“What happened—”

I raise my head to kiss him, swallowing the rest of his words.

My lips are harsh. My hands grip his arms. Claw his shoulders. Pull him closer until I can’t taste the blood. I can’t suffocate from it. I can’t hear Oliver, Dad, or Melkin whispering in my head.

This is what I need. This will make it better.

I wrap my leg around his, and he makes a tortured noise at the back of his throat. I kiss him hard enough to hurt—a tiny bite of pain against my lips that feels real.

“Rachel—”

He pulls away, and I follow him. Clinging. Desperate to bring him back.

“Wait,” he says, his voice breathless. “Just wait a minute.”

“Why?” I curl my fingers around the back of his neck and tug him toward me. “We’re alone in our shelter. We can do whatever we want. There’s no one here to stop us.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and then looks at me. I can’t read his expression. “I’m stopping us.”

I let go of the back of his neck and my hand falls to my side.

“It’s not because I don’t want . . . um . . .” He gives me a look that is apparently supposed to suffice for the rest of his sentence.

“Me?”

“Yes. I want you, Rachel.” He lies back and wipes a hand over his face. “I really do. But I don’t think this is about wanting something between the two of us. At least, not for you.”

My teeth start chattering again. “Fine.”

“No, it isn’t fine. It is anything but fine.”

I pull my blanket over my shoulders and wrap my arms around my chest. “Just forget it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well, I do.”

He’s silent for a long moment. Long enough for me to realize my words might have hurt him. Long enough to feel regret.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I don’t know how to put into words everything I’m sorry for.

He rolls onto his side, facing me. “When you kiss me, I want it to be because you’re thinking of me. Because you really want me. Not because you’re trying to distract me from something you don’t want to talk about.”

I look away. At the silver wash of moonlight seeping in through the entrance of our tent. At the tufts of springy grass our bedrolls don’t cover. At anything but him.

“I didn’t mean to use you. I didn’t really think it through.” I scrunch down into my blanket. “I just . . . I can’t . . . I wanted something real. Something to make the stuff inside of my head fade away. And what we have is the most solid thing in my life, so . . .”

“I understand,” he says softly.

“Do you?”

“I am kind of irresistible.” He wiggles his brows at me.

I laugh, and the lingering tension leaves my body. He grins at me, a funny, lopsided smile that wraps around me like comfort. He scoots closer to me and runs his fingers through my hair, gently tugging at the knots he finds.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just want to be here for you.”

“I’m here for you, too,” I say. “I’m not the only one who lost family.”

Pain brackets his mouth and fans out from his eyes, and I slide my arm out of the blanket to press it against his chest. My fingers curve over the flesh and bone that shelter his heart. A heart strong enough to keep moving forward even when he’s lost so much. Strong enough to lead even when he doesn’t want to.

Strong enough to commit to me when I know I’m not an easy person to love.

“You could kiss me now,” he says, his voice low.

I smile. “Could I?”

“Yes.” He sounds breathless.

“Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t want to overstep or—”

“Rachel—”

“—make you uncomfortable, or—”

“Just kiss me.”

“—take advantage of poor helpless Logan.”

He leans down and covers my mouth with his. This time, I kiss him not to forget or to drown anything out, but because he’s Logan, and he’s mine. And then he holds me close as sleep overtakes him. I lie beside him, clinging to his warmth and desperately trying to stay awake as long as possible so that I can savor this before I’m once again plunged into a world of blood, loss, and unbearable guilt.

Chapter Fifteen

RACHEL

Sunlight pours through the gap at our shelter’s entrance as I stretch my back and shove my blanket to my knees. Logan is gone, and by the sounds of the camp outside my shelter, I can tell most people are up and moving around. My stomach grumbles as I yank my fingers through my hair and splash my face with water I saved from last night’s ration.

When I’ve finished, I shake the dust off my trousers and then consider which tunic to wear. We were lucky to recover enough clothing to give everyone two changes of clothes.

We were less lucky in the recovery of laundry soap.

Either that or the girls who are desperate to catch the eye of one of our few available boys are hiding the soap for themselves. I seem to recall that a few of our sparring participants smelled suspiciously like a spring meadow.

I sniff the tunics, choose the cleanest, and decide to take Willow up on her offer to teach me how to make soap. Shoving my feet into my boots, I strap on my knife, lace up my travel pack, and exit the shelter.

The camp is busy. The older men and women beat dust out of clothing and then place them into travel packs or on blankets that will be filled with light supplies, tied off with rope, and carried over the shoulder. The younger ones sharpen weapons, tear down shelters, and load the wagons.