Chapter Six
The Reason
"Actually." Shane scratched the side of his face. "She won."
There was a hum throughout the table. Surprise and amusement rode through the rest of the group. Even Daryl, the one with a permanent scowl, held an emotion that was not unpleasant. The stain upon his lips might have told the reason why.
Rick chuckled loudly. His hand hit his knee. "What?" He rasped. "She beat you?"
There was not a speck of disappointment on Shane's face as he nodded.
That very moment, Delaney's heart stopped. She watched a man so competitive and proud acknowledge defeat without an inkling of it bothering him. That man. Shane Walsh. His ego was so large that it dragged on the ground behind him. The man had his high school football jersey hung up on a wall in his house, for God's sake!
Her hand moved from the tabletop to below where his thighs were openly spread. She caressed the top of his knee, avoiding his searching gaze.
"No way." Glenn shook his head.
"I'd hate to have seen the pair of you that next morning. Hangovers worse than death," T-Dog added. He then turned his head to his companion. "Just like you're gonna have."
"I'm fine." The young man waved dismissively. Then he giggled.
It was Glenn's first drop of alcohol. And he'd had a lot of it.
Jacqui took a sip of water from her glass before she set it down. "I saw coffee in the kitchen. It'll help. In the morning."
Mention of coffee should have set off Andrea; she adored the stuff. It was something she talked of surviving off of in law school and the start of her career.
The fact that she said nothing riled Laini's suspicions. She kept an eye on her at the opposite end of the table with a heavy heart for the woman who lost her most precious belonging that had survived the rape the world, and here Laini was, enjoying the one thing she hadn't wanted but enjoyed all the same.
The conversations carried on from there. Laughter, light hearted memories over food that filled their bodies with new found energies. They all drank it in. She felt closer to the people at the table as they shared in their joy. Retold stories were welcome, as were new ones.
Full bellies left their eyes heavy. Laini propped her chin up with a hand to keep it from falling.
Dr. Jenner rose to standing. He was silent and offered no explanation. His hands only gestured to the mound of backpack supplies they had made in a corner of the room.
Napkins were expelled onto the table from Carol and Jacqui's hands. The rest followed suit. They gathered their things. The weight of her pack pressed heavily against her exhausted body. Laini placed the shoulder strap with a small 'oof'.
"Let me take that." The top handle of her backpack was lifted from her back. Straps fell off her shoulders. It hung by Shane's side. When she looked at him, he only shrugged. "Can't have you falling over."
He flung a black duffel bag over his right shoulder while he carried her backpack with his left. They were one of the last people to follow the doctor through a long corridor.
"The housing wing has been shut down. Can't spare the power. But, these all have couches." The corridor was filled with large offices. There were desks, chairs, and a single long couch along the wall. Inside there was another door. Some were ajar, just showing the faint outline of white tile. "There is a rec room at the end of hall. All I ask is that the video games remain off. Okay?" He regarded the children with that statement. A small smile turned his face into another being. Despite the wear to his face – stress and long nights – the doctor had ripples of handsome features. They ignited when he felt a shred of happiness. "The rest of you. Take it easy on the hot water."
A stunned silence fell.
The corridor was filled with their entire group, always mumbling or moving, grunting or cleaning, with a background noise all its own. That noise stopped suddenly. Eyes widened. The enraging wide eyed stare of Lori returned as she looked to Rick with disbelief.
"Did you say 'hot water'?" Glenn shook with glee.
An excited hum surged throughout the room as they all excitedly found an open door to walk through before someone else took it. Shane walked through one and tossed their bags down onto the pair of chairs.
Her weariness was eliminated at the prospect of a hot shower.
"Come 'ere," Shane said after he closed their room door. He took hold of her wrists and pulled her body flush with his. His face buried into her hair. Hot breath flushed down one side of her face. "Let's get you that bath. I owe you one, don't I?"
They wasted no time stripping themselves clean of their dirty clothes. The water heated instantly. Their bodies slid into the shower. Moans of pure ecstasy pulled from their lips as the warm water slid over their skin.
Laini bent her head back allowing the streams of water to run through her scalp in a cleansing flood. She pressed her hand beneath a small soap dispenser and scratched the liquid until her skin hurt.
She felt Shane's eyes on her. Arched back, breasts forced up as her mouth parted under the fall of the water.
"You're so beautiful." His hand grasped her hip. He liked to grab ahold of her there. The size of his hand latched onto the bone easily.
"It's like you forgot," she added, half-heartedly.
It was not his fault there was separation. He was content as could be.
His brows fell. "I haven't forgotten."
The flow of the stream was interrupted as he entered. Water coursed down the length of his face, beaded down his muscled chest and was lost below his waist.
One hand raised to cup her cheek. His forehead fell right against hers. It rested there a moment.
"What do you want from me?" He whispered.
It barely broke through the sound of splattering water at their feet.
Her breath stopped. "What?"
"You want me to carve your name on my chest? 'Cause I'll do it. You want me to leave Rick and this whole fucking group behind and it only be us two. Well, I'll go ahead and do that, too." A slight parting came to his lips. They brushed against her nose. "Just tell me what you want from me. I'll do it so you don't push me away like I'm nothin'."
A swift chill went up the back of her legs. It coursed inside, through her various veins and arteries, clawed up her muscles straight for the beating warm center of her heart.
She stood, wide eyed, in stunned silence.
All at once his body was gone from hers. The dropping of a blanket, a retreat of heat from her flesh.
He took a step back. His back leaned against the outer wall of the shower. He looked at the floor. "I – I don't know. Maybe I am. If you thought I'd lay hands on you." The tone of his muscles tightened as he shrugged.
This was not the man she knew Shane Walsh to be.
Bits of Shane's insides showed. A deeper sense of care than she gave him credit for. An unfair assumption that emotions were nothing to him, unknown things that only caused anger, rather than true pain.
She released a shaky breath. "You're something to me."
"Why then? Why you'd try to leave on that damned stupid mission?"
"I wanted to save Daryl's brother. We owed it to him."
His eyes narrowed. He eased up off the wall of that shower. "Merle Dixon was a son of a bitch you couldn't stand. You told me yourself." He took a step closer. "You don't give a damn about Dixon."
The heat of the shower was losing its edge. The softening of her muscles was being undone.
This was not a conversation meant to be done naked in a shower with a man she couldn't resist with clothes on.
She placed a firm palm against his chest to keep the distance between them.
"Why go?" He asked her again.
"Why stop me?"
A shatter of emotion went through his dark eyes. He lowered his brows and wrinkled his nose. "Because I wasn't going to let Rick's self-righteousness risk something that I cared about. Somebody had to be the voice of reason."
The weight of his body leaned against her arm. It was weakening her by the minute.
Raw hurt swam inside his eyes.
"I can't protect you if I'm not there, baby. I can't save you if you're miles away." His Adam's apple bobbed through his taut throat. "There isn't a single man I'd trust with your life. Not here. Not anywhere."
A bend came to her arm. Her elbow refused to push against him.
"I didn't want you to lose Rick," she admitted. Her body felt tense and embarrassed. Her back turned to the man to avoid the way his eyes looked at her. Words fought against her. They didn't want him to see weakness. Her weakness.
"Hey." His voice was gentle.
Hands slid down her shoulder to her bicep. The fingers tightened, pulling her back to him, ever so slight.
"Don't turn your back on me," he repeated. Just as he had done in the woods. "Look at me."
She found strength to meet his gaze. Not that there was strength inside her to expose herself like he had. But the determination to withstand him was waning. The more she was around him, the more she found that she loved the way he made her feel, the way he cherished her and coveted her attention. It was intoxicating. A fact, she hated.
Shane cupped both her cheeks. His thumbs brushed below her eyes in smooth glides.
"If Rick had come back, and you hadn't, I'd have shot him."
"You don't mean that."
They were childhood friends. Brothers.
"I do." He nodded. "I'd have killed every single one of the people who came back without you."
"Shane, I -."
There was a change in the temperature of the shower. It went from hot to luke warm. The steam of the conversation stole away from the moment. The reminder of a ticking clock somewhere far off, unbeknownst to them. The blaring reminder of where they were, what they were doing, how little sleep they'd had and just how long it'd been since they'd had use of hot water.
"Lets just…" He set his palms against her shoulders. A deep sigh came from his lips. "Let's just get you cleaned up."
The throb of her heart settled, crashing suddenly into the realization that her emotions were getting caught up in his gravity once more. She nodded with a small smile. The pieces of herself cracking under its pressure. His pressure.
Never had a soul made her doubt herself more.
They huddled together in the stream. His hands lathering soap upon her skin. Fingers spread through the white soapy path along her limbs, torso, up her neck and on her back. He rubbed it vigorously as she stared at the shower wall.
As scared as she was to be bound to Shane in this permanent way, there was more fear inside her to be apart. He was all she knew, the steady tree in the wind storm, the buoy in the waters.
She glanced back over her shoulder. "I never thanked you," she said, "for all that you did. Do. For me."
The scrubbing stopped.
Shane's chest pressed against her back. Arms wrapped around her belly, holding at her waist. His lips pressed against her forehead. "And you'll never have to."
She leaned into his kiss, letting it deepen and letting his lips drift lower to her mouth. They kissed. Shane held onto the rounded tops of her hips. They twisted her around to face him. Erection pressed in the soft flesh of her belly with a hardening pulse throughout its shaft. She smirked through their kiss at its pressing. Shane noticed her amusement.
"Can you blame me?" He lazily smiled. His breath snaked up around her neck as little kisses were spread across its flesh. "A hot naked woman in the shower with me." He raised eyes alight with a glaze she knew well. Passion and lust laced throughout the man, taking on one of her favorite aspects of him.
Laini flushed. Sensation below her waist grew hot and tense, needy and on the edge of pain. It overcame the growing cool of the pouring water.
His hands roamed the spread of her exposed body like an eager man dying of thirst. Every spot she loved touched was. Playfully nipped or rubbed.
All the while his eyes stayed locked with hers. Unyielding.
"Too bad it won't clean my mouth."
A devilish smile twisted his mouth. "Thank God for that." His tongue slipped between her lips the next breath. "I love a woman with a dirty mouth," he said when he pulled away.
Her hand reached down and grasped the cock she'd left unattended. A sharp breath exhaled his lips as her palm latched around its shaft, and pulsated his fingers lower, faster.
She stroked him as he stroked her. It was an intense game they liked to play. The faster he went, the faster she pumped his cock, and the nearer he came to that glorious finish line, the slower he was forced to go, as there was no glory in finishing first for him. The man prided himself on a record of never leaving a woman unsatisfied.
A record she never wanted broken.
"Remember what that mouth told me," Shane panted. He rode the edge. She felt his balls twitching even through the hard tugging of his cock. He plunged his fingers deeper inside, curling them just so. Her back was against the wall with a lessening strength in her limbs. It was so close to her edge, too. His fingers fucked her like it truly was his cock buried inside her pussy. "What was it that dirty little mouth told me the night we met?"
Coherent thought was difficult to latch in the painful want of climax.
She blinked multiple times to find memory enough to speak. "Fuck, Shane. Don't do this. I'm almost -." Her lips parted in a sudden moan.
God, she was ALMOST there.
"Come on now, baby girl. Tell me what you said."
The story she recounted at the table was a PG version of the truth; there was more sexual tension than she let on.
Shane was using his lines like a Southern gentleman the night they met. Flirty, but restrained. His pass at her friend had been nothing but calling her beautiful and offering a free drink.
Delaney – already three drinks deep and in need of a good night to forget the total tool she'd been talking to for two months that ditched her for a nursing major – found herself speaking before her friend had the chance to respond.
"I'll bet that pretty mouth does much more than order drinks," Laini had said – practically yelled since the music was so loud at establishment.
He'd been leaned against the bar, sipping out of a beer can. A sharp sudden smirk curled, although the jump of his brows read surprised.
"That it does," Shane replied.
"Tell you what. Show me how much tequila you can shoot and I just might let you use that mouth on me tonight."
The shower turned frigid cold as they basked in the aftermath of their mind-shattering orgasms. Shane wretched the valves closed. It still left them shuddering cold in the chilly tile shower. They stumbled out of the bathroom with towels wrapped around themselves into the office. The carpet instantly warmed their feet.
Shane rummaged through his duffel bag for a pair of his boxer briefs. She remained in her towel, trembling slightly. Though it wasn't from the cold.
"Here." A pair of Shane's sweats were tossed in her direction. They were dark grey with little emblem on the right pocket. She fingered the deep blue embroidery. #22.
"But these are your favorite," she said.
"I know." He chuckled. "But your sweet ass looks better in them."
She smiled as she slipped the sweatpants up. They were baggy. And long. But she liked them anyway.
They both dressed in their comfortable clothes, the few they could spare in their bags, and exited their rooms. Shane was intent on talking to Rick. Laini decided that she'd check out the rec room the doctor had mentioned.
She wandered down the hall to the rec room. Carol and Sophia and Carl were there. Carol held a book in her hands. A small smile was on her lips as her eyes poured over the pages.
Since Ed's death, it was like a veil of pain was lifted off the woman. She was renewed. Alive again.
The back wall was covered in a huge bookshelf stuffed of books. Lots were more intellectual reads than fiction, but it was nice to see some semblance of old life displayed.
There was also a tiki themed bar that surely once operated as a drink stand for a vendor. A menu listed different drinks and a few snacks offered behind the counter. She peered over to see if any of the advertised chips were hiding behind there.
"Hi Laini," said a singsong voice.
She turned back around to notice that she'd been spotted by Sophia. All too soon, Carl noticed her too. They both peered at her with curiosity.
"Whatcha doin'?" Carl asked. He rose from his knees to examine what had caught her attention.
She sighed. The jig was up.
Her hands pulled out two small snack sized bags of Lays barbeque flavored chips. Their eyes lit up with excitement.
"Go on ahead," she said playfully. "Take them."
Carol turned her head up from her book. Her pale cheeks blushed. "Oh, Sophia. Those belong to Laini."
"No, no." She put her hands up. "They need them more than I do. I'd just been snooping anyway. Not like I put my name on them."
The meek woman gave a soft smile. She turned to her daughter who lingered in uncertain air.
"Well, alright." Her mother nodded. "But you thank Laini for sharing with you."
Sophia instantly bounced to full height. "Thank you, Miss Laini."
Carl's hands wretched open the top of the bag. "Yeah, thanks Lain."
"Enjoy," she said as she strolled on through the other side of the room.
It led to an open hall. Down a way she recognized.
There was a lonely figure in the dim of the computer work stations. A single man with pale hair atop his head, hunched shoulders, a haunting silence around him. The silhouette of a wine bottle sat atop his desk.
She crossed her arms against her chest as she warily entered the work room with a strange sense of intruding.
Dr. Jenner did not seem to mind. His eyes lifted without expression from his desk to observe the source of echoing footsteps. He gave a polite nod of his head at the sight of her.
"How did you find the shower?"
Water still dripped from the ends of her hair. "Lovely. Thank you for sharing your hot water with us."
The man said nothing. Only bobbed his head blight in acknowledgement.
Her eyes wandered around the darkness of the room. She imagined what being trapped down here for months would do to a person. How lonely, eerie, depressing it felt to have not a soul to split the emptiness.
"How long have you been here?" She asked. When the doctor titled his head, she clarified, "alone."
"A while."
"I can't imagine what it's been like…for you."
To watch it all happen through a screen, with no other option than to work in hopes to finding a cure to solve it all. As the world descending further and further from humanity.
"No less devastating than what you've been through."
She shrugged. There was no argument that it was not awful to survive on the outside. They were desperate, starved, haggard people on his doorstep. "Yeah, but I've had others to lean on. Be there when I'm not strong. You." Her eyes glanced up around the room once more. "You have no one. No one to brave the end of the world with."
"The end of the world sweeps with a lonely hand," Dr. Jenner replied flatly. "Death is an existence of pure isolation."
"Of course."
Death was the same to all. It took one, and only one.
As awful as she felt for the man, he lived in the silence with contentment. He did not shift or express discomfort at her probing. He remained indifferent to lack of sound and sensation.
What choice did he have? There was no option but to embrace it.
There was no one else.
She cleared her throat. "I should go. Shane will be wondering where I am."
It took a minute for the man to rise from his chair. She'd been only a few feet away when his soft voice forced a louder tone, "Wait."
Her toes spun around.
He raised a hand with a submissive look. "I apologize if I startled you. I was going to come to you tomorrow. Let you settle in for the night first before I told you…"
She wrapped her arms around her torso. Their voices echoed in the space as they had to speak louder to hear one another. "Told me what." Her shoulders heightened the tighter she hugged herself.
"I finished analyzing the blood from your group and -."
"Someone's infected," she blurted with her eyes bulged.
All of them looked healthy. Seemed healthy. But, maybe the virus transformed somehow. Laid dormant for longer, adapted quickly. Evolved for an more effective betrayal.
Her mind spun through the ideas in quick succession. A steady rabbit hole of fear warped her thoughts until the doctor cleared his throat. She raised her eyes to his face.
"No. Not infected."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then what?"
He gave her a pained look – knowing and telling.
She shook her head. Her eyes furiously blinked to keep her vision clear.
"I'm afraid so."
"I can't be," she whispered.