Wanderlust

by Skye Warren

  Droplets hung on his eyelashes, on the coarse, stubble-covered skin of his face.

  Just enjoy this.

  I leaned forward and kissed him—right on his nose. A little silly maybe, but he didn’t laugh. He looked startled first, then his eyes darkened. He held me still, steadily kicking to keep us afloat. But he made no move to pull away or to initiate another kiss. Just holding steady for my exploration, if I wished to continue, and I did.

  His eyelids, his forehead, the rough cheeks and much softer lips. I stayed there, sending small kisses along his mouth, from one corner to the other and then back again. It was a thank you for bringing me here, for convincing me to do this. More than that, the jump had given me permission to do this thing I’d wanted, to kiss a beautiful man who held me. One who seemed to want me but was unable to express it except in the harshest of ways.

  “What next?” I whispered, expecting him to do something obscene and maybe painful. For the first time, I thought I’d welcome it. It was crazy, but so was this.

  His lips curved knowingly, as if he guessed the direction of my thoughts.

  He raised his eyebrow. “Wanna jump again?”

  And I did. We jumped five more times until we were both exhausted from the swimming and the climb. Still in our wet clothes, we sprawled out under a tree at the base of the waterfall, letting the steady hum of it lull us into a half-sleep.

  “One question,” he murmured. “I see them in your eyes all the time. I’ll answer one question.”

  A million sprang to mind. What made you this way? When will you let me go? But one stood out.

  “How many others?” I asked.

  Beside me, he tensed.

  Minutes passed and lengthened. I might have drifted off and then returned.

  Finally he said, “You were the first. The only one.”

  I sat up. “What about your conviction?”

  “You asked me once if I did it. I didn’t.” He shrugged where he lay, eyes on the sky. “Believe me or not. It’s your choice.”

  I had no reason to believe him, and we both knew it. A court of law had found him guilty. And I knew how he’d been with me, so it stood to reason he could have done this to another girl—countless girls. Sometimes that bothered me more than what he’d done to me. I really had nowhere better to be. I was already broken in countless ways. And after today? I felt a strange and twisted kind of gratitude for what he’d done. But to imagine another girl made helpless turned my stomach.

  And he said it had never happened. I was the first. I was the only.

  I believed him.

  He laughed, so bitterly that goose bumps raised on my chilled skin. “I told myself I was getting what I’d already paid for. They locked me up for it, so I might as well do the crime, right?”

  I was silent.

  He spoke in a raw kind of horror, like a man desperate, a man divided. “But the truth was, I just wanted you. I saw you looking at the sunrise, and I wanted to have that. To have you. So I took you. I knew full well how wrong it was, and I did it anyway. And the most fucked up part about it all is that I still don’t regret it. No remorse. Really fucking crazy, right?”

  Yeah. It was pretty crazy. And terribly sad. My heart ached for him, for me, for this crazy, messed-up world where we were enemies when we could have been friends.

  “Wanna jump again?” I asked softly.

  He turned to me, incredulous.

  “I think I’ve got the hang of the landing now. We can jump together.”

  He answered slowly. “Yeah. I’d like that, sunshine.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Niagara is a Native American word for "Thundering water".

  A woman stood in front of a wide porch. She was obviously pregnant, her belly rounded beneath the loose pink sundress and her hands supporting her back. A young boy rode a tricycle in circles on the gravel driveway. There were no other houses in sight, just a line of trees and then open grassy land.

  The peacefulness of the scene took my breath away. It was like a living portrait, something I’d only imagined but never experienced. My heart began to pound as we pulled up close. What did it mean? What would he do?

  My mind spun all kinds of horrible scenarios. Robbery and hostage situations. I silently vowed not to let him hurt the woman or her child, though I had no idea how I could accomplish that.

  She didn’t seem concerned that an eighteen-wheeler was pulling off the road onto the grassy area in front of her fence. Run, I thought. Get yourself and your kid inside and lock the door. But she stood there, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. Then she waved. Actually waved her hand in greeting though she still didn’t move from her spot.

  Then another idea came to me. Was she possibly…his wife? Or girlfriend? Was that his child? And as messed up as everything had been, it somehow offended me worst of all, the idea that he would bring some random girl home to his family.

  Anger bubbled up inside me, warring with the helplessness. “Who are these people?” I asked.

  He finished shutting off the engine. “Friends.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not your kid?”

  His eyes widened. “I don’t have any kids. I wouldn’t be driving around the country if I had a son waiting somewhere.”

  “Oh right, because you’re a pillar of morality.”

  The words slipped out with a dry humor before I’d thought them through. He stared at me for a moment, clearly as shocked as I was. My heart beat a worried tattoo. What had I done?

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Jesus. You’re a troublemaker, you know that?”

  “I’m really not,” I said sadly.

  If I had been rebellious, I never would have stayed holed up at home for so long. And I would have fought harder against him all this time. What did it say about me that I hadn’t? Clearly I was too weak to stand up for myself.

  Or I secretly thought I deserved it, but that was even more disturbing.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’ll like them.”

  He opened his door and started to climb down from the cab.

  “Wait.”

  He turned back.

  “You aren’t going to hurt them, are you?”

  Something flickered in his eyes. “No. I understand you have no reason to believe me when I say that, but I’d die before I hurt my friends.”

  I believed him. The words settled into place inside me like a jigsaw piece. Sometimes it felt like that, like he was a puzzle and I had to search for every piece to put him back together again. He wouldn’t hurt them because they were his friends—I trusted that. What would it take for me to become his friend?

  Strange thought.

  But I dutifully stepped down from the cab and followed him up the driveway. When we’d gotten halfway there, the little boy jumped off his trike and ran over. He hit Hunter like a rocket, right in the stomach, and Hunter stumbled back, laughing. I gaped a little, staring at the open, happy smile on his face that I’d sure as heck never seen before. They wrestled right there, while I stood off to the side, feeling oddly bereft, as if I were missing something and only just realized it.

  The woman walked over to me, smiling. “Good to meet you.”

  I shook her hand. “Evie. Nice to meet you too.”

  Weird but also oddly nice. We were a couple visiting friends, two lovers on a road trip. It wasn’t far off from our actual identities if I ignored the whole kidnapping bit, and as time passed, I was tempted to do just that. Maybe it wasn’t even Stockholm Syndrome but simply exhaustion, resignation—sometimes it was easier to pretend.

  “Hunter’s never brought anyone by. You must be someone special.”

  That answered one question. He didn’t make a habit of this. Did that mean she was right, then? If I were someone special, it was a dubious honor at best. Someone special who let people imprison her. Someone special who imprisoned herself with her fears, preferring to live through her dreams.

  She continued. “We hope you’ll st
ay a few days.”

  I had no idea what Hunter would do. I never did. I smiled. “I’d love to, but I’m not sure what our plans are.”

  “Of course.” She waved it away. “I’m sure you two would rather get on your way than hang around boring married folk, but you know you’re welcome as long as you want. And you feel free to ask me if you need anything. Any friend of Hunter’s is a friend of ours.”

  What I needed was an escape plan, but I doubted she would be amenable to that considering her devotion to Hunter. And I found myself strangely reticent to tell her otherwise, to say that the man tossing a baseball with her little boy was a monster.

  The screen door squeaked, and I looked back to see a middle-aged man emerge. He wore a sweater vest and a friendly smile. Hunter stopped playing long enough to shake hands and formally introduce me.

  They were Laura and James Truluck with their little boy, Billy. They’d lived in this house for the past six years, but they seemed to know Hunter from before then. I was introduced as simply Evie, and I knew they assumed I was Hunter’s girlfriend. The way he curved his hand around my waist and held me to his side seemed to endorse that. The worst part was I didn’t even want to pull away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Around 40 people are killed each year when they go over the falls—most of which are suicides.

  We went inside, where the men broke off to watch a football game in the basement while Billy played with trains. I offered to help Laura with dinner, especially now that we’d added to her load.

  She set me up with the ingredients for a large, colorful salad and I went to work chopping vegetables, a mixture of store-bought and ones grown in their backyard. As she cooked the steaks and prepared garlic bread, she chatted about Billy, about the renovations they were doing on the house.

  She sent me a guilty look. “I’m just talking your ears off, aren’t I? It’s not often we have visitors here. It’s good to talk to another woman.”

  “Not at all.” I smiled. “I don’t…I haven’t gotten out much, so this is nice for me too.”

  “You know,” she said, a smile playing at her lips. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know I said that already, but I…I can just see how happy you make him.”

  I kept my gaze on the carrot I was grating. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Oh, it’s right there in his face, the way he looks at you, the way he talks about you. I recognize that.”

  My throat constricted as I imagined him looking at some other woman, talking about her, even though by all accounts I shouldn’t care. But maybe this would be an opportunity to learn something new about him, to gather a new puzzle piece.

  “Who do you recognize it from?” I asked, and my voice came out husky.

  She looked at me, surprised. “From James. When we were together, still dating. He didn’t admit it was love for a while, you know men, but I knew. And I just gave him patience, you know? He came around.” She laughed a little, gesturing toward the house. “As you can see.”

  “Oh.”

  Her nose scrunched. “You thought I meant some other woman? No, Hunter’s never been in love before. At least, not that I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’m pretty sure he never expected to be.” Sadness weighed down her smile, and her eyes looked into the past. “But life can take us to crazy places. I like to think things turn out for the best, you know? No matter how we got here.”

  “Right,” I said, but my voice cracked.

  Her gaze met mine, her green eyes filling with concern. “Is everything okay with you? Here I haven’t given you a chance to get a word in edgewise. If something is bothering you, I’d love to lend an ear.”

  “No, I…” What could I say to that?

  “I know men can be stubborn sometimes, always thinking they know what’s right for us. It’s damn annoying, that’s what it is.”

  I gave a watery laugh. It was a little funny, that everything she said was so true…and yet hopelessly irrelevant to us. Hunter and I weren’t in a real relationship.

  “I don’t think it’s the same,” I tried to offer by way of explanation. “As you and James. You seem so happy together.”

  “We are.” Her gaze darkened with remembrance. “It wasn’t always that way though. There were some bad times.”

  I was tempted to ask what they were. Not out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if they were anything like mine, either back home or with Hunter. I wanted to know if there was hope for me.

  “How did you know?” I asked instead. “How did you know everything would be okay when things looked bad?”

  “I didn’t.” She thought for a minute. “I guess at some point I found faith, in myself, in the world. Hunter helped me with that.”

  Hunter helped her with faith? Shock ran through me, but then I remembered the rosary that hung in his truck. Was he religious at some point? Was he still? And if so, why the hell was he doing this? This wasn’t even a puzzle piece. It was the torn off edge of one. A hint of something broken.

  I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant exactly, but just then Billy ran inside. He begged for a snack from Laura who insisted he wait until dinner. James and Hunter followed. James stood behind Laura and gave her a wraparound hug that hurt my heart to see. It was like someone had taken a picture book and made it real. Exactly the opposite of my life right now or ever.

  I stiffened when I felt Hunter come up behind me. He slipped his arms around my waist, mimicking James’s actions. It felt like a mockery, and tears stung my eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

  “Like you care,” I muttered, my voice wavery.

  “Don’t be mad,” he said, and I hated that he said that. I hated that I responded to that inside, softening a little. The truth was, I didn’t like to be so full of rage and fear. It was like carrying around poison inside me, infecting me worse than the world around me. It was a relief to loosen the valve and let a little bit out. I sank back into his embrace.

  His arms tightened on me. “That’s my girl.”

  James and Billy began to set the table while Laura gently chastised them for their rough handling of the dinnerware.

  I shut my eyes against the wholesome sight. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

  I didn’t expect him to answer me. He never had before. But I felt the tension that ran through him and was reminded of that jagged piece of the puzzle.

  A burst of laughter pulled my attention to the family settling down at the table. Laura looked over at us, clearly happy to see us linked this way.

  “How long are you planning on staying?”

  The question was directed at both of us, but we all knew she was asking Hunter.

  He was quiet a moment, then he said, “I’m not sure. Not too much longer, I think.”

  The phrasing was strange with a special weight on the words. I got the idea that he wasn’t answering her but me. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t sure. And the one always at the tip of my tongue: how much longer would he keep me? Not much.

  Which was exactly what I wanted, so there was no reason to feel disappointed.

  Laura’s pretty face fell. “Oh, but you two should stop by again on your way back through.”

  The way back? That implied that Hunter had a home somewhere and Laura knew where it was. It implied we were going somewhere and would return. Hunter must have felt me tense, because he squeezed my hips gently.

  The timer went off and Laura pulled the steaks out of the oven.

  Hunter turned me in his arms. His eyes were clear in the waning afternoon light of the kitchen, and Laura had been right—he looked happier. I remembered how he’d been in the diner, mysterious but also…scary. Intimidating. And kind of sad. Laura seemed to think the change was due to me, and I couldn’t really be sure. It shouldn’t matter to me if it was true, but it did.

  He pushed my hair from my forehead and pressed a kiss there. “Are you okay here? Do you want to leave?”

  His solicitousness felt at onc
e foreign and comfortable. He was a little crazy, swinging back and forth between cruelty and kindness, but I sensed that the former was an act, a meanness he forced on himself as much as me. This seemed natural, and I decided to embrace it for the night. Ironically, he would be himself for once, and I would be the one playing a role.

  We ate dinner while James regaled us with tales of fishing with Billy at the nearby river. Apparently this house butted up against an area popular for camping and inlaid with trails.

  I ended up telling them about all the places we had been. We’d ended up going through Little Rock after all, though I left out the fact that Hunter had bribed the owner of the bath house so we could have a private room in the hot springs, which was technically against the rules. I told them about digging for quartz crystals and showed them the necklace Hunter had ordered made from the pink-tinted gem I’d pulled from the earth with my own hand. I told them about rock climbing and fly fishing and then ran out of time and breath before I’d even gotten to tell them all the things we’d done.

  Hunter had been very true to his word when he’d promised to show me new things.

  Strangely enough, we’d come closer to my end goal. I had mapped the route enough times to know that I would probably have passed through here on my own if I had made it this far. Kind of weird that Hunter had been going the same direction. Or had he driven this way just for me? I knew he’d looked through my things, which would include the picture of the dam.

  The idea that he could have done something that nice for me was too much. It expanded my chest so I couldn’t breathe. It was easier to ignore the good along with the bad, and pretend we were just a regular couple on a little road trip to nowhere. A couple of wild explorers with no bond at all.