Page 12 of Savage Escape

“It was, of course, in the middle of the cafeteria and one of the most embarrassing things I have ever done. Everyone, the lunch ladies, the kids in the corner, the kids in the hall—everyone saw. The girl I was dating at the time dumped me like then and there. My brothers had a laugh but beat the hell out of everyone else, that was. We all ended up in suspension. Lots of bowel-related jokes after that.

“What about you? Got any embarrassing and traumatizing high school stories?”

“Not really... I, uh... I tripped some kid in the hallway once. She wasn’t hurt or anything, but she started crying and ran away.” Which had been awkward and weird at the time until she found out that a rumor of her gouging out somebody’s eyes had been going around. In which case, bursting into tears and running away was definitely understandable.

“Youcried and ran away?” His head tilted like he wasn’t comprehending.

“No, she did.” Caden shrugged and hissed as a jolt of pain coursed through her system at the movement. “I dropped out my sophomore year so I don’t really have many embarrassing moments.”

Once, when she was first learning to drive, she’d accidentally driven down the wrong side of the road for like a mile, which would have been embarrassing had anyone been in the car with her, but no one had been. She’d dropped a whole box of tomatoes at one of her part-time jobs, but the embarrassment had lasted all of ten seconds before it just became more annoying than anything.

Why the hell was she sharing to begin with?

“Oh well, I’ve got enough for the both of us. More than I really care to admit to actually, but hey, what the hell?” He settled against the wall and started in on the list of his top fifteen most embarrassing moments.

Number seven was about the time Caden realized she was not only smiling, listening intently, but also eating the bowl of snot.

No, it wasn’t his doing.

Caden just needed to switch positions every couple of hours or her limbs were gonna fall off. And fuck, it wasn’t like the slop was doing anything to replenish the nutrients and shit in her body. So why not drink it? If Caden had to describe the white-lumpy-syrupy-snot as anything, it would be most like curdled milk; slightly thick and bouncy, but more liquid than anything. It actually required a combination of chewing and swallowing she was probably never gonna get used to.

It wasn’t the fact that Savage was talking to her like she was a human being and not the Terminator (before his wires got all crossed).

Nor was it because another human was so openly sharing things that were obviously personal and embarrassing with her.Her.

It wasn’t even the fact that he was once again demonstrating his weird and candid trust in her by telling her about himself.

It was not because her gut was doing weird things at the prospect of being treated like a normal, nonviolent-person-who-could-go-off-and-kill-every-living-thing-in-sight-at-any-moment-so-fucking-tread-carefully, person.

It was just that her stomach was numb and her ass was gonna take a turn on the cold cement.

6

NATHAN

It was working.

She was upright, smirking at his embarrassing stories, and eating.

If it didn’t make him look so stupid, Nathan would have high-fived the shit out of himself. But she already thought that he had no fashion sense. He didn’t want her to tack on ‘lame’ as well.

But damn, his voice was getting raw.

Water would be good, but Nathan wanted to ration it in case his captors decided against refilling the bucket. He sipped it instead and shoved it towards Quinn. She scowled a scowl that didn’t really reach her eyes, but huffed in annoyance and took a sip.

High-fiving was out of the question, but Nathan was running victory laps in his mind. Seeing as how she seemed to respond to personal stories, Nathan decided that he’d share all of his colorful history if it got her engaged and not thinking about dying.

“All right, let’s see.” Nathan settled beside her and tried very hard not to pat himself on the back.

The man drew a much-needed breath, resettled his ass on the concrete so it didn’t fall asleep, pictured the farm, and dove right in.

It wasn’t hard coming up with topics and he wasn’t really ever gonna run out of things to say about his family or the farm. With six brothers who were all their very own brand of crazy and a pair of loving parents, there was a lot he could talk about.

So he started with a rather, if he did so say himself, great description of the family farm. The names of all the cows, horses, and chickens. The big beautiful house he’d spent a good amount of his childhood in. How he twice jumped off the second-story roof to prove to his nay-saying brothers that he could, in fact, fly. He only needed a good amount of distance from the ground and the right kind of bed sheet tied to his wrists and ankles. The only thing he ended up proving was that he could break the same arm twice and could get maybe three seconds of hang time before plummeting to the garden below.

About how his mother sold the extra produce and such at the farmer’s market and had done it since they’d moved there. How his adopted dad took them all camping at least three times a month during the summer and they’d learned to swim and fish and shoot. About playing war in the woods with his brothers. All the little nooks and crannies on the farm where he could stash firecrackers and odd-shaped rocks.

How Reid, one of his adopted brothers, had gotten himself lost in the woods lining their farm one summer. How when he’d been found, fourteen hours later, the kid had acquired a squirrel friend and didn’t know what all the fuss was about because he wasn’t lost. He had known exactly where he was.

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