* * *
In the few hours of darkness remaining, sleep eluded him.
He was too cold.
In too much pain.
Too terrorized by everything he’d experienced to venture back into dreams.
He lay on the rock, overwhelmed with one desire. One need.
Theresa.
Back home, he’d often wake in the middle of the night to feel her arm thrown over him, her body contoured to his. Even on the hardest nights. Nights he’d come home late. Nights they fought. Nights he’d betrayed her. She brought so much more to the table than he ever had. She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations. While he hoarded his chips and held a part of himself back, she went all in. Every time.
There were moments when you saw the people you loved for who they really were, separate from the baggage of projection and shared histories. When you saw them with fresh eyes, as a stranger might, and caught the feeling of the first time you loved them. Before the tears and the armor chinks. When there was still the possibility of perfection.
He had never had a clearer picture of his wife, had never loved her more—not even in the beginning—than in this moment, in this cold, dark place, as he imagined her holding him.
* * *
He watched the stars go dark as the sun breathed fire into the sky, and when it finally cleared the ridge on the far side of the river, he bathed in the rays of gorgeous warmth streaming into his alcove and toasting the frozen stone.
In the new light, he could finally see the damage he’d sustained fleeing Wayward Pines.
Bruises, bull’s-eyed with blackish-yellow hematomas, covered his arms and legs.
Puncture wounds from Nurse Pam’s needle stabs specked his left shoulder and right side.
He unwound the duct tape from his left leg, uncovering the place along the back of his thigh where Beverly had dug out the microchip. The pressure of the wrap had effectively stopped the bleeding, but the skin around the incision was inflamed. It would need antibiotics and a good stitch job to stave off infection.
He ran his hands along his face, thinking how it didn’t feel like anything that belonged to him. The skin was swollen, split in places, and his nose, broken twice in the last twenty-four hours, felt excruciatingly tender. His cheeks were rippled with shallow cuts from branches whipping his face as he’d sprinted through the forest, and a lump had risen on the back of his head, courtesy of one of those rock-wielding children.
Nothing, however, rivaled the blinding ache of his leg muscles, which he’d pushed far beyond their breaking point.
He wondered if he even had the strength to walk.