The world tilted to one side, lurching out from underneath her. "You left him there?" It was all she could think to say.
Everything felt numb. She talked, but her brain was far away in someplace green.
Dad shook his head. "We brought him back here, but we couldn't do anything to help him." He kept rubbing his hands together, his gaze darting, as if he was nervous about something. But Bo couldn't concentrate on her father's unusual behavior when the sky was crumbling on her.
Bo closed her eyes, resting her hands over them. Her imagination took over, seeing Adam suffering and left to die. Don't leave me behind, he'd said. And she'd done just that in the dreadful moment that he needed her most. He'd died without her, without anyone. An alien amongst humans, once again. Little difference than if he'd still been the Beast of Lyx, captured by the enemy.
Anger flared in the pit of her stomach at her dad, at the camp. How could they be so cruel? Yet, somewhere in the back of her mind she couldn't help but wonder if she would have let him die if she'd only just met him. She knew she would've. She might have been even crueler, leaving him for the wild wolves in the forest to finish off.
Tears ran freely down her face.
Dad rested a hand on her shoulder, letting her cry.
"The small supply tent. When you're ready." His hand lifted, and she was left alone to mourn.
---
The supply tent was small and dark, hidden in the back of the camp. Even so, Bo felt many pairs of eyes boring into her back as she shuffled toward it. Dad supported her on one side, and she leaned heavily on a crutch on the other. Her legs, still mostly useless and horrendously painful, dragged as she maneuvered her way toward the fabric entrance flap.
Dad stopped just a few feet short, guiding her hand to the stack of boxes that made a narrow sort of hallway right in front of the tent's entrance. Bo turned to look at him as she held her weight, her arms shaking.
"His body is in there," her dad said, strangely loud, as if he was hoping someone would overhear. Bo cocked an eyebrow. "Go on, Bo."
"What?" she asked.
"It's for you to go in alone," he said, taking a few steps back. His eyes flicked to Felicia, who looked as if she was going to follow Bo in. He shook his head at Felicia, and she frowned.
"Why?" Felicia asked.
"Just do as I say, Felicia, and stay out here," he said.
"I need you to help me walk-" Bo started to say, reaching for her dad's shoulder. But he stepped back again.
"No, Bo. You're to go in alone." He ran his hands down the sides of his legs, and Bo got the distinct feeling that he was hiding something. But she didn't argue any further. If he hated Adam so much that he would make her walk on her damaged legs into the tent, well... she couldn't find anything to say to that.
Taking a deep breath, Bo swallowed her pain and leaned into her crutch as she limped into the tent. She glanced back once to see her dad holding Felicia away from the tent, and guiding her away to where a small group from the camp was gathering to spectate from afar.
The gloom of the setting sun cast the interior of the tent in deep shadows, and Bo had to wait a moment before she could pick out the table in the center of the boxes and crates of supplies. Something lay across it, draped in tarp. As her eyes stayed locked on the form, she reached for a lamp and lit it.
The center of the tent came into view with the flickering orange flames, and Bo shuffled forward to look down on the dull skin of what could very well have been a human corpse. His skin was white, no trace of the blue she remembered. His eyes lay closed, hiding their earthy brown color, and the tarp draped over half his body hid his height. He could have been anyone at all.
Bo twisted her mouth as she stood over him, her hands resting on the edge of the table but not touching his bare arm.
The pain in her legs grew too much, and she pulled a stool over to sit down. Her breath came heavy from working through the pain, but also from a different sort that came from her heart. Her tears were all dried, but her eyes still pricked as she stared at his still face.
The fact that he was in a tent meant that her Dad had interceded. Bo knew her camp well enough to know that they would have chosen to toss him in the desert as soon as they were certain he was dead and couldn't come back to harm them. She knew her dad would have been the only one to argue for a proper burial.
After a minute, Bo got up the courage to trace her fingers across the features on Adam's face. They were clammy from the hot air, but she didn't pull away. She ran the pads of her fingers across his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, along his jawline, and then finally onto his lips. Leaning forward, she replaced her fingers with her lips.
And that was when she felt it. The slight charge, as if static electricity had nipped her lips. She yanked back to stare into his brown eyes.
"Adam?" she choked out, hands gripping his arm that shifted slightly under her fingers.
His lips slowly curled at the corners, until he was smiling at her. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream at him, but all that made it past the initial explosion of emotions was the overwhelming need to hold him close. She gripped either side of his head between her hands and lifted him up to kiss him, both their mouths smiling, both their hearts miraculously racing.
"Careful." His voice was muffled through the kiss, and Bo tried to ignore him. Only, he began to laugh, which set her off, and she finally pulled back to look at his face.
"You're a vicious kisser," he said, though his words were cut short by a cough.
The elation of seeing him alive suddenly evaporated and worry took its place once again.
"Are you all right?" she asked, leaning forward and pulling back the edge of the tarp.
The wounds on his chest were bandaged, but blood stained the fabric where each bullet hole had ripped his skin. Bo hissed and glanced at his still-too-pale face.
"Who patched you up?"
Adam shrugged, but then stopped short with a wince. "I don't know. I think perhaps your father, but I was mostly out by that point."
Bo's mouth dropped open. "My father saved you? But he—" She remembered the way he'd said Adam was dead. If he'd patched Adam up, he surely had to know he wasn't dead. Her father was just as skilled at field wounds as she was, and something as glaring as being alive wouldn't have escaped his notice. Which meant...
He'd known all along that Adam lay alive in this storage tent, far away from those who might still wish to do him harm. Hidden in the falsehood of death, Adam was safe for the moment. Safe to wait for Bo, safe to share another moment together before... before...
Adam grimaced as he pushed himself to his elbows and ran a hand down her arm. She jerked out of her thoughts and smiled at him.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
Bo shook her head, her eyes falling to where her boots rested in the orange dust of her world. "I don't want this to end," she said. "I want to stay here. You're alive and we're happy and..."
"And there's still danger."
She glanced up to see his mouth pressed tight.
"Yes," she said. "The people here... they aren't ready yet."
Adam sighed. "I know."
Bo's head dipped until her forehead rested on his arm, and she spoke against his skin. "What do we do?" she whispered.
"Live."
"But apart? We just found each other. I can't do that."
"Of course you can." He shifted, catching her chin in his hand and forcing her to look up. "We may part, but there is nothing they can do to separate us completely."
She didn't want to do it. She didn't care how badly the rest of the camp hated him, she wanted him to stay. "No, you don't have to leave. We can force everyone to understand, to accept you."
Adam raised an eyebrow. "You and I both know that force doesn't help anything, Bo."
Yes, she knew it. She knew exactly what she had to do if she wanted to share her life with Adam, but it would take hard work—impossible work. There was no instant fix. She would be working for her happy ending for years.
"All right." She bit back the tears that threatened. "Apart for now, but not forever."
"Of course not." He kissed her then, and they let the pain of parting subside for just a few moments.
---
When she finally emerged from the tent, the sun had completely set and the camp was waiting for her in uniform lines lit by flood lights. Dad waited on one side of the tent flap, and offered her a chair to sit on. He gave her a look, his eyebrows raised, as if to ask if she understood what he had done. She smiled slightly and nodded, the only way she would ever be able to say thank you to him.
Bo took the offered chair, trying her best to disguise the aching and yawning exhaustion that plagued her body. Even though she tried to stop it, she remembered the image of Adam, dressed in clothes too small for him, hunched over from pain but already gaining strength, ducking under the back of the tent. They'd kissed one last time, and with supplies in a sack over his shoulder, he'd slipped into the darkness.
She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking the tears, and then blinked them back open to see all the people she'd known since childhood staring at her in silent expectation. She knew all their faces, knew their families and their histories. They were her people, the ones she'd die to protect. That was why she'd forgive them for what they'd done. It didn't mean she'd return to the same relationships she'd left, but she'd try not to hold it against them that they had no idea that an alien didn't always have to be their enemy. She would teach them.
Adam was out there somewhere, finally free, finally living a life that was not confined to some mansion of robots and empty rose gardens. She didn't know for certain that she would ever see him again, but she knew that she could prepare a home for him. She wouldn't let her camp become what Aston and the militia wanted. She was their leader, and it fell to her to show them the right path.
She opened her mouth, looking out over the sea of faces.
"We cannot become like the war that bore us, unthinking and unfeeling. We can look beyond someone's face, beyond where they came from or what they've done, and we can find the human in them. The militia is out of the question, and anyone who disagrees can leave now. This is not going to be a camp that kills anything and everything just to survive. This camp is going to love and show compassion. If that means we won't last as long as a bloodthirsty militia camp, then so be it. But I won't see the people I love become wild animals in a quest to kill anything that does not concede to their pack. We are human, and we will act that way."
The camp shuffled, uncomfortable. They knew she talked about the alien they thought lay dead in the tent behind her. Bo knew better than to think they would come to her side immediately, and she wasn't naïve enough to think that she would bring them to accept Adam any time soon. But there always had to be start.
In a world broken and wounded, Bo would champion compassion. In a world of ruthlessness she'd been willing to join, she now stood apart. Let them hate her, let them grumble and follow Aston wherever he went. She knew that her way was their best shot. If they were willing, she was too.
Bo struggled to her feet and stood before her camp as their leader. Stronger than ever.