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  I’m not sure why, but the words actually make me feel better. I give him a little smile.

  Travis adds, “Men might be stronger, but we’re not independent anymore either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I say. Men can’t make it now without women any more than women can make it without men. We need each other.” He clears his throat and avoids my eyes. “I need you. Like you need me.”

  “You do?”

  “You think I’d’ve done nearly as good this week without you? You think of things I don’t. You’re better at finding houses with food and gas. You... you make things nice. I might not have even kept going if not for you, especially if we didn’t have that message. You make me...”

  I’m staring at him in astonishment. “I make you what?”

  Travis’s face twists like he’s regretting what he said. “Nothin’.”

  I open my mouth, but his suddenly shuttered expression makes me bite back my words. He’s said more just now than he’s ever said to me before, and I don’t want to push too far and have him retreat again.

  I like it better when he’s talking to me for real.

  I think about everything we’ve said. “Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I’m helpless.”

  He glances at me with raised eyebrows. “I never said you were.”

  “I can shoot a gun and use my knife.”

  “I know it.”

  “I did okay with you. That first day. Getting you away from my motorcycle. I did okay.”

  “You did good.” His voice sounds sincere, but he’s not meeting my eyes.

  I frown. “What? What aren’t you saying?”

  He opens his mouth and then closes it again the way I had earlier.

  “Tell me.” My voice isn’t pushy. It’s almost pleading. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You didn’t do anythin’ wrong. You did good.” He tightens his lips and then says, “You would’ve kept most people away. I mean it. But I coulda got your gun away if I wanted.”

  “What? No, you couldn’t have!”

  He doesn’t argue, but the look he shoots me is skeptical.

  “Seriously? You could have taken it from me?” Not for a minute do I doubt his word. This man wouldn’t lie to me about something like that. “I thought I did okay. You backed off.”

  “You did do okay. Like I said, you would’ve kept most people away from you.”

  “But not you? If you’d wanted to get me, you could have.” I sigh and slump slightly. “What did I do wrong?”

  “You relied on the gun. If your faith is in a gun, then you’re never gonna be able to always defend yourself.”

  The words ring true, and I think about them for a long time. Eventually I ask, “Will you teach me? To do better? I know I’m small, but I don’t want to feel helpless. Will you show me?”

  Travis turns his head, and both his gaze and his jaw soften. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll help you.”

  SINCE WE’VE GOT SO much food, we stop for lunch in the middle of the day. We find a small clearing blocked by the woods and out of sight of the road, and we eat canned pears and tuna.

  Travis walks into the trees afterward, and he’s gone for a while, so I assume he’s doing more than peeing. I putter about, rearranging some of our supplies.

  After a few minutes, I hear him approaching. I smell him behind me. I close the compartment and am about to say something casual when I feel a hand grab my braids.

  I gasp but can’t react when the hand uses my hair to pull me backward, and then an arm snakes around me from behind, tightening until my back is pressed against someone’s front.

  It happens so fast that I’m terrified. I whimper and fight the hold.

  I can’t get loose.

  It’s Travis. I know it’s Travis. I can’t see him, but his smell is surrounding me.

  My momentary panic transforms into outrage. “What the hell, Travis?”

  “You said you wanted me to help you protect yourself.” His voice is gravelly and right at my ear.

  “I do. But this is how you do it? You didn’t want to give me a little warning?”

  “No. Your first lesson is to always be on guard.”

  I wriggle, but he doesn’t let me go. He’s got me trapped against the front of his body in an iron grip. “But it was you. I didn’t think I needed to be on guard with you.”

  “What if it wasn’t me? What if it was someone else coming up behind you?”

  “I knew it was you.”

  “No, you didn’t. Not for sure.”

  “Yes, I did. I could smell you.”

  “Everyone smells like me. No one’s got deodorant anymore.” His tone is different now, like he’s surprised, like he’s thinking things through.

  “I know that. But not everyone smells the same. I recognize how you smell. I smelled you long before you reached me.” For no good reason I’m embarrassed by the confession. “I knew it was you. I didn’t think I needed to be on guard.”

  “Okay.” His voice is odd. Thick but not with his normal gruffness. “I’ll trust you on that. But say someone takes you by surprise and grabs you like this. What do you do?”

  His grip loosened as we talked, but now it tightens again. He’s got both my braids in one hand, and the other arm pins my arms down at my sides and traps my body against his.

  I thrash against him, trying to slip his hold. In response, he lets go of my braids and wraps both arms around me, holding me even tighter.

  I writhe hard.

  It doesn’t work.

  I try to kick back at his legs, but I can’t do more than stomp on his toe.

  He grunts but doesn’t let me go.

  I try to swing my elbow back but can’t get it to connect with enough leverage to do damage.

  I’m trapped.

  He’s got me.

  He’s so much bigger than me.

  I’m so frustrated I whimper and slump. “Help me. Please.”

  “What part of your body can you move?”

  I think about it for a minute. “My feet.”

  “What else?”

  I wiggle my fingers, but with my arms trapped they aren’t in reach of his body.

  “What else?” His voice is still at my ear, his breath wafting against my hair.

  I turn instinctively toward it. “Oh. My head. I can move my head.” I bend it forward and swing it back hard against his shoulder. “Ow! I think that hurt me more than it hurt you.”

  He gives a soft snort. “Yeah. Wouldn’t recommend that sort of headbutt. But how else can you move your head?”

  I arch my neck and turn my head until my mouth brushes his shirt. I freeze as an idea occurs to me.

  “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Do it.”

  “The angle isn’t right.”

  “Then make it right.”

  I wriggle and squirm until I can turn my head far enough. Then I open my mouth and clamp my teeth down into the flesh of his upper arm, which is the only part of him I can reach.

  I don’t bite down, but I hold the position.

  “Do it,” he rasps.

  I hesitate. This is Travis, and I don’t want to hurt him.

  “Do it.” His body is hard and hot behind me, and I’m liking how it feels more than I should. “Do it, girl. And stomp on my foot at the same time. Not on my toe. Up toward the ankle. Hard as you can. I’m not gonna let you go till I have to. Do it.”

  I do. I stomp on his foot and bite his upper arm at the same time.

  He huffs loudly, so it must hurt. He doesn’t drop his arms, but they loosen. I yank myself out of his grip and whirl around, bringing my knife out of its sheath at the same time.

  I point it right at his stomach.

  “Good.” He’s flushed and crouching forward slightly, an almost feral look in his eyes. “Real good.”

  I’m filled with a rush of excitement, power. I’m watching when he comes at me again. I manage to evade his reach several times, but then he feints to th
e left and tricks me, grabbing my wrist so hard and so suddenly that the knife falls to the grass.

  I scramble down for it again, but he’s got me before I reach it, yanking me back against his chest like I’m a rag doll. I immediately start to squirm and turn my head to bite him again, but he’s got me in a choke hold this time, his arm up around my neck. My teeth are in better reach of his arm than they were, but he’s not letting me move my head enough sink them into his flesh.

  I gasp and whine at the pressure on my neck, although it’s not hard enough to hurt me. Not even hard enough to bruise.

  Just hard enough to keep me trapped.

  “Travis,” I gasp.

  “What can you move?” His voice at my ear is so thick it’s barely comprehensible. Hardly more than a low growl.

  I start to bring my foot up and stomp down on him again, but he wraps his other arm around my thighs, pinning my legs to his.

  He’s hot as fire behind me. Hard and firm and alive in a way that makes my blood throb.

  “What can you move?” he asks again.

  I roll my hips, pushing them backward.

  I feel something new. Against my lower back.

  It triggers a rush of heat below my belly. A coil of deep pressure I can barely process. More than my blood is throbbing now.

  I struggle helplessly in his grip, but I’m not sure I’m even trying to get away.

  “Damn it, woman.” His voice is stretched and demanding. “Stop squirmin’ like that. What can you move?”

  My arms. I suddenly realize I can move my arms since he’s holding me by the neck and the thighs. I drive an elbow back into his side.

  He grunts and jerks. I try to yank myself away from him the way I did before, but this time I can’t get away.

  I lose my balance. Or maybe he does. Both of us tumble forward onto the grass.

  I fall on my face, catching myself when he lets me go. He ends up on top of me, his weight pressed into my back.

  Both of us are gasping. He plants his hands on either side of me, taking off some of his weight.

  That pulsing between my legs is stronger than ever, and it’s making my body do things I never would have considered otherwise. I raise my hips until my bottom finds that bulge in his jeans. I rub myself against it, making a weird little sound in my throat.

  Travis chokes wordlessly and hauls himself off me, collapsing on the grass beside me.

  When I turn over, he’s hefting himself to a sitting position and giving me the world’s meanest glare. “What the hell you doin’?”

  “Sorry.” I rub at my face, trying to pull myself together. I’m panting loudly, and every cell in my body is straining for him, reaching for him, aching for something to happen. “Sorry. I wasn’t...”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I said sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I gulp and cover one of my flaming cheeks with my palm. “I wasn’t... I didn’t realize you...”

  “You didn’t realize what? That I’m a man?” He’s tense and angry and flushed as deeply as I am.

  “Of course I know you’re a man. But men are all different. They’re not all going to want... to want...” I break off, still trying to catch my breath. Still trying to keep myself from crawling over to him and rubbing myself all over his body. “I didn’t realize you thought about me that way.”

  We stare at each other across the thick air and the dead grass for a long stretch of time, both of us breathing heavily.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur again. “I wasn’t trying to tease you.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  He lets out a long, hoarse breath. “Nah. It’s okay. It happens. No big deal.”

  I hope he means it, but I’m not sure if he does.

  A lot of people—both men and women—don’t think sex is a serious thing. It can just be something to do to pass the time. To get a quick high. It can be something to trade for protection. A means of manipulation. A commodity.

  But sex means something to Travis. I know it does. He doesn’t take it casually. He wouldn’t be so uncomfortable about any hint of it otherwise.

  And I really don’t want to mess things up between us just because I’ve developed this irrational attraction to him.

  I’m not going to risk it.

  “We better get going,” he says, groaning slightly as he pushes himself up to his feet.

  I stand up too. “Sorry again about... And thanks for helping me.”

  He nods, no twitch of a smile. “You did good. I can teach you some more later.”

  His words relieve me.

  Maybe I didn’t ruin everything.

  IT’S GETTING LATE IN the afternoon by the time we arrive on the outskirts of a town.

  The roadbed is wrecked. There are cracks running all the way across, some of them almost a foot wide. We have to drive far off the road to get past them.

  “What on earth happened?” I ask, staring at the damage.

  “Don’t know. Earthquakes, I guess. What else would tear a road up this bad?”

  “Nothing I know of. Wow. They must have been really terrible. Look at that house.”

  The house is completely flattened.

  “I didn’t realize they’d had earthquakes in this area,” I say as he maneuvers around the damage to get back to the road. “It’s like the whole world got thrown out of whack after impact.”

  “Yeah. That it did.”

  Soon we see a gas station with an attached fast-food restaurant that looks like it’s been bulldozed, and beside it is a drugstore.

  The whole front of the drugstore has collapsed in on itself.

  “The earthquakes must have taken out this store too. This wasn’t caused by looting.”

  “Nope.” He pulls into the parking lot. “Might be worth checking out. If it was brought down by earthquakes, there might still be stuff inside.”

  “Yes! Let’s take a look. There might even be medicine.”

  He drives to the back and parks the Jeep. We walk around the building, searching for a safe way to enter. It soon becomes clear that whatever goods were located in the front of the store have been thoroughly pilfered. I find a bottle of ketchup under some broken glass and hold it up to show Travis with a disappointed shake of my head.

  “All the food was probably in the front,” he mutters.

  “Yeah. But the pharmacy would have been in the back. And the over-the-counter stuff. If we can get into the back section, we might find something useful.”

  It takes a while, but Travis eventually makes an entrance by moving one of the big refrigerated shelves used to hold drinks and other cold stuff. It’s fallen forward, leaning onto a collapsed section of the roof. It must be incredibly heavy, but Travis manages to push it over enough to give us access into the back of the building.

  Travis starts to duck his head to go through, then he stops. “You better stay out here. Building might not be stable.”

  Then, as if that is the end of the conversation, he leans over to fit through the access he made.

  I squeak and grab a fistful of the back of his shirt to stop him. “No way! I’m not going to stand around out here and hope for the best. If it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for you too.”

  His face twists. He’s clearly annoyed.

  “I mean it,” I tell him. “I’m not going to let you risk your life for a fucking bottle of aspirin.”

  I see the resignation on his face. “Damn, you’re stubborn.” There isn’t any heat in his tone, however, so I know he’s not upset with me. “Looks safe enough, I guess. Come on then.”

  I follow him through the entrance, relieved that the building doesn’t appear like it’s going to collapse on top of us. Most of the shelves have been knocked over, the goods spilled out in piles all over the floor.

  But there’s stuff.

  All kinds of stuff.

  “Oh my God! Look at this!” I’m rifling through scattered over-the-counter medicati
on.

  “Find some stuff we need, but don’t take too much. We don’t have room.”

  I’m happy as a clam, gathering up stomach medication, cough syrup, more ibuprofen, and first aid supplies. Travis is pulling up shelves and pieces of wall at the very back of the building.

  “Can’t really get into the pharmacy section,” he says. “Guess we don’t really need prescription medicine anyway.”

  “Not that I can think of. Just leave that. If someone comes along who’s desperate, they can try to dig it out.”

  He moves to the other side of the store, looking through more toppled shelves and occasionally bending over to pick something up.

  “Got soap,” he calls out. A minute later he adds, “And more sunblock.”

  I giggle as I lean over to grab a pack of lip balm.

  “Uh, you need any of this stuff?”

  I straighten up and peer over to see what Travis is holding.

  A box of tampons.

  He’s not meeting my eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him as I walk over to where he’s standing. “I haven’t had my period in months. Because of bad nutrition and everything, I assume. But if there’s a small pack, I could take it just in case.” I see a small box of tampons and reach for it.

  I get another look at Travis’s face and take pity on him. “I saw some tools and household supplies over there. You might check them out.”

  I secretly smile as he drops the box of tampons like it might bite him and strides toward the middle of the store.

  He’s quite adorably shy about certain things in a way I never would have expected.

  “You didn’t see any deodorant, did you?” I call out.

  He grunts.

  I look over. “Was that a yes grunt or a no grunt?”

  “No. Haven’t seen any.” He scowls. “I’ll wash up again next time we find water.”