Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,31

every day he was being torn apart and put back together just so it could happen again.

But the way his face fell, expression cooling and closing off, pushed her to add, “You’re really good at that: showing up after everything’s gone to hell – sometimes literally.”

His hands tightened on her arms.

“Showing up after the fact to fix things doesn’t count for much. Some things can’t be fixed.”

He stared at her a long moment, jaw clenching. She watched him swallow. Watched his gaze track back and forth across her face, searching; whatever he hoped to find, she wasn’t going to give it to him willingly.

Finally, he nodded, and moved around so he could slide his arm around her waist.

“What are you–” she started to protest.

“I’m guessing if you can’t stand up, you’re not in any position to walk,” he said, curtly. “We’re going to get you a shower.”

Her face burned, and she wanted to upbraid him for making such an assumption – but she really wasn’t in any shape to make it there on her own. She staggered forward, letting his arm support a shameful amount of her weight, and pressed her lips shut tight against a torrent of insults.

This base wasn’t heavily-populated – was really more of an outpost, a fueling station, and a facility where military medical research could be conducted in relative peace – and, thankfully, they didn’t encounter anyone else on their slow, unsteady progress down the concrete and metal corridors. They reached a unisex locker room that offered walled-off showers and changing rooms for privacy’s sake; toilets were all tucked away in their own individual closets. The rest of their company must have already showered – Lance included, judging by his clean fatigues and the faint scent of their harsh, chemical soap – because the air was warm and humid, and wet footprints had been tracked across the tiles, leading from the changing rooms to the lockers.

He helped her to a dry section of floor, and pushed the swinging door to a changing room open. Inside it was small, with a bench, and pegs for clothes, and a mat to stand on. Beyond, through a frosted, sliding door, was the shower.

She noted a folded set of dark blue sweats stitched with the Gold Company emblem waiting on the bench. A wrapped bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo. And, on the ground, a pair of orthopedic flip-flops. The flip-flops were much too small for any of her fellow Knights. They were for her, and she knew the clothes were, as well. They’d been set out for her: warm and comfortable things, soft and welcome after being bedraggled.

At another time, Gallo would have been the one to think of her. But Gallo was waking up from anesthesia. And she knew that neither Tris nor Gavin had done it. Which left Lance. Lance had found clothes, and those absurd and rare flip-flops, and shampoo, and soap, and had come to fetch her, to make sure that she showered.

It would have been so easy to chalk it up to duty: a commander had to look out for the rest of his company. What good was a Knight too feeble and sick to wield a weapon? But she knew, in this instance, that the gesture had been meant as a kindness.

And she hated that.

Her anger came to a sudden, red-hot peak – and then burst, and fell, and faded, leaving her only shaken, and grateful, and hating him for the simple fact that he wasn’t Beck, and that he hadn’t saved Beck, and that he would never have been able to at all.

Her eyes and throat burned, and she swayed within his grasp.

“Do I need to help you?” he asked, tone still gruff, still mad at her – but worried all the same.

“No,” she said, not sure at all if that was true.

But when he carefully withdrew, she was able to shuffle forward, and reach for the buttons of her jacket.

“I’ll be out here,” he said, like a warning. “If I hear you fall, I’m coming in, naked or not.”

Too weary to even nod, she kept working on her buttons, aware of his deep frown before he closed the outer door.

It took an age to undress, her fingers clumsy, her clothes half-dried to her skin. She nearly fell, stepping out of her pants, and slapped a hand against the wall to catch herself.

“Greer?” Lance called.

“Fine.”

Teeth chattering even more violently, covered in gooseflesh, she hobbled into the shower stall and cut