Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

Guardsmen who paid his salary. Paddock was a short ferry ride, the place was nice, and he loved to chew his food while staring out at the water.
    Rose knew the truth by the following Sunday, and had lived it with Boricio each Sunday since. Now, several months later, the day Boricio was waiting for had finally arrived.
    He had been planning the morning for a month. Boricio was taking a short vacation, and wasn’t scheduled to be back at Black Island for the next five days. Rose had delivered the final pages of her manuscript the week before and had little on her plate until she started her next novel in November. They would spend five days together, uninterrupted, and after breakfast, they could spend them celebrating their engagement.
    Boricio rolled to Rose’s side of the bed, empty but warm. She was probably making coffee. He was about to yell for her to stop, because Boricio had wanted to wake up nice and slow and sleepy with her, lying in the coziness of freshly laundered sheets for a while. They could caffeinate themselves later.
    Boricio knew things wouldn’t go quite according to plan when he heard what had to be the sound of Rose weeping in the bathroom. He tore off the sheets, leapt from the bed, and then sprinted down the hallway and burst into the bathroom.
    “You okay, baby?”
    Rose nodded, shook her head, then nodded again. Boricio looked down at the thin strip of white plastic in her hand, then at the blue line dividing the middle.
    Oh… Wow.
    He had to hide his surprise, lest it come off wrong, and said, “It’s okay, baby,” as he pulled her body against his.
    She mashed her face against his chest as her soft cry fell into a full sob. Boricio swallowed on repeat to keep his tongue in his mouth. His words had to be perfect. Rose was too fragile, shuddering against him as her swirling emotions were licked by uncertainty’s fire.
    They had barely grazed through the one or two conversations they’d had about having children. Their relationship was still young, even though they both considered their union inevitable. Boricio was certain Rose felt the same as he did — they would spend the rest of their lives together. But she’d also feared having kids and how it would change things, as it had for so many people she knew.
    For the first time in her life, she was truly happy. Everything had lined up — her career, her finances, and her relationship — in perfect harmony. Having a child would disrupt that harmony. The only question was, to what extent?
    As Rose held the piece of plastic in her hands, Boricio imagined all the thoughts racing through her mind that they’d made a horrible mistake — that they’d done something wrong, something to jeopardize their perfect future by accelerating their present.
    Life was hard enough without having someone kick you from the inside, but there was something remarkable about creating something from nothing. Becoming a parent turned humans to gods. Though Boricio had harbored fears, they melted away seeing Rose holding the strip. Maybe he wouldn’t be perfect, but he wouldn’t be the monster his father had been.
    This was a blessing.
    And there was no better time to propose, than the day when you found out you were about to spend the rest of your life being a father.
    Rose was scared. Maybe terrified. Boricio had to be careful, especially since a big part of her fear was likely his fault. He had always been evasive when their conversation drifted toward his childhood, the vicious years before Will. He had never said anything specific, but Rose was sharp, smart enough to see that Boricio’s early life had bled far outside the lines of a healthy childhood, and she had likely hypothesized at the many marred hues which colored Boricio’s personal history.
    His life with Will had been mostly blue skies, but life before that was dark — spilled ink that still blotted his dreams with repellent memories of monsters that no amount of therapy, pills, or hugs could ever hope to erase.
    Boricio owed it to Rose to open the drapes on his past, if for no other reason than to give her the truth of who he was. True love deserved nothing less, just not today. Today was about their future, not his past.
    Boricio continued to stroke her hair as Rose cried herself to a sputtering shudder. He pulled her deeper into his arms, then pushed her slightly away, crouching a third of the way to the floor so their eyes aligned.
    “Baby,” he said. “I’ve never lied to