Page 50 of Cora

He rushed toward me, cupping my face and kissing me hard. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?!” he rasped, tears falling from his eyes. “I could have— I could have— I don’t know what I could have done, but I would have done something. You at least wouldn’t have dealt with this alone. You helped me so much with my trauma; I wish you would have allowed me to pay some of that back.”

I pulled my hand from Cora’s and hugged the man I loved beyond reason. “I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to pretend that it never happened. And if Queen weren’t knocking on our door, I wouldn’t have said anything. Cora saved me; that was all that mattered.”

I felt my brothers surround us as they joined in on the hug. “You still should have told us, brother,” Derrick said, his voice cracking with emotion.

“We’re a family,” Isaac continued. “We don’t keep secrets like that from each other, no matter how much it might hurt to talk about; we do the hard things because we matter to each other.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I know you’re right, but I was so embarrassed that I didn’t want to admit my weakness. I didn’t want you to know I wasn’t man enough to protect myself, let alone Cora.”

Speaking her name made us all realize she wasn’t in the middle of our family hug. We released each other to look around the room for her, and I snorted when I saw her standing beside the hole Trent had put in the wall. She glared at Trent as she pointed to the wall, her other little fist planted on her hip.

“Oh, man, Trent. You’re in fucking trouble now,” I snickered.

“What?” He spun around, and when he saw Cora, I swear the man shrunk three inches. “Oh.”

Derrick and Isaac chuckled as he approached our angry Little Mouse.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, wrapping his arms around her stiff body. “I promise I’ll fix it or have Isaac fix it. When he’s done with it, you won’t even be able to tell there was ever anything wrong.”

He stopped hugging her when Cora hadn’t relaxed in his embrace. She still had a deep scowl on her face. “I lost control of my temper. I swear it won’t happen again! Next time, I’ll take it outside and punch a tree or something.”

After a few more seconds, Cora’s face softened, and she nodded, accepting his apology. I grinned at her, and she winked when she met my eyes.

If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that life with Cora would never be dull.

We spent the next several days barricaded inside the house. Given the threat lurking in the woods, we weren’t anxious to be separated from each other for any duration. A lot of time was spent working with Cora to exercise her vocal cords more. She’d improved enough for more consistent grunts, which made it much easier for her to get our attention if we weren’t watching her. Not that there weren’t many moments where one of us wasn’t staring at her.

“Here you go, Sweetheart,” Trent said as he handed her a bowl. “You have to eat something.” Cora sat up on the couch and looked in the bowl before wrinkling her nose, grunting, and pushing his hand away. “But it’s mashed potatoes,” Trent protested. “You love mashed potatoes.” He tried to hand them again, but she wouldn’t take them.

“I’ll eat them!” Derrick called from down the hall.

“I didn’t make them for you!” Trent called back.

“Sounds like you didn’t make them for Cora either,” Derrick retorted.

Trent ignored him as he sat beside Cora. “What do you want, then? I’ll make you anything you want if you tell me what that is.”

Cora shrugged. I knew she wasn’t trying to be stubborn or difficult. Cora genuinely didn’t know what she wanted. From what I gathered, Cora didn’t have the best eating habits before we arrived, surviving on the easiest things to prepare and neglecting the greenhouse and its potential for fresh food. I searched my brain for a solution that would get her to eat.

“Cora?” I said to get her attention. “Would you like me to see if I can find any late-season berries?”

Cora’s face brightened. “Mmhmm!”

“Ok, Little Mouse. Isaac and I will head out and check the lines. While we’re out there, we’ll try and find some berries for you as well,” I said, standing and looking at Isaac.

He sighed. “Yeah, I guess we can’t put it off another day, can we?”

“I’m afraid not,” I told him.

We grabbed a game bag, a basket for berries, and our weapons and left. By now, we had formed well-worn paths through the forest, following our trap lines. I kept my eyes peeled for any berries, though I wasn’t confident I would find many. Halfway through our circuit, I found enough to fill half the basket. They wouldn’t win any berry competitions, but they would do. There was a fresh dusting of snow on the ground, and as we returned to the house, I started to notice footprints in the snow. At first, I thought maybe a zombie had stumbled through, but then I realized too many of them were branching off in different directions. I could see where whoever had been out here had stopped in one place for a long time. That spot had a clear view of the house. We were being watched.

I pointed it out to Isaac, and he paled slightly. “Come on,” he said. We raced back to the house, uneasy to have been gone so long. When we got home, Cora was still on the couch, but now she was napping in Trent’s arms. Derrick was sitting near the front window, watching the woods.

“I keep seeing movement in the trees like there are people out there,” he said without looking at us.

“We saw tracks in the snow,” I told him. “They’re watching the house.”

Derrick looked over his shoulder at Cora. “There is so much more at stake now that she’s pregnant. It’s almost terrifying tothink about. We’re going to have to kill these people to protect our woman and our baby.”

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