White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

Let's get home to our families and forget any of this ever happened."
    Tony was jammed up in an unhappy marriage. So he said.
    He claimed that it had been that way since the day they exchanged vows. He once admitted to Annie that he only married Amber, seven years his junior, because she got knocked up , as he so eloquently phrased it. He'd have never married her otherwise.
    So he said.
    They'd only gone on three or four dates before his happy accident (now in the form of a seven-year-old named Todd and a six-year-old named Amanda) had changed his life forever.
    So he said.
    He spoke of Amber as if she had a terminal disease, as though she was clutching the sheets on her deathbed. When he mentioned her name, deadness filled his eyes and mouth. Annie couldn't relate to the feeling, not with Christian. Her husband was a genuinely good man, and she was quite undeserving of his ways. She'd made that one mistake only a few nights ago, but it felt like it happened another lifetime ago. And now she felt like things would never be the same with Christian, not without a lot of work on both their parts.
    Behind seeing Paulie and hugging him to death, t hat was what drove her mounting desire to get back home most of all. To look into his eyes, to tell him what she'd done, to declare her horrible nature for him to judge, and to beg that they would make things work again, if they had ever worked in the first place. He might not forgive her, but that was a chance she was willing to take. All the snow and ice in the world couldn't keep her from returning to her baby, and from pulling out her heart and handing it over to Christian. It would be his decision when all was said and done, but she trusted he would be compassionate with her. She didn’t deserve it, but she would take it if she could get it.
    Annie's stomach felt like it was full of cold spaghetti whenever she tho ught of his face, and the way Christian’s features would melt into nothing when he found out what she'd done with Tony. Even though it was a single lapse in judgment, it was enough to break his damn heart. It might be easier, she realized, just to be a viper towards him once she saw him again, to drive him away by any means necessary. Much easier than telling the truth and exposing her weakness. But she couldn’t do that to Paulie; he loved his father too much. She’d never live with herself if she ruined the kid’s life. Truth be told, she also loved Christian too damn much. Eventually, it would break all of their hearts, one by one. 
    Tony brought her out of a woozy daze as he slammed his hand against the side of his contraption. "Let's not just go back to the way things were. I know you're thinking that, but you can't. I love you, Annie. Can't you see that?"
    The way he smiled at her when he said that-- the L word, dripping with sticky rot-- made her skin prickle. The guy was slime, and that was something she'd known from the moment they met each other in the lunchroom room three years previous. He was classically handsome and an up-and-coming ladder climber on their staff, but he didn't have half the heart that Christian did. If Christian was a lion, then Tony was a slug.
    "You don't love anything."
    "Of course I do," he replied, looking a little hurt. His hurt, like his proclamation of true love, was ninety percent feigned. There was a nugget of truth in every lie he told himself and others, just enough to be convincing. He loved himself, but little else. The way he stared at himself in the mirror said all that needed saying about Tony.
    "Just get me home to my son."
    *   *  *
     
    Paulie and Christian found normalcy where they could. The electric was flickering on and off now, so they were happy with popping a DVD into the player when they had an hour or two of electricity. It was staying dark for longer and longer. Christian was sure that it would give out for good—or at least until the storm ceased—any day now. He was getting pretty sick of watching the