I hadn't realized that Drake knew about my years working on the hospital ward until he handed me an overstuffed duffel bag of medical supplies from somewhere in the back of the bus and charged me with treating Cya's wounds. Jeb was ordered to take over guard duty on top of the bus while Kennedy and Drake finished their work on the ailing engine. Shayla burned the bodies of the new zombie and Conner. I couldn't help noticing that she searched her fallen lover's body and pocketed all the weapons and valuables before she dropped the match on his shirt.
Cya slapped at my hand the second time I attempted to apply a bandage to her ribs. I grabbed her wrist roughly in one of mine. “Quit,” I told her. Cya had dissolved into a sniveling, snotty mess as I made her remove her thin, shredded t-shirt so I could rub burning alcohol on the bloody scrapes she'd gotten when Shayla had yanked her off the roof of the bus.
“You're hurting me,” she whimpered. Her reddened eyes were filled with misery. I strongly suspected her ankle was severely sprained or even broken due to the heavy swelling and deep purple and black bruise that had formed around the joint, but she kept insisting it was fine and wouldn't let me anywhere near it.
“If I don't get the dirt out of your cuts you could get an infection,” I told her.
“I don't care.” She crossed her arms over her bare chest.
“I care,” Drake's voice came from behind me. I hadn't even noticed him come back into the bus. He was standing in the aisle putting a box of tools back into the storage box under the second seat from the front. “We can't risk you getting an infection. We don't have any medicine.”
“You all want me dead anyway.” Cya hiccuped and more tears ran down her cheeks. “Don't you?”
“Of course not.” Drake smiled gently as he stepped up beside me and sat down on the seat next to us. “What happened to Conner was an honest mistake. We don't blame you.” He took Cya's hand in his own. “We've all made mistakes. Horrible mistakes. Being a Scavenger is a scary job and we have to take a lot of risks in order to get the supplies the folks back at the Cube need to survive. You just have to remember that everyone is counting on us. You can't let yourself be held back by a single mistake.”
Cya was staring at him in hopeful disbelief. “You don't hate me?” There was so much hope in her voice I could scarcely look her in the face. He did hate her. All of them hated her. I was sure of it after I'd watched them have that strange conversation outside less than two hours ago.
“No, I don't hate you.” Drake smiled warmly at Cya. The sunlight reflected off of his golden hair and cast his face in a warm glow. He looked so much like the hero lover Julie and I had always made him out to be in our fantasies that I wondered if I had misunderstood the undertone of the conversation between Drake and Shayla. “Let me take care of you.”
“You won't hurt me?”
“Of course not.”
“Am I going to be okay?” Cya asked.
I frowned and stared down at the alcohol soaked rag in my hand. I remembered the way Drake had said we needed Cya. It hadn't sounded friendly to me but today had been a bad day in an otherwise shitty year. Maybe I was reading things into Drake's words that weren't really there.
He certainly looked kind enough right now as he took the alcohol soaked rag out of my hand and gently began to wipe dirt out of the abrasions on Cya's skin. She closed her eyes and let him run his hands all over her petite, well-proportioned frame, including the damaged ankle that she had refused to let me touch.
Drake frowned when he saw how severe the swelling was in the joint but he didn't say anything negative as he gently began to massage Cya's injured leg. “You'll be just fine,” he told her. She looked up at him with pure adoration.
“You promise?” she asked.
“I promise.” Drake took Cya's dainty little hand into his own and squeezed her fingers affectionately. “Go ahead and get dressed, it’s almost time for dinner.”
He turned to face me. “Thanks for taking care of her.
I nearly opened my mouth to tell him that I hadn't been of any real use but the intimacy in his eyes stopped me.
“You're going to be a real asset to the Scavengers,” Drake said as he leaned across the seat and planted a quick and completely unexpected kiss on my cheek.