by Karina Halle
It was wrong. I knew it was. I didn’t fall for men. I never fell in love. It’s not that I didn’t want it but it was never anything I pursued.
But I was falling for Derrin. I wasn’t quite there yet but I was well on my way. That feeling that borders on obsession, where your thoughts and body and heart crave him like water. You’re in a blissful, warm haze when he’s there and suffering in a dark hollow when he’s not. It was made even worse because I knew he was leaving. He wasn’t Mexican. He didn’t have a job here or a life. He was a visitor on these shores. There’s something so incredibly romantic and dramatic about that, the whole affair with a timeline, the impending goodbyes and heartache.
Thankfully I didn’t dwell on it too much. I wanted to enjoy the present. The past was brutal and the future was unclear but the present was brilliant. The present was in the shape of a strong, sexy man.
“I still think you should move back,” Luz told me, bringing my focus off the ocean. “You’re well on your way to recovery now. I say, move back to your place and get a cat for company.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Listen, you’re the cat lady in our friendship here, not me.’
She sighed loudly. “Fine. But I’m still going to call you every day and see if I can change your mind.”
“And I’m going to keep having hot wild sex with my soldier,” I told her. “Looks like I got the better deal out of this.”
She grumbled something and hung up.
“Did you just call me your soldier?”
I jumped in my seat, the sunscreen knocked to the floor and looked to the door where Derrin was standing there with a cocky grin on his face.
“Jesus,” I told him, hand to my chest. “How long have you been standing there?”
“The whole time.”
“How did I not hear you?”
“I can be quiet when it suits me.” He stepped onto the balcony and bent down to kiss me, soft and savory. He sat down on the other chair. I knew he wouldn’t be there for long. I guess I could blame my injuries, but I’ve always been the kind of person who can just sit for hours and hours and not move a muscle. Maybe it’s to make up for the fact that when I’m flying I’m on my feet all day.
Derrin, on the other hand, had a real problem sitting still. He was always moving. Sometimes I told him to chill out and forced him down with a beer but twenty minutes seemed to be his absolute max before he was up and doing stuff. The man just had too much energy though I was happy he was absolutely tireless in bed. The other day we’d fucked six times, included a blow-job in the bathroom of the restaurant we were at. I couldn’t get enough of him and he never seemed to tire. We made quite the team.
“So, Luz still hates me, huh?” he asked.
I gave him a sympathetic look. “She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t know you.”
“Well I tried to get to know her last night.”
“It doesn’t really help that you don’t talk much.”
“I do with you.”
“Only because I talk your ear off and you’re forced to keep up.”
He clasped his hands together, leaning forward on his elbow, his hands trailing over the gleaming skin of my legs. “So what do you want to do?”
“About Luz?”
“Today. What do you want to do today?”
There were a bunch of things I wanted to do. Most of them involved his dick. I think he knew this.
“Aside from the usual?”
He nodded and tried to wipe the grin from his face. “Yeah. Want to go check out the market in the old town?”
“The one that goes over the bridge? You planning on buying overpriced crap?”
He shrugged. “I’m a tourist aren’t I?”
Don’t remind me, I thought.
An hour later we were getting out of a cab onto the congested cobblestone streets of the old town. We would have taken the rental car – he had gotten a super sexy Mustang – but parking in that area of the city was a total bitch.
Today was no exception. It seemed every tourist, expat, gay lovers on vacation, and locals were out and about. It gave me a sense of purpose, vitality. I had slipped on a light batik-print sundress for the outing and even though I now had a walking cast on my leg, at least the doctor was able to put a black one on so it looked a bit sleeker. Okay, it probably didn’t, but it made me feel better. Plus it made it much easier to get around. I didn’t have to use crutches or lean on Derrin as I had been doing.
Despite that though, he still grabbed my hand. The intimacy of it all surprised me. It sounded absurd after ten days of fucking and sleeping tangled together and cuddling and kissing and all that wonderful stuff. But this simplest gesture was so pure and so proud. As he led me through the crowd to the market stalls, I felt like he was showing me off to the world.
How pathetic was I that this was the first time I’d felt that? That I felt someone was proud to be with me?
I blinked back the hot, sentimental tears that wanted to fall down my face. I didn’t want him to know how he was affecting me. He was starting fires in my soul from kindling I thought would never burn.
We walked along for a bit and I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this happy – if I had ever felt this happy. It was like everything before this moment was a blank slate. Even all the bad, the horrible, the sorrowful things, I felt like they couldn’t hurt me anymore. There was just me and Derrin, walking on a hot day through the old town of Puerto Vallarta, taking in the smells of fried tortillas and salty ocean breezes. Mariachi music drifting in from restaurants where tourists were smiling awkwardly, trying to get them to go away.
Eventually we found ourselves in one of them, ordering half-priced margaritas. In my purse I had some pickled chili peppers I picked up at the market. We dipped warm from the oven chips into fresh green salsa and ate them with juice running down our chins.
With a bit of a day buzz going on, we decided to try and walk back to the hotel. We’d go through the town on the Malecon and then walk north along the beach. If we got tired, we’d walk two steps to the nearest hotel and get a drink. It had all the markings of a perfect day. It was the perfect day.
We were walking through the town square, past the iconic church tower, when he squeezed my hand and said, “You know what, Alana?”
“What?” I loved the sound of my name with his raspy accented voice.
“Back in Minnesota, we have a saying that’s pretty applicable right now.”
I frowned, puzzled. “Minnesota? Isn’t that in the states?”
He blinked then said, “Yes. I played hockey there for a bit. Big hockey state. Lot of Canadians go down there to play.”
Made sense. “What is it?”
“I’m sweet on you.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “I think that’s what Americans in the movies say. Not ex-solider, hockey-playing Canadians.”
He shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Well I guess I’m sweet on you too,” I told him. “You know in Mexico, we have our own saying.”
“Go on then,” he said with a grin and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me toward him. I stepped forward, careful not to put my cast on his toes, and pressed against his chest.
A deafening crack ran through the air.
I felt wind at my back and something solid hit my cast.
Someone somewhere was screaming. Maybe it was me.
“Run,” Derrin said through gritted teeth, staring up and over my shoulder, his grip on me like a vice.
I turned and followed his line of sight. There was a quick movement at the top of the bell tower. I looked down at the space behind me. The ground was split open from a bullet. Pieces of concrete had hit the back of my cast.
I was standing there a second ago.
That bullet was meant for me.
I couldn’t even process it. Derrin was pulling me along the square, racing for the cover of trees, while people screamed and scattered in all directions. I tried to run as f
ast as I could with my cast but it wasn’t cutting it.
Derrin knew that but did what he could to keep me going. Pigeons took flight as we made our way past the gazebo, where a band had paused and was looking around in horror, and we scampered toward the road.
Another shot rang out through the air, hitting one of the gazebo poles and ricocheting off. I would have screamed again if I had any breath left in me.
“We’re not going to make it on foot!” he yelled at me. He yanked me behind a tree, leaving me there to tremble like a dog, while he leaped out onto the road. A small motorbike was puttering past and he quickly knocked the man off of it. The man fell, crying out as he hit the road, narrowly being hit by an oncoming car and Derrin hopped on the bike, wheeled it around and jumped onto the curb beside me.
This all took place in the space of five seconds.
“Get on!” he yelled at me, his eyes blazing. But they weren’t afraid. They were determined.
I did as he said, leaning on him and awkwardly trying to get my leg over the back of the bike. The man who owned the bike was getting to his feet, yelling his head off, while another bullet hit the sidewalk. I whipped my head to the square to see two men running for us, guns drawn.
This can’t be real. This can’t be real.
But it was. Derrin gunned the bike forward and I quickly wrapped my arms around his waist, holding on for dear life.
Who was that? Who was that? Who was that?
I kept wanting to ask, to yell, to scream but I couldn’t. I could only hold on and try and catch my breath. My heart was playing drums in my chest and the city I knew and loved was zipping past me in a blur. In seconds it had turned from a warm safe place to one that wanted me dead.
Why?
We zipped along the street, Derrin handling the bike like it was second nature, dodging pedestrians, over taking cars, hopping on and off the sidewalk when we had to. All I could do was grip him and try not to fall off. Fear was in every part of me, begging me to pay attention to it, but I couldn’t. Once I did, that would be the end of me.
I put fear in a box and managed to look over my shoulder. You would think that after all of Derrin’s fancy maneuvering that we would have lost whoever it was. But there, in the distance, I could see two motorbikes. They looked bigger. Faster. They were gaining ground.
“Shit!” I screamed, finding my voice. It practically tore itself out of my throat.
Derrin quickly looked over his shoulder and only raised an eyebrow at the discovery. The bike went a little bit faster, but only a little.
We swerved to the right heading down a narrow lane, nearly taking out the patio seating area for a restaurant, while people shouted and yelled at us. The sound of the bike’s engine was deafening as it bounced off of the close walls, then multiplied.
I dared to look behind me again. Through the haze of hair blowing across my face, the two bikes entered the end of the lane, gunning toward us.
“Faster!” I yelled at Derrin. “They’re coming.”
“I’m trying!” he growled. “Hold on, put your head down!”
He rounded the corner and then jumped the bike up onto the sidewalk where we proceeded to head right through a restaurant. We crashed through a table that went flying to the side, then zigged and zagged around people, waiters, tables. Broken glass and dishes ricocheted through the air. I kept my head lowered, pressed against his shoulder blades, my eyes shut tight. I didn’t want to see any of this.
Derrin swiftly maneuvered it back and forth and then we were in what sounded like a kitchen and then we were airborn, weightless, and I had no idea where we were going to land. I opened my eyes just after we hit the ground with a jolt, biting down on my tongue by accident. My mouth filled with copper pennies.
We had soared over the kitchen’s backsteps and now were twisting right onto a different road, Calle Santa Barbara, and heading up the hill that lead to most of the tourist apartments on the south end of town. We had a bit more distance behind us now, but the bike wasn’t built for two, especially not someone as heavy as Derrin and it wasn’t made for hills either.
It sputtered, the air filing with the coarse smell of an overworked engine.
“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” I cried into Derrin’s neck.
He didn’t say anything. We kept going up the curving road, wheels bouncing over rough cobblestones, then a shot rang out. Then another. They hit the stones beneath us. Derrin jerked the bike to the left and another bullet hit a parked car. They were gaining.
“Keep your head down,” he said.
I did as he asked and felt him reach into his shirt. He pulled out a small gun then twisted at the waist. I twisted with him, out of the way. He quickly pulled the trigger, firing two shots, and hit one of the guys. He went flying off the bike and the bike fell to the side, just in time for the other assailant to crash into it.
One bullet, two down.
Despite being scared to fucking death, my adrenaline feasting on my veins, I was in awe.
I swallowed hard, trying to think of something to say to him.
“Buen disparo.” Nice shot.
His eyes smiled at me before looking to road in front of us. “I like it when you speak Spanish, babe.” Then his eyes looked back again and this time they were cold.
I turned my head to look. A black SUV was thundering up the road toward us. They weren’t tourists out for a Sunday drive.
“Fuck,” he swore. “Are you ready to get a little wet?”
I stared at him blankly. “What?”
He whipped the bike to the right and we went thumping down flights of cement stairs, nearly knocking over an elderly couple walking up them.
“Lo Siento!” I yelled at them before I bit my tongue again. At the top of the stairs, the SUV paused then drove off. I knew the road curved down and met with the one we were about to land on. Sure enough, as soon as we had hit the road, the SUV appeared at the end of, turning toward us. Derrin yanked the bike into a condominium driveway then down a brick path that traced the edge of the building, trees and bushes reaching out for us, snagging our clothes and our hair as we whipped through them.
Suddenly it seemed like it was the end of the line. There was a pool and beyond the pool there was blue sky.
“Hold on!” he yelled back at me.
I couldn’t hold any tighter. I let out a cry as the bike lifted off the ground, bounced on a lawn chair and then bounced off the edge of the patio.
We were flying. I kept my head down but my eyes open.
A sandy beach passed underneath our feet.
Then next thing I knew we had hit something hard, cold and my arms were ripped off of Derrin’s waist. Salt water burned my eyes, filled my lungs and nose and I tried to breathe, to swim, but I was sinking, drowning. The cast was weighing me down.
Suddenly a strong arm was wrapped under me and my head broke the surface.
“Breathe, it’s okay,” Derrin told me, gasping for breath just as I was. “Try and swim, I’ve got you.”
I tried to nod but couldn’t. I focused on my breathing and moved my arms and legs as much as I could but he was doing most of the work. When my eyes eventually stopped burning I was able to see where we were.
We were in the ocean, a few meters off the shore. The handles of the motorcycle were just beginning to disappear into the waves, sinking. Beyond that, sunbathers on the beach gawked while people ran to the edge of the condo’s pool area, to see where we had fallen. On either side of us there were outcrops of stone and rock where the waves gently crashed. We’d been lucky. We could have landed on those instead and neither of us would be alive.
“Right here,” Derrin said as he hauled me up to something. I floated around and saw that we had reached a jet-ski that was bobbing in the shallows, clipped to a buoy. I could barely process it.
He swam around me and tried to hoist me onto the edge of the jetski. I don’t know how he was able to do it while swimming and unable to touch the bottom but he
was. I grasped for the jetski, trying to pull myself up as far as I could without hurting my wrist. The shouts from the shore were softening and there were some splashes, a few people coming into the water, maybe to help us.
I don’t know if the fall knocked something loose in my head or I took in too much saltwater, but I had a hard time focusing. All I knew was that Derrin was getting on the jetski. He pulled me up so I was in his lap and stabbed something metallic, like a small knife, into the ignition switch then hit the button. The jetski roared to life and he quickly unclipped it from the anchor before we peeled away from the shore.
I was staring blankly up at the patio where the crowd had gathered when I saw what looked like one of the men who had been chasing us, the guy on the motorbike who had crashed into the one who got shot. He was wearing dark aviator shades but the length of his mustache was memorable. But when I blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus as we moved further away, the man was gone.
“I think I saw one of the guys,” I managed to say before having a coughing fit.
“I know,” he said. “Keep holding on.”
“Where are we going? How did you start this without a key?”
How did you shoot someone while driving a motorcycle?
Holy fucking shit. He just killed someone back there. It was in self-defense and I’m glad he did it but oh my god.
Oh my god.
What was happening?
My breath was coming shorter and it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, hey,” he said, taking his hand off the bar and tilting my head gently so he could look at me. “We’re okay. You’re okay. We’re going to drive this back to the hotel. It’s faster than they are and we have no reason to think they know where we are staying, okay?”
“How do you know that?”
“They would have killed us earlier.”
“They would have killed me. They’re after me.”
He nodded. “And now they’re after me because I shot one of their men. It doesn’t matter. We’ll go back to the hotel, get in the car and we’re out of here.”
“We can’t just leave the city!”
“Alana,” he warned just as we passed over a large wave, landing hard on the other side. My whole body was starting to ache. I was so battered as it was. “If you want to live you’ll do as I say. And you’ll answer my questions honestly, okay?”
