In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

my gaze following the tops of the olive drab trucks rolling along the motorway in the distance.

At the sound of the bathroom door opening wide, I busied myself with a brush through my hair, despite having already smoothed it to perfection.

Turning when she hadn’t arrived in the room, I found her leaning on the door frame, a white towel hanging from her armpits to halfway down her thighs. Hair wrapped in another towel, her eyes narrowed as she stared back with a sweet smile, teeth digging into her bottom lip. The smile rose as I took a step. Toni pulled in a breath and walked past me, only turning as she arrived beside the bed.

“You should get something else to eat,” she said, shaking the towel loose from her head and rubbing it against her hair with her hand. “You’re losing weight.”

I tried to push away the comment. I tried not to analyse her intent. Had she changed her mind? Was I imperfect for her in another way?

No. I told myself those days were gone, reminding myself she had no control over me as I watched whilst she continued to dry her hair with her gaze on me, but only for a moment. She turned away, pulling the larger towel tight around her upper body.

Lingering again, I shook away my thoughts and meandered down the stairs, staring out of the window as I arrived at the ground floor. It wasn’t until I noticed the bucket and sponge by the front door I turned back through the window and saw the van white again. By the bucket stood a pair of red heels, my size. I could tell without having to look inside.

She was a four, I was a five. I was bigger in all but one way. They must have been mine. I was sure until a thought crept in; they could have belonged to someone else.

Without time for my mind to ask questions I didn’t want to answer, my stomach urged me back to the fridge and, flicking on the TV as I passed, I made another two sandwiches, setting one aside.

There was no rolling news, no stories breaking through the seasonal films. The scoop was still mine to break. For now.

Just in that moment I remembered the phone, cursing that she’d managed to distract me.

I looked below the TV to the empty cradle, its light no longer blinking. Before I could survey the room for the handset, I heard her feet on the stairs.

“What day is it?” I said.

“New Year’s Eve,” she replied, with no smile in her voice and none on her face as she landed at the bottom in jeans and a t-shirt. “You found the shoes.”

I turned to see her looking down to my feet, shaking her head as I offered out the sandwich on a plate.

“Mine?” I said without thought, my heart pounding in my ears as the words slipped out.

Her smile went wide, her teeth glistening as they bared, her face alight with joy at my question. She nodded, turning away, only coming back as the smile faded to a shadow in the corners of her lips.

I had to wait, not wanting the relief to show in my voice and ate the other sandwich, controlling my movements with each bite.

“I’m a little over dressed,” I said with a smile, hoping and not she’d tell me to take the clothes off.

“You want to film this, right?” she snapped.

I nodded, turning back towards the kitchen. The remains of her smile flattened.

“What now?” I said, looking away, my mind drifting back through the months. We could never bear to be apart for so long, couldn’t have been naked so close without having to spend the next hour scratching each other’s itch.

Warmth filled my cheeks as I tried to push away the thoughts, but her cold, strict tone did the job for me.

“There’s another facility on the edge of Dartmoor. A place called Willsworthy. You know it?”

I shook my head, remembering how it always changed.

“I’ll need some trainers as well,” I said, my voice flattening out.

A phone call, either mine or hers, and it was like something snapped. A fight would start. I’d take the blame, but they were mostly her fault. Maybe she would say the same, but she’d be wrong. I could feel the warmth inside me turning cold, my stare following as she went around the tiny room squaring the place up. We had to get out of here before the inevitable.

“Are we going or what?” I said, heading to the front door.

“You’re ready now, right?” she replied, and I pulled it open, letting the cold breeze wash away the building anger as the door slammed at my back to leave her searching a cupboard.

***

I drove the empty side road in the trainers Toni had found. We’d agreed in a few short words we’d avoid the motorway like the plague, both of us regretting the phrase if the silence was anything to go by.

Passing each closed up shopfront, Toni's frustration grew, claiming she couldn’t get the supplies she wouldn’t disclose and for which I wouldn’t indulge her by probing further.

Only a handful of the shops bothered with a sign telling people who’d dared to brave the chemical leak it was the reason for closure. After travelling half the distance we’d covered escaping on the motorway, Toni’s sharp phrase called for me to stop at a petrol station on our left.

With pumps which hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the seventies, to the side of the forecourt stood a building you could barely call a shed.

For a fleeting moment I ignored her call; it was time for her attitude to stop, but my will relented as her head turned my way with a scowl and I pulled the van