Chapter Forty

“Tell me about you and Negan,” Rae said to him after a long moment of silence. “Tell me about your childhood.”

Keegan was silent. She thought he wouldn’t answer her question. Reminding him of Negan was perhaps not the most sensible move. But ever since he talked about him earlier, she couldn’t shake the curiosity off.

He surprised her by asking, “What do you wanna know?”

“The best parts,” she stated. “The parts when the two of you were brothers and not rivals. The parts of your story that you think about fondly, without hate and without thinking about the present.”

“That isn’t easy,” he confessed. “Everything has been tainted by his betrayal. But I’ll try to think of something. Let me see…”

Rae waited patiently for him to start telling the story. He was drawing circles on her open palm with his thumb and she loved their proximity. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. The night was hot but his warmth didn’t suffocate her. She would choose to be beside him even in a volcano. A smi