
When he reached her at the stairs, she slipped an arm around his waist, and together, they climbed the steps up to the loft.
For him, the end would never come. For her, it was frighteningly near.
And for the first time in his life, Logan found something in this world that scared him. He had not known fear before Sana, and now fear was all he felt.
She was going to die, and it terrified him.
The Brilliance at the End
They shared more than a bed.
As the days passed, Sana found that they shared interests and hobbies, too. They both liked to read, and Logan had quite the collection lining the shelves of his living area downstairs. Some were tomes, but Sana liked those the most. The words seemed endless, and even though she knew she was running out of time, she couldn’t help but pick out the biggest books to read. She inhaled the words off the page, tasting a distant time when things hadn’t been so crazy. A time when people had the time to write—and a time when there were others who had the time to read.
She wasn’t very strong, but she helped where she could. She tended the garden in the early morning, bent over in the dirt as she tugged out weeds and helped the vegetables to flourish. She even took care of the parsley, though she never ate it again. Logan liked parsley, and that was reason enough to grow bunches and bunches of it.
By midday, they had done most of their chores. Sana found that Logan liked to cook, and learned that she did as well. She hadn’t understood how important spices were until she tasted them in the meals he cooked. He taught her, showing her how to properly handle a knife and then teaching her the different dishes that he seemed to have filed away by memory.
The first time she had pasta, she nearly fainted. It was delicious. The tomato sauce Logan had made had a depth of flavor that she couldn’t place. He explained later that a few small tinned anchovies cooked down into an oily paste was all it took to enhance the sauce. When she smelled the tin, she didn’t think she liked it very much. The fish smelled like it was rotting—but she had to admit; she didn’t taste the fishiness in the sauce. Just an oily, deep, “umami” flavor. That was another word Logan had taught her.
As the weeks blurred by, she found a quiet happiness with Logan. Every day she would wake up and wonder if it was her last, but she wasn’t sad about it. She was living out the last of her days with warm meals, a warm bed, and the warmth of Logan’s arms wrapped around her on the cold nights.
She never did ask him what his secret was, but she realized one day that she’d have to tell him hers. She did not want to burden him with her passing.
After six beautiful weeks, she packed a small rucksack with some food and supplies. It was time to go. She felt better than she had in years, but she was sure that was a trick the universe was playing on her. The end must be near.
Sana disabled the gate. She knew how to pull the lever and knew the code to punch in to open it. When the gate creaked open, she slipped out into the wilderness. It had been weeks since she’d ventured out on her own, but with Logan, she’d gotten to know the land well. High in the mountains, she’d seen a cave and selected it as her final resting spot. The view had to be breathtaking from there, and truly, what else could she ask for but endless beauty?
Still, her chest ached to leave him. Truth be told, she didn’t want to go at all. He’d stirred up feelings inside her that she hadn’t thought herself capable of experiencing. His golden hair had grown so long in their time together, his piercing gaze almost soft now. He was as beautiful as she thought possible for a man. His rough hands. The silken kisses he’d plant down her shoulder at night. The way he’d give her something close to a smile when she made ridiculous impressions of the vagabonds she’d met in the wilderness.
She was nearly two miles into the forest, hiking upward, when she heard the hoofbeats. She knew that horse so well. Nightmare.
Logan had come for her.
“Why?” he asked, jumping down. He grabbed her arm, turning her around. “Why would you leave? Have I not given you everything?”
She trembled. “I can’t ask you for more, Logan.”
“Yes, you can,” he said. “Take me. Take all of me. Just please, don’t leave.”
“I—” She paused, her vision suddenly blurry with tears. “I’m dying, Logan. I can’t ask you to see me die. It’s too much to ask.”
His hand slipped into her hair, cradling the back of her head. He tipped her neck back so she’d have to stare up into his eyes. They were wild, overflowing with more emotion than she thought possible for him. He was a gruff man, but he felt things, too.
“You think I would let anything happen to you?” he said in barely a whisper. “You think I would allow you to die?”
“It’s not up to you.”
“But it is, my sweet one,” he said, and she could see that he was unraveling seam by seam. “I made your cancer go away.”
She blinked in surprise. “What?”
“You are well now,” he said. “You could live to a hundred, if you pleased. Maybe even more.”
“Logan, that’s absurd—”
“I am one of the Four Horsemen.”
Sana shook her head. “They’re out there, Logan. They wouldn’t hide away out here in the mountains and—”
“Pestilence has not been seen in many, many years. Since before you were even born. Even you must know that much.”
“We learned about Pestilence in school in the North Zone,” she said. “We heard he disappeared early on. Brought upon a pandemic, and then took it away. The other Horsemen continue to bring on the end of the world, but for some reason, Pestilence couldn’t. Why, Logan? If you’re him, why did you stop?”
“Because I saw the beauty in life and living,” he said. “And when you came along with your sweet little smile and heart big enough to fill the universe, I knew I had done the right thing.”
“Logan—”
“I love you.” He said it so simply, like it was a fact that could never be challenged.
She smiled as tears streaked down her cheeks.
“I love you, too,” she said, her heart full, so very, very full.
He kissed her and lifted her onto his horse.
“Do you know the meaning of your name?” Logan asked her, climbing up behind her.
Sana smiled as he wrapped an arm around her middle. “Of course. It means brilliance.”
Logan took her to the house that had never quite felt like home until she’d entered his life. She was beauty. She was fire. She was everything worth fighting for.
Until the brilliant end.
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