They ran hard despite the raging storm booming overhead, their clothes drenching quickly in the violent downpour. Charlie panted raggedly, slowing as they lost themselves deeper in the woods beyond where those who might've been dumb enough to follow them into the storm could possibly catch up. Monroe kept running, but she knew where she was supposed to meet him; knew the rendezvous point they'd agreed on; knew she'd be able to find it, even in the dark.
Slowing to a walk, Charlie tipped her head back, looking to the sky as lightning flashed in the distance before thunder boomed overhead. It felt good to feel the rain on her skin instead of the constant, dry baking grit of the Texas desert and the stickiness of her own sweat. It hardly ever rained in Texas. The stinging cold of it made her shiver, but Charlie had never felt more alive. God, how long had she been running? Fighting? Killing? Had she stopped since that day in Sylvania Estates when Captain Neville had put a bullet in her Dad's chest and taken her little brother captive?
It didn't feel like it. It felt like everything since then had just been about surviving. Even when she'd ditched Mom and Miles in Texas and gone off alone, it hadn't felt like living. It was all just about surviving. She knew with sickening ease that the day her childhood had ended had been that day in Wisconsin when the Monroe Militia blasted her entire world to smithereens.
And what a sick joke that this moment, now, when she was trudging through a thunderstorm and pondering the value of her own life, she could already hear the president of that Republic running back for her.
"Charlie?" he called when he was close. "What happened? Were you hit? Why'd you stop?"
General Sebastian Monroe. President of the Monroe Republic. Running to her rescue like she fucking mattered to him. Like his men weren't responsible for everything that had gone wrong in her life back in Wisconsin.
"I'm fine," Charlie replied when he ran back to her, his hands finding her body even in the dark and beginning to wander it, cataloging, his fingers looking for injuries his eyes couldn't see. "Just wanted to feel the rain."
His hands froze on her hips and she heard the strangled sound of fury he choked on.
"We're in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wanna stop and feel the rain?" he growled furiously.
Charlie sighed, knowing he was going to make her run again. Knowing her moment of reprieve was already over.
"It hardly ever rains in Texas," she reminded him.
"You take a few blows to the head in the fight, kid?" he asked and when lightning flashed overhead, she could see he was frowning at her.
Charlie laughed.
"Nah," she said, shoving his hands away and pushing his chest lightly.
"You sure?" he asked, his hands returning, this time smoothing over her head, looking for bumps as though he might find something.
"I'm fine, Monroe," she shook her head. "Just thinking."
He was silent for a beat, one of his hands gathering the hair plastered to her right cheek and across her forehead, slicking it back and tangling his fingers in the dripping strands.
"About what?" he queried quietly, not stepping back or letting her go.
"It's nothing," she shook her head.
"Yeah, sure," he sneered, and she could hear him rolling his eyes. "Everyone stops in a storm to feel the rain and think about nothing."
Charlie kind of hated him.
"Thinking about Dad," she confessed quietly. "And Danny. It used to rain like this in Wisconsin. And snow. We'd get so much snow in the winter…"
"Beats melting in fuckin' Texas, I bet," Monroe muttered.
Charlie nodded.
Lightning flashed again, illuminating him in the dark and Charlie met his eyes for that brief second, counting in her head until the thunder boom three beats later.
"Still blame me for what happened?" he asked quietly in the pattering rain that followed when the sky fell silent for a few minutes.
Charlie sighed, bringing a hand up and fisting the fabric of his shirt where it was plastered to his abs in the rain, thinking about the answer.
"Not really," she admitted. "You didn't pull the trigger yourself. I've learned enough since then to know that counts for something."
She didn't know how it could be, but she had let it go. All of it. She wasn't angry at Monroe for the deaths of her father or her brother anymore. She hadn't been for a long time. Not since he'd saved her life in Pottsboro and proved he was a complete gentleman when it really mattered.
"Been a long time since I stood in the rain," he said after what felt like an eternity, moving closer and bending down to lay his forehead against hers.
"How long?" she wondered.
"Before the blackout, probably," he muttered. "At least since I stood in the rain because I wanted to, not because I had no choice."
"Why would you have stood in it by choice before the blackout," she frowned. "Houses were better maintained back then."
He laughed quietly.
"Better maintained but just as stifling, sometimes," he told her quietly.
"Weren't you in the Marines with Miles?" Charlie clarified.
"Yeah. So?"
"Did you even have a house?" she frowned.
"Real nice, Charlotte," he grumbled, laughing quietly as more thunder boomed, lightning filling the sky. "Hit a guy while he's down."
"What've you got to be down about? If you'd had a house, you'd have long since lost it by now, along with everything else."
"Such a ray of sunshine aren't you, baby?" he teased, laughing, his hand untangling from her hair and cupping her cheek.
For a breathless moment, Charlie wondered if he was going to kiss her. She'd like that, she thought. Out here in the rain with no one to see them and no one to judge them, it might be nice, just once, to give in to the tension that always bubbled between them, just begging to boil over into something else. Something more.
Biting her lip, she searched his face in the dark, silently begging for more lightning so she might see those brilliant blue eyes and know what he was thinking and whether he wanted to kiss her too. She took a deep breath in, thinking that she should just go for it before the sound of heavy footsteps caught her ear.
"Someone's coming," she hissed, panic surging through her limbs as she jerked back from Monroe. "Come on. Let's go!"
"What? You done feeling the rain?" he taunted, and it was like flipping a switch, the tender, private moment gone in a heartbeat and he was back to his cynical, snarky asshole self.
"Eat me, Monroe," Charlie retorted, setting off at a run again, knowing that if anyone had dared follow them out of that town they'd assaulted, they would be fast catching up while they dawdled.
Monroe made her run ahead of him this time, refusing to go around her even though he was the faster of the two of them. He stayed right behind her, pushing her on, bending and scooping her back to her feet with his hands under her armpits when she stumbled over a tree root and skinned her knee through her jeans, pushing her forward and driving her to the foxhole where Miles and Connor would be waiting with the rest of their raiding party.
"Who goes there?" a voice shouted, one of their team already there ahead of them.
"Connor's such a moron in the dark," Charlie complained to Monroe as they both slowed their pace.
"It's us, idiot," Monroe answered his son. "Where's Miles?"
"Thought he was with you?" Connor called back and Charlie stopped, looking over her shoulder, fear clenching her heart.
"The hell?" Monroe growled, stopping too and looking around in the dark like they might spot Miles in the gloom.
"He'll be right behind us," Charlie assured him.
"How'd you lose him, Connor?"
"He went left at that water tower on the far side of town, and I went right. Think he was going after you two..."
Charlie's eyes narrowed when footsteps sounded in the dark again and for a terrible moment, she wondered if it'd been Miles out there in the dark interrupting her before she could kiss Monroe.
"Miles?" she called out hopefully.
The footsteps kept coming and Monroe hauled her closer to their bunker with one arm, while he swung his rifle around with the other.
"Miles?" she called again, knife in hand, ready to fling it at the invader if it was anyone but Miles.
"It's me," he grunted when he was closer. "Move. They weren't far behind me."
Relief flooded her and she charged into the shelter past Connor where he stood on watch, grateful for the light and the warmth when she descended into the basement and found Aaron, Grandpa, and her Mom all inside.
"Charlie. Thank God," her Mom said, drawing her into a relieved hug despite her wet clothes and hair.
"Get dry, kiddo," Grandpa advised, favoring her with a warm smile to show his own relief. "You'll catch your death in wet clothes like that."
Charlie nodded, heading for her pack and digging out some dry clothes before slipping into the adjacent room and peeling off her drenched jeans. She was about to pull her tank top off too, but the scrape of boots followed by the rasp of a fly stopped her.
"Monroe," she hissed, narrowing her eyes at him, scowling.
He looked over as he shoved his pants down his legs, uncaring that he was commando under them, and that she could see his junk.
"What?" he asked, and though he feigned an expression of concern as though worried she was upset about something, Charlie caught the gleam in those electric blue eyes that he knew exactly what he was doing.
Huffing, she turned her back and proceeded to pull the shirt off over her head anyway, viscerally aware of his gaze drinking in the sight of her.
"Oh, don't play cute, Charlotte," Monroe taunted quietly from behind her. "What? You're gonna play the embarrassed and blushing virgin? C'mon. This is me."
"The hell's that supposed to mean?" she asked, well aware of what she was doing as she stepped out of her wet underwear and stood with her back to him, naked as the day she'd been born.
"I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice," Monroe taunted, his voice coming closer until she would swear that she could feel his warm breath ghosting over her damp shoulders and feel the heat radiating from his body. "I know you wanted to kiss me out there in the rain…"
"You're delusional," Charlie retorted, grabbing the dry shirt she'd brought and pulling it on over her head before wriggling into dry panties even though her skin was still damp. The jeans would have to wait, she decided, turning to glare at Monroe, knowing she'd have a hard time getting the tight fabric up her legs as long as she was wet from the rain.
He was standing right behind her, still naked and Charlie's eyes dropped to his chest, his abs, and then lower.
"Christ," she muttered, taking a step back and drawing a smug laugh from him.
"Yeah," he smirked. "That's what I thought."
"Put some pants on," she rolled her eyes, even though she was having a hard time tearing her eyes off his dick. Had it always been that big? Shit.
"You sure you want me to?" he asked, his voice turning husky and damn him to the deepest pits of hell, no she wasn't sure. She wanted to reach out and touch him. She wanted to sink to her knees and take him in her mouth right then and there, but Miles was coming and her Mom and Grandpa were in the next room.
"Monroe," she said tightly, her hand twitching to reach out and run down the steel length of him.
He laughed knowingly.
"Take a good look, baby," he murmured before the sound of Miles' footsteps filled the air.
"Damn it, Bass!" Miles growled. "Put some damn pants on! Christ. I'm blind."
Monroe laughed, never taking his eyes off Charlie, his eyes just daring her to do as she so desperately wanted, and to reach out and touch him. He bounced his eyebrows at her when Miles kept fussing before conceding to Miles' demands and stepping into a dry pair of jeans.
"Christ, Charlie, you too?" Miles asked, horrified when Charlie stepped around Monroe in only her panties and her tank top.
"Like I'm gonna be able to get jeans this tight up my legs while I'm all wet?" she rolled her eyes, steadfastly not looking at Monroe when he shot her a knowing smirk about what kind of wet he imagined her to be.
"Just… I don't even want to know," Miles shook his head, ripping his wet clothes off quickly.
Charlie averted her eyes.
"Dude, niece still in the room. Hold it with removing those jeans," she hurried to stop him before he could strip completely as Monroe had.
"Well, move it, moron," Miles grumbled grouchily. "I'm wet and I'm cold and I want to be neither."
Charlie shook her head, looking away from Monroe once and for all and trying to get the image of his dick out of her head even though she was pretty sure it was burned into her retinas.