He reaches over and horsebites my leg, pinching that spot above my knee with his thumb and forefinger. He squeezes and I squirm, laughing. I grab his hand. His eyes are sparkling. “I hardly know you. You haven’t even told me about that necklace.”
I touch the peanut. “I’ll tell you everything,” I say, “if you say yes.”
His eyelashes brush his cheeks. His forearm flexes as we take a turn in the road. Then his leg tightens as he puts on the brake. He signals and pulls off onto the shoulder, rolling to a crackling stop on the gravel. He leans back in the seat and stares up through the sunroof. Then he puts one hand to his face and looks back at me over that big bend of his thumb and first finger. There are black and blue streaks under his eyes.
Then he gives me the smile. The smile.
My heart leaps. “Yes? Is that what you say?”
He nods into his hand, and says, “Fuck yes. That’s what I say.” He reaches down to a panel by his knee, pops it open and disconnects a pair of red wires. The on-board navigation system, with its built-in GPS, goes dark.
I bring his huge hand up to my lips and plant a kiss on his rough, slightly bruised knuckles. “Floor it, handsome. Let’s run like hell.”
Vince drives us through a big swath of sycamore forest. My previous feeling of utter exhilaration has given way to just a touch of paranoia. I haven’t, after all, ever been on the run before. My eyes are in a constant skitter from side mirror to rearview to the road. A black Suburban comes towards us from the opposite direction, and in the time it takes me to register the make and model, I also convince myself it’s got to be the FBI.
“Oh God, oh God,” I whisper. “Already? How is that possible!”
“Calm down, Peaches. Criminal rule number 582: Not every black SUV is the feds.”
He’s right. The driver is a soccer mom with super big hair. I flop back in my seat. Next to me, Vince looks as laid-back as if he were catching rays on some Caribbean beach.
“How can you be so relaxed?”
“Not my first time at the rodeo,” he says. He squeezes my thigh again. Not a horsebite this time. A kind, supportive, masculine squeeze. Almost fatherly. I find it incredibly hot.
“I’m so glad you’re here. With me, I mean. For all this. I don’t think I could figure this out without you.”
He glances at me. “You could. But it’s way more fun together.” He slides his hand up my thigh, then turns his hand palm up, giving me come on fingers. I put my hand in his, and he smiles at the road.
After a while, he lets go of my hand and focuses on the twists and turns in the road. My hand feels empty, and I tuck it under my leg. He signals and pulls off onto a side road into the forest. There’s no sign marking the road, only a set of cockeyed fence posts. He slows, and we roll down the dirt and stones. He leans forward, and I can see he’s scanning the forest for something. I watch his eyes flicker, and he points at something over the steering wheel. All I can see is an outcropping of rocks and trees, trees, trees.
He turns off the engine and opens his door. “Come on. And bring your purse.”
He opens the trunk, pulls back the carpet, and takes my old GIDDYUP plates from the wheel well. He takes my suitcase in his hand and his duffel in the other. I reach up and pull down the trunk door.
He’s already heading into the forest, and I scurry to catch up.
“What happened to the cash?” he asks, glancing back at me. He sounds dark and just a little bit scary.
I wait to answer until I’m right next to him. I let my arm brush against his. Here we go. Confession time. “Had a little run-in with your Russian colleague.”
He stops dead in his tracks, pivots on his boot, and stares down at me. “You did what?”
I cringe. I realize now I made an executive decision last night that maybe I should have thought about a little harder. It was pretty hasty, dropping that cash on Yeltsin’s head. But what else could I do? “He stopped by while I was packing up.”
He narrows his eyes. I feel like he’s trying to look right through me. “Why are you just telling me this now?”
Gulp. God, I realize too, he might be pissed at me for taking care of problems for him. That’s not exactly something I can see him ever wanting me to do. But I am what I am. “I paid him off.”
Much to my surprise, instead of turning angry, his eyes go soft and warm. His forehead makes a line of wrinkles. “You’re fucking kidding me,” he says softly.
I shake my head. A rush of energy and pride drives aside my worry. I wobble on my sandal a little, twisting on one leg slightly, and some dirt gets caught up under my heel. “I also maced him.”
His eyes get so wide that I the whites all around his gray irises. “No way.”
“Twice!”
I’m expecting him to laugh, that cocky, sexy laugh. I can almost hear it echo through the forest before it happens. But he doesn’t do it. Instead, he breathes out slowly, then looks away. I watch him blink quickly three times. “Fuck. Nobody’s ever…” His voice cracks a little.
He’s tearing up. Rip my heart out and eat it like a fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. I dig through my purse and grab one of my KEEP CALM tissues from the little plastic packet. I unfold it and hand it to him.
“It’s my fucking nose. I’m not crying.” He makes some throat-clearing noises that are very, very unconvincing.
“I know,” I say.
He blots his closed eyes. “Fuck.”
I feel myself getting a little teary too as I’m watching him. I let my purse drop to the ground and bring my arms together around his waist. Then I rest my cheek on his chest. He drops our luggage and smooths my hair. His lips press against my temple, and he says, “You really, really shouldn’t have done that.”
There’s a little tumble in my stomach, where anxiety lives. I look up at him. “Shouldn’t have or didn’t need to?”
His Adam’s apple shifts as he swallows. “Didn’t need to.”
I don’t need a thanks, I don’t need him to say another word at all. I just need him to keep looking at me exactly. Like. That. For as long as is humanly possible.
“I know I didn’t need to. But I wanted to.”
His eyes dart away again. “Nobody’s ever…”
“Well, get used to it,” I tell him. “You’re not on your own now either.”
He puts his arm around me and presses his lips to my forehead. “Fuck.” His voice is tearful and growly. “Thank you, Lucy. Thanks.”
I love the way those words sound, like they’re not broken-in almost. Like he’s said them so few times he doesn’t know quite know how to be comfortable saying them.
I take his arm and pick up my purse. He grabs the luggage, sniffles one last time, and we keep on winding our way through the forest. We don’t say anything. I can tell he’s deep in thought. I feel better; focusing on him, it makes me feel way less panicked than if I think about me.
Together we walk maybe three hundred yards from the road. I get lost in the way our footsteps sound together. The wind rustles the leaves, and some unfamiliar birds sing an unfamiliar song. Finally, near a few boulders scattered all over with pine needles, he sets down our bags.
“Keys,” he says, serious and focused again. I hand them over, and he begins separating the key to the Beemer from the rest of my keychain, which he puts in my hand. He puts the key in his pocket. He turns the pepper spray over in his fingers.
“You did it with this?”
“Right in the eyes!” I whisper-squeal.
“I know guys three times your size who don’t have balls like that.”
I shrug. “Never underestimate the American upper class. We can be pretty vicious.”
His laugh starts silent, just a whisper, and then turns into a headshake. “I’ll remember that.”
“Like hyenas, really. Very similar pack structure.”
He snickers. “Jesus. Well, alright, my little hyena. Let’s get down to business,” he says, his face turning serious again, “First thing
to do when you’re trying to disappear?” He pulls my wallet out of my bag. “Get rid of your paper trail.”
He hands the wallet to me, adding, “Everything that makes you you.”
With my eyes locked on him, I unsnap it. “Everything.”
“Everything.”
I go through every compartment. In my palm, I stack up credit cards, IDs, library card, school ID.
“Even the frequent shopper ones,” he says.
How in the world? Oh right. Lest I forget. “You really did go through my stuff.”
He lifts one shoulder in a cocky kind of way. “Never underestimate the American criminal class.”
“See? This is why we’re perfect together.”
But as I put my Froyo World card and my Arepa cards in the stack, I feel a sudden wave of sadness. I think how I loved those arepas. I loved the arepa cart man even more. Pudgy and happy. His name was Fernando and he called me La Lucy. I get a brutal pang of homesickness and swallow hard.
Vince must sense my hesitation, either in the silence or in the way I clutch the cards. He hands me his tear-stained tissue like I’m about to need it. “You don’t have to do this, Lucy.”
I hand over my Froyo World punch card. My lips tremble a little. Only, of course, it’s not the Froyo. It’s everything. Letting go of everything. Because I do have to do it. And I want to, painful as it is. A whole new world awaits.
Placing the stack of all my cards and identification in my hand, he takes out his wallet too and adds his own ID to the pile. He has no credit cards or anything else to add, but as we walk farther into the forest, I see that he wasn’t lying about his name. Vincent Ramírez Russo. His DOB tells me he’s a Gemini, surprise surprise, and just turned 34 last month. He looks older than that, especially in the eyes. Height, 6’5”. Weight, 225.
“You don’t weigh 225,” I say. I’m looking him up and down from behind. I don’t know how much he weighs, but he’s no 225, and as every Women’s Health article ever written says, muscle weighs way, way more than fat. And he is solid muscle.
He turns to me over his shoulder, and there’s that grin again. “There’s not much to do besides lift weights in jail.”
I shuffle to catch up to him. “About that. I’m guessing car theft?”
He looks fake-incensed. “Conspiracy.”
I click my tongue. “Hard to imagine.”
“Right?” He lifts his shoulders. “That’s what I told the judge. He didn’t believe me.”
“I want to know about it,” I tell him.
“You definitely do not.”
I get that. I do. But I’m not about to drop it. “Just tell me, are you safe?”
He studies me. The dappled sun coming through the leaves above shines on his face. He’s just so beautiful. “Safe enough. But there might be some warrants. Maybe.”
Holy moly. “To do with Yeltsin?”
“Jesus! You can see it too?”
I nod. “So?”
He stares off into the forest and, after a long second, turns back to me with a smile. “Shit that isn’t our problem anymore.”
Near an outcropping of rocks, he shifts pine needles from the forest floor with his boot. He finds a stone, flat and sharp as a roofing slate. He crouches down and forces it into the soil. A wedge of dirt comes free, and he digs deeper. I drop my purse and grab a similar piece of stone from nearby. The soil here is heavy with clay, and it’s slow going. He stays in a crouch, and I lower myself down onto the ground cross-legged. I see a hole in his jeans, on the seam, halfway up his thigh. The fabric of his boxers just shows through. Black plaid. He glances over at me a couple of times. Every time he does, my eyes are waiting for his.
“Alright,” he says finally when we have a hole about as big as a shoebox but a little deeper. Into the hole, he drops our stack of IDs and other bits and pieces. They scatter like playing cards in the ground.
“Passport,” he says, nodding down. I drop it in.
“Know how to take out a SIM card?” he asks. He’s got my phone in his hand.
“I promise I won’t turn it on.” I reach out for it and dig my fingers into the grooves between the rhinestones.
“Better safe than sorry,” he says, handing me a paperclip that he found at the bottom of my purse.
I look at the dead screen. “But all my pictures, Vince. My mom, my friends, my horse…”
He shakes his head and grinds his jaw a little. “Evidence. You have to let go.” He’s gentle when he says it, coaxing almost. “That’s just the past. You’ll always have it in here.” He reaches out, pressing his fingertip to my temple. Then he puts the flat of his palm on my chest, adding, “And here.”
I blow out a long breath and turn my phone over in my hands. He’s right, I know he’s right. I dig my nails into the little edge between the phone and the cover and pop off the rhinestone case. I drop it into the hole. Then I take the unbent paperclip and pop out the SIM card. Such a tiny piece of plastic that holds so much. I hand it over to him, and he snaps it in his fingers. He hands half to me, and together we drop them in.
“What about your phone?” He tosses it in. “Burner. We’ll get you one.”
He comes around behind me. I feel his fingers work the clasp on my necklace.
I clap my hand to it. “Not this.”
“Yeah, this,” he says, and I feel the chain slip out of my grasp, each tiny link a ripple. Even after the necklace slips away from me, I feel the weight of the chain on my thumb and my neck. Phantom pain. I feel utterly naked without it. He holds it in his hand, nestled there in his palm in a golden knot.
I stare at the peanut. My Peanut.
“Gonna tell me?” he asks.
I place my finger to the charm in his palm. “My mom bought it for me when my horse turned two,” I say. “Her name is Peanut.”
“Well, that explains it then. What kind is she?”
I raise my eyes to his. “A Percheron. That’s a…”
He stops me, “Draft horse. I know.”
“How do you know?”
He narrows his eyes in a smile. “What color?”
“Blue roan. She’s the sweetest. Not the smartest.” I giggle a little, to cover my aching heart. “But really, really sweet. Maybe you’ll get to meet her…” I trail off, realizing how impossible that would be.
His eyebrows flicker, and I see that dimple again. “Maybe.”
He puts the necklace back into my hand and glances at the hole. Then I open my palm, turn over my hand, and it falls into the ground without a sound.
From his pocket, Vince produces the Instax picture of Peanut and hands it to me.
There’s a frog in my throat so big I can barely breathe. “I can’t tear it up,” I say, more to Peanut and her radish than to Vince.
“That’s okay,” he says.
I will myself to let it go and I do. And it spins through the air like a glider, landing face up. I take a handful of dirt from the ground and drop it into the grave, onto Peanut’s face. The hole containing what I used to be.
Vince’s eyes are on me the whole time, I can feel the heat in the air, but I don’t lock onto them. I’m already feeling a tremble in my chin, and I have a feeling if I get lost in those gray eyes, I’ll fall right apart.
“We’re going to have the time of our lives,” Vince whispers. “But it’s okay to be sad, beautiful. Makes sense.”
The hole fills up handful by handful and finally, we tamp it down with boot and sandal prints. Vince takes a dried pine bough and gets rid of the marks, and then puts leaf litter over the spot.
We walk back to the car and put our luggage in the back. I cover it with the built-in zip-tarp. As I hook it into place I turn to him. He’s got the key in his hand. “I don’t want to get back on the road,” I say. “Not yet.”
He narrows his eyes and smiles a little. “Got something else in mind?”
Oh yes. I most definitely do. I’m feeling free. I’m feeling new. I’m feeling alive. And vulnerable too. I need
him now more than ever. So I take a fuzzy plaid picnic blanket from the trunk and take him by the hand. Leading him towards a nearby sound of a trickling stream.
We only make it a few steps, though, before he stops and scoops me up in his arms. I laugh up into the trees, hugging the rolled-up blanket to my chest. My feet bounce along, and I giggle again. “Shouldn’t you be doing this over a threshold?” I giggle.
It takes him a second to answer. His eyes move to some far-off place before he says, “Who says I’m not planning on it?”
We don’t even get the blanket spread out before he’s got me on the ground. He pulls my tank over my head, and for one perfect second, through the fabric of my shirt, I see him like he is when he doesn’t think he’s being watched. His eyes go to my stomach, and he shakes his head. And then my shirt comes all the way off.
The pine needles dig into my bare back, pricking me all over. I don’t mind it, not one bit. I paw for his shirt, trying to get it up and over his shoulders. I hear a thread snap as he does it himself and sends the shirt flying. He puts his hands on either side of my body and I wiggle out of my leggings. I unzip his fly and undo his belt, pulling his jeans and boxers down in one quick motion. Then I take his cock in my hands and position it at my opening. I guide him into me, but once he’s halfway in I can’t do anything but lay back and take it.
“Fuck,” he says, yanking his hands up off the ground. One of the needles is still stuck in the meat of his thumb. He pulls it out with his teeth.
His power inside me makes me breathless, but I do manage to say, “Is my hunk actually a wimp?”
He looks pretend-outraged as he lowers his pelvis into mine. “You trying to make me mad?”
He drives in hard, and I groan, “Maybe.”
“Trying to get me to punish you?”
I slide my hands down his torso. As they meet his abs, my elbows dig into the soil. “I like to see you mad. I watched you throw that punch.” I dig my hands into his biceps. “I want to feel all that power.” Then I bring my hands to his ass and pull us even closer together.
He stares down at me, not thrusting or even moving, just planking right above me, every muscle rippling. “God, that’s hot.” Then he pulls me up off the ground, clears the needles out from under me a little, and spreads out the blanket. I cling to him and press my cheek to his shoulder. With one hand, I massage the base of his cock, letting my thumb go up and down the length. He groans and lays me back down. The wooly scratchiness of the blanket is somehow worse than the needles and sends every nerve in my body into overdrive. He hoists my legs up around him, one hand on each of my ass cheeks, pulling my lips wide apart and then pressing me back together when he pushes inside. I whimper into the trees as he fills me.
Confessed Page 15
