He lost control and shook her hard. “What are you talking about?
That’s nonsense! When they caught us together outside the compound—what was it, six months ago—your father forbid you from ever seeing me again. He told us both that it wasn’t something that he would allow, his daughter with a street kid, the member of a tribe. He said that! Others in the compound were even worse.
Some wanted you cast out on the spot. They worried you might have picked up diseases that could be transmitted to them. Some would have thrown you from the walls. Do you think that if we tell them we want to get married, it will change any of that?”
He put his hand on her mouth as she tried to speak. “Wait, don’t say anything. Let me finish. Let me get it all out. I didn’t argue about it at the time. I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I didn’t want to lose you. So we’ve been meeting like this ever since, you sneaking out at night, me sneaking down here through the ruins. But we both know how it’s going to end. Sooner or later we’re going to get caught—unless we find another way to live our lives.”
He exhaled sharply, his energy exhausted. “We’re right on the edge of something. I can feel it. Step the wrong way, and we are lost. Step the right way, and we will never lose each other. But you have to leave the compound. You have to leave and come with me to wherever it is that we have to go to be safe and together. Your parents won’t understand. Nothing you can say will make them understand. We could offer to take them with us, but you know as well as j do that they wouldn’t come. What will happen is that they will make sure you don’t leave, either.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know it as surely as I know how I feel about you.”
Tessa stared silently at him, then wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I have to think about this. I have to give it some time.”
Time is something you don’t have, he wanted to say, but he managed to keep himself from doing so. “I know,” he said instead. “I know.”
They sat together on the bench, holding each other and not speaking, looking off into the dark. Hawk kept wondering if there was something else he should say, something that would better persuade her. But he couldn’t think of what it would be. So he settled for keeping her close for the time they had, soaking in her warmth and her softness, giving himself some small measure of comfort before she was gone again.
“A foraging party went out early last week,” she said suddenly, not looking at him, her face buried in his shoulder. She didn’t continue right away, but then said very quickly, “There were eleven of them, all experienced, all heavily armed. They went south toward the warehouses twenty or thirty miles outside the city, looking for fresh medical supplies and packaged goods to bring back to the compound. It was a five-day expedition.” She paused, as if waiting on him, and then said, “It’s been a week, and they haven’t come back.
One of them is my father.”
He could hear the fear in her voice now, could sense the deep abiding terror she was feeling. His warnings about Candle’s vision and the strange things happening in the city had done that. He wished he had saved it for another time. But it was too late to take it back.
There are eleven of them carrying weapons,” he said, trying to reassure her. “They know what they are doing. They can protect themselves.”
He could feel her head shake in disagreement. “The Croaks and that Lizard you told me about would have known what they were doing, too. They should have been able to protect themselves, too, but look what happened.”
“It isn’t the same. Eleven armed men can stand up to anything. Your father will be all right.”
He wished he believed it. He wished he could think of something more reassuring. He knew how she felt about her father and mother and what it would do to her to lose either of them.
You’re so stupid, he told himself angrily.
“I have to get back,” she said suddenly, breaking away. She rose and went over to the door, then looked back at him. “Will you come again soon?”
He rose. “If you promise to be careful, I will. In two nights, okay?”
She came back to him quickly and pressed herself against him.
“You’re the one on the streets.”
“Sometimes the streets are safer.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more.” She kissed him hard, then broke away, her black eyes shining, her face radiant with her feelings. “I want you. I want everything from you. I want to be with you forever.”
She kissed him again, and then turned and bolted back through the tunnel door and was gone. He stood listening to the locks fasten and then to the silence. He was flushed with excitement and driven by fear. He could barely contain his feelings. Two words played themselves over and over in his mind.
Don’t go.
Chapter FOURTEEN