Dying to Love

by Reese Rivers

It’s been 662 days since the dead rose up to destroy the world as I knew it and 413 days since I last spoke to another living person.

Spoiled princess? Yup, that’s totally me in a nutshell. Never worked a day in my life, except for all of them. Had everything handed to me? Sure did, while clawing my way out of poverty and abuse. Worked my ass off with my friends to create this safe haven only to have the most important part of it ripped away from me? Yup, total fucking princess and fuck you very much, Dev.

“If they don’t let us stay, I think we’re going to die out there and I don’t think it will take very long.”

“What the fuck, man? First of all, they’re night and day personality-wise from what we’ve seen so far. Second of all, slow your roll. We’ve been here two fucking minutes. And third, can’t you just fucking try to be happy about something for once? Seriously, go take a hot shower. It’ll help lube you up enough to pull your head out of your ass.”

She turns and manages two angry stomps in our direction when she catches sight of us lined up watching her and she freezes again. I can’t stop the wide grin that fills my face. “Yup, we’re totally fucking goners,” I say. “All the way down the rabbit hole,” Oliver states in his cool voice. “Balls deep.” Grayson laughs. “Well fuck me sideways,” mutters Dev.

“You can’t do that! We can’t do that anymore, girls. Embarrassment with a capital E has re-entered our lives. There are witnesses, wit-ness-es to how we behave now. The crazy train of before needs to put the brakes on and come to a stop. You heard them, Snookie. Linc said they’re goners and Oliver thinks they fell down the rabbit hole and that means I’m the Mad Hatter! We can’t keep acting crazy like that or they’re going to leave us. Do you want that? Do you want to go back to the two hundred days? Because that was some dark shit we almost didn’t make it through.”

I lean down and gently cup her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes. “We aren’t going anywhere and all of us have bought our first-class tickets on your crazy train and we are all aboard for the ride.” I kiss her lips softly and then pull away. “I’ll take care of the chickens. Go with Oliver so you can get dressed and eat the breakfast Grayson made for you.”

“What the hell, guys? You’re going to mess her head up so bad she won’t want to have any of us around!” “Yes and no,” I tell him. “Yes, she’s confused but she responded to both of us so she’s attracted to us that way. Her confusion and anxiety stem from the guilt of kissing us both and I bet she’s worried that she will hurt our feelings or maybe even cause a rift between us. We just have to ease her into the understanding that she doesn’t have to worry about that or about choosing just one of us. Also, a lot has happened to change her life in the last two days so she’s overloaded. As much as I don’t want to, we’re going to have to slow things down and let her catch her breath.”

My eyes move down the abs and look, there’s a V and it goes down into a VERY precariously tucked towel and the other side goes back up to … abs. Tara shows up and she looks at me and then over to the abs and her eyes bug out like a cartoon character. She drops to her knees and frames those abs and says, “Abs, Kells, abs. We wants the preciouses,” and then proceeds to pretend to lick the abs. When the hip under the abs move and the towel slips an inch, I choke on the saliva in my mouth because human-ing is apparently beyond me at this point but still … abs.

Four, four, four, four men. How would that even work? Forget work, there would never be time for work with four men. Just sex, sex, nap, sex, nap, and sex again. Nothing would ever get done with four men. Not unless it was more than one at a time. Like if it was two at once or three. Three could work but four, four on me would be … My long unused, dusty lady bits wake up and clench as images of that scenario float through my mind.

At this close range, it’s almost impossible to miss. I turn to take out the next few that are stepping out of the trees and almost stumble when I see all three of the guys moving toward me instead of dealing with the dead that are heading their way. “Argh! What the fuck are you doing?” I yell at them and it seems to break them out of the stupid trance they’ve fallen into. Fucking hell, the zombies won’t have to kill them because I’m going to! I’m so pissed off that I just let loose and shoot every fucking zombie that’s left the tree line, switching out guns to finish off the last few that the guys should already have taken out before stomping over to meet them as I reload on the fly. “What the actual fuck! I never should have brought you out here with me. Yes, you all are big strong men and you want to take care of me and protect me and I get that, but seriously? Fucking seriously? Get your shit together because out here you can’t let me become a distraction. Distractions get you dead. Rule number four, motherfuckers!”