He releases me with obvious reluctance. “Oh. Jasper didn’t give you the full tour, huh? He’s usually perfect.” His cheeks color, and he clears his throat, avoiding my eyes. “I mean, perfect at that kind of . . . You know what, never mind. Follow me.”
Grabbing my hand, he tugs me out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, walking slowly to allow for my injured foot. A huge stone fireplace is unlit, but sunshine dances outside, warming the room. He tugs open the sliding doors, letting me see the code to lock and unlock the house. A cozy swing chair stuffed with soft cushions is perched on the wrap-around deck.
The large front yard brackets the house, extending to the line of the woods. There’s a barn far to our left and a small shed about thirty yards back from that. The two towering barn doors are closed tight.
I take a step toward it, but Lucky drops his hands on my shoulders, spins me, and nudges me in the other direction.
“Unless you feel like another run-in with Jaykob, we should go this way.” He bites down on the corner of his bottom lip, but his smirk is irrepressible. “The barn is where he works. And sleeps. Where he spends most of his time—since he’s a damn recluse. The shed is for dressing, drying, and stocking our meat, and we keep a locker for our heavy-duty weapons in there. Not that I have a key.” He pouts. “Dom has a ‘thing’ about keeping explosives in the house.”
I don’t particularly care about the weapons, beyond being glad that I’m not sleeping on top of a powder keg, but the memory of Jaykob’s scathing scowl makes me step a little faster.
I fastidiously ignore Lucky’s snicker.
He slows as we pass the apple tree and plucks a ripe orb from between the leaves. He rubs his thumb over its crisp, ruby red flesh, and I’m so caught up in watching the provocative slide that I’m a beat too slow when he tosses it to me and fumble it awkwardly.
“Want a bite, Eden?” he asks, his smile making a reappearance when I finally catch it.
I lift a brow. “Kind of low-hanging fruit, don’t you think?”
Lucky laughs, then leads me to the right side of the house until we reach a hidden tunnel leading into the cliff. The sneaky entrance is tucked between folds of rock and can only be seen from a certain angle. The stone is rough under my palm as I gingerly pick my way inside. It smells cool and wet. We’re only swallowed by the dark for a few moments before it opens out into a grassy cavern.
There are openings in the rock above where sun shines in from several angles, and an underground stream bubbles along one rock wall, trailing in from deep within the cave network. Wire fences enclose the space neatly, blocking off several dark, snaking trails.
What truly catches my attention, though, is the multitude of animals bustling around the enormous space. Chickens, goats, and pigs share the clearing, perhaps two dozen of each trotting comfortably alongside one another. Realizing my mouth is hanging open—quite improperly—I shut it with a click.
“How . . . ?” I ask weakly.
Lucky rubs his hands together, delighted. “It wasn’t easy. It took ages before we could get this many. The cocks were especially bad—they kept going after each other until we started keeping them penned. Fighting over the hens, you know?” He indicates a few small pens toward the back. The dimples are back, and I notice the one on his left cheek is particularly pronounced.
He opens the feed bin beside us and draws out a scoop of mixed vegetables and scraps. “You should have seen Dom and Jayk trying to get the pigs from the farms. They had to take the Jeep, and by the time they got back here with the first load there was shit all over the seats and Dom was just about ready to start the slaughter early—starting with Jayk.” He grins. “Jasper refused to clean it.”
He starts laughing, and my lips twitch at the image. It’s hard to imagine stern, domineering Dom wrestling dung-covered pigs.
Lucky opens the latch on the wire fence and steps into the clearing, indicating with his head for me to follow. I take a cautious step in, and immediately the animals seem to perk up, shuffling our way.
“It took months to get all the basics here. I wanted cows, but Dom said unless I could ride one in here, it wasn’t going to happen. Always been a spoilsport.” He sighs and starts scattering the food around. “They only get sunlight during certain hours, but it doesn’t seem to bother them too much. They keep breeding anyway.”
“So, you eat them?” I ask, watching a baby goat nuzzle its mother.
Lucky studies me. “Are you a vegetarian? You said you caught rabbit and fish, right?”
“No, I’m not, but they’re just so . . . ” Cute. Damn it. I trail off, realizing how stupid I sound. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything so soft and sweet—innocent things don’t last long these days. It’s never been a sentimental world, and it’s only gotten worse since the strikes.
A twinge of guilt twists my guts. Memories of the small, hungry faces in that group haunt me, as they do every few days.
What would they have given for a home like this?
A small pig presses its wet little nose to the back of my bare legs, snuffling, and I reach down to scratch its pink ears, hiding my face.
Lucky grins at me, oblivious to the dark turn of my thoughts. “We don’t usually kill these guys. Mostly, we use the eggs from the chickens and the milk from the goats—you can thank Billie and her sister Baa-bara over there for the cheese. When I go hunting, I usually pull us enough meat that we don’t need to worry. Rabbit and fish are pretty much a given, sometimes turkey or pheasant, but I’m after the deer, mostly. A good-sized buck will feed us for weeks—months if we really ration it. We only crack out the pork and bacon if we’re running low, or for special occasions.”
My forehead knits, and I straighten again as the pig gets distracted by the produce. “But feeding them alone would take so much work. How do you even get all of this food?”
Lucky plucks up a particularly fluffy black hen, nuzzling into her.
“This is Henrietta. She’s needy,” he explains. Then he lifts one shoulder, refocusing on me. “They do okay. We had a couple shi—sorry, crap—years when we couldn’t get anything to grow properly. We have the veggie patch over by Jaykob’s workshop. Berries, cabbage, pumpkin, tomatoes, corn. Lots of corn. We also let it pretty much run wild in here, so they get insects and worms and shi—ah, stuff—too. Thought Jasper was going to shoot one of us and use the corpse to feed to the pigs before he finally got the hang of it.”
God. How can they have so much? I stay quiet, just watching the animals and thinking, until Lucky starts shifting beside me, his smile slipping.
“Eden—”
“It’s just— Don’t you ever feel guilty?” I can’t stop the words; they bubble from some dark, envious vault inside me. I starved and scraped through for years while they had all of this? “People would kill for what you have. Literally kill for it.
People starved, good people, who needed homes and safety and food—and you had all of this! How is that fair? Why couldn’t you share? There’s room. There’s so much room. With these caves . . . How many people could you have saved? You were Army, right? Doesn’t that mean you have to protect and serve?”