He idly picked up a bag of chips and shoved one into his mouth. The crunch irritated Raegan and she snatched the bag from him.
“What are you doing?” he whined. “I’m starving.”
“I want you to take this a bit more seriously!”
“But that’s food. Human food. Real food. Who knows when we’ll get this again?”
“Huh.” That blindsided Raegan a bit. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I suppose so.”
She crunched on a chip herself, but the texture made her gag. It might have been human food, the sort that she used to eat once upon a time, but she had spent the last decade surviving in a different way.
Was this a sign that settling back to ‘normal’ life wouldn’t work for her.
Raegan slid her body to the ground and held her head in her hands. She was fighting for something, for a version of this before it went to hell but living a ‘normal’ life would be troubling for her. Seeing it, even for a few moments, wasn’t the relief she thought it would be.
Without even realizing it, a tear slid down her cheek.
“Oh, Raegan, are you okay?” Miguel gushed. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that this had hit you so hard.” He moved to sit beside her. “We didn’t mean for this to happen, don’t forget that.”
“This isn’t guilt,” she sniffed. “I don’t know what it is really.”
Miguel brushed his finger up and down her cheek, and Raegan didn’t stop him. Her emotions were in a muddle and she had no idea how to rearrange them. Her eyes were dragged upwards, the connected with Miguel’s in an instant.
His delicious, warm brown eyes.
Her heart stopped beating, she couldn’t get any air into her lungs, Raegan was frozen just looking at this guy, knowing that everything she was feeling wasn’t right. She needed to switch these butterflies off, the flutter racing through her system.
But she needed it. This was better than sadness.
A magnet pulled them in, it happened out of their control. Raegan’s brain was screaming at her that this shouldn’t happen, but her body craved this, wanted him. She couldn’t resist.
Stop this, Raegan, don’t fall for him…
Yet her hands reached out, she balled them up in his hair, and she yanked him to her and kissed him hard. Their lips crashed together in an explosion of intense fireworks. Neither of them had ever been kissed before, but they didn’t need anything to compare it too, to know it was phenomenal.
This is what I’ve been missing out on… why?
An involuntary moan escaped her lips. The passion was overwhelming. Hormones that Raegan didn’t even know were within her burst free. The urge to pull him up onto the bed nearly consumed her.
They both pulled back and stared at one another, half-lidded, seductive, riddled with desire.
What now? Raegan wanted to ask. They’d already overstepped that invisible boundary, she’d broken all the rules, why not go further?
“We should…” Miguel started, in a croaky, desperate tone. “Probably keep safe.”
Raegan’s heart sunk. He was right, she knew that he was only being sensible, but it crushed her all the same. Maybe it was for the best though. They didn’t want to end up doing something that they later regretted.
She also needed the time to work out why Miguel was the only one she had ever even considered breaking the rules for.
“Yeah, you’re right. We do need to get some safety.”
“Did you want to go now?” Miguel sat up straighter. “Or should we get some rest?”
Raegan knew that staying was risky, for so many reasons. “We should go. Who knows what the streets will be like in the morning? We don’t want to end up trapped.”
Raegan wandered over to the window to take a look at what it was like now. Even since they came into this hotel it had gotten a lot worse, moving was the only smart option. Thank goodness they had stopped the kissing when they had. Even if she didn’t want them to…
“Oh wow!” She didn’t even realize that Miguel was behind her until his voice burst into her eardrums. “Is that it?”
“Is what… what?”
“Look, over there.” He pointed into the distance. “The exit hole. Is that it? I can see the glow.”
Raegan was stunned. She couldn’t believe she missed it. How distracted was she? “I don’t know, I think you might be right.”
They shared a smile, back to friendship for the time being, which was probably for the best.
Ten
“Where are we now?” Raegan demanded the moment they landed, their hands snapping apart as if a spell had been broken. “Can you see anything?”
Miguel blinked a couple of times, his eyes slowly adjusting to the new, very bright light. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like anywhere I’ve ever been before.”
Raegan nodded. For some reason, she had never revisited anywhere either, which seemed crazy with all the randomness surrounding this journey. Perhaps going back was impossible.
“What do you want to do?” Miguel continued. “Sleep, eat, or…”
“I…”
Before Raegan could answer, a shuffling sound grabbed both of their attention. Even though it terrified the pair of them, there was a welcome feeling of having something else to focus on than just each other. They couldn’t deny that things had become awkward ever since that kiss, and neither of them quite knew how to overcome it.
“What was that?” Raegan hissed.
“I don’t know, but I think that just answered our question for us. We need to get out of here…”
Raegan nodded sharply and went to move but couldn’t. Her legs were stuck. She tried to call out to Miguel who’d gone a few steps ahead of her, but her lips were stuck together too. She felt ice-cold as if she’d been frozen but was still aware.
For one heart-stopping moment, that’s what she thought had happened.
“Who are you?” a bold. yet incredibly feminine voice boomed. “What do you want?”
Raegan couldn’t even see who was talking, her neck remained stuck in position.
“We… we…” Miguel simpered.
The pain in her chest wasn’t just for herself, she didn’t just want to be free so she could defend herself against whatever threat had come her way. It was for Miguel too, painfully so. A part of her would die if anything happened to him.
This is why I shouldn’t get attached, she thought sadly. But it’s too late for that now.
“What are you doing here?” the woman yelled again. “What do you want with us?”
“N… nothing. We came here by mistake… it wasn’t supposed to…”
“Shut up!” She cut Miguel off. “I do not want to hear your lies. “You have come here to take things from us, to steal our way of life. Which will not happen!”
The next time Miguel spoke, he had a trance quality to his voice. This almost tore Raegan apart. If any of her could move, she would’ve fallen apart.
“Our world has ended. War destroyed us,” he said as if his voice box no longer belonged to him. “The fabric of time and space split apart to save some of us from the nuclear blast.”
Save? Was that possible? Raegan had never thought of it like that before. She simply viewed it as bad luck.
“We travel through exit holes in an attempt to find our world again, but I fear it will not happen. I am afraid that we will travel until we die.”