“Oh yeah?”
I put my hands on her hips.
“We have, oh, a couple hundred thousand dollars at our disposal. We can talk about what we want to do for real later. But today, let’s be stupid.”
“I think I like stupid.”
I moved against her a little, letting our bodies settle into each other. Jeez, she felt good first thing in the morning like this, in this fancy room with the nice sheets and the bed that swallowed us up. Jane let out a little murmur and melted down on my chest, draped on top of me. I raked my fingers up her sides, under her shirt, starting to pull it up and off, when there was a polite knock on the door.
“Oh,” she said. “I forgot I ordered room service!”
“Now?” I groaned.
She gave me a devilish look and slid off me. “Why? What else did you have in mind?”
Breakfast came served under a big silver cover, like in the movies. Jane had ordered Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.
“Want a bite?” she asked.
“How about later?” I wanted to get back to her.
“Now, or I’m going to eat it by myself,” Jane warned.
“Seriously? You care about breakfast right now?”
“You don’t?”
She held an overloaded forkful to my mouth, and I wasn’t really sitting up far enough, so it spilled down my chin. Jane laughed and leaned over to grab it with her mouth, her lips lingering. She kissed down my chest then back up again and abruptly crawled away. I reached out for her, and she rolled even further.
“Are you torturing me on purpose?” I groaned.
Her eyes glinted with mischief.
“Oh,” I realized. “You totally are.”
“You deserve it,” Jane said.
“No I don’t.”
“You lied to me,” Jane said.
“You lied to me.”
“You have to make up for it.”
“What about you?”
“I said it first.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re a smart boy. Take me on a date. Somewhere amazing. I’m going to go take a shower.”
I rolled out of bed. “Game on, girl.”
While she was showering, I thumbed through a binder from the bedside table, full of things to do. I felt a smile creep onto my face. I had an idea.
JANE
They said the boat could carry twenty-eight people. Cade said he wanted it for only the two of us and offered to pay in cash.
“Are you serious right now?” the guy asked.
“I’m sorry?” Cade gave him a discerning look. He pulled off the role well.
“No, no. I’m sorry.” the man backpedaled. “You look like a couple of high school kids.”
“We robbed a cartel out of Mexico,” Cade deadpanned.
The guy let out a guffaw. “No, really . . .”
“Really? We’re very lucky to have the parents we do.” Cade smiled charmingly.
“All right then, what excursion you want?”
“All of them.”
“Wait, what?”
“You heard me,” Cade said. “Everything.”
The guy shook his head. “You for real? Okay. Everything it is. Welcome aboard, trust-fund babies. I’m Bob. You can call me Captain.”
“Um, what’s everything?” I asked Cade under my breath.
“Snorkeling, sunset cruise, dolphin watch, and tubing.”
“Hold on . . .”
“And parasailing.”
“Did you book us for every activity this company offers? In one afternoon?”
Cade grinned at me. “Is it a date?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well, is it?”
“Uh, yeah.” I squinted up at Cade in disbelief.
He kissed me on the forehead and walked off ahead of me, proud of himself.
“First up, parasailing!”
We got strapped into a little two-seated harness that hooked to a colorful parachute. We crouched into a seated position as the guys pulled us back as far as they could. The wind filled the chute, our feet left the ground . . . and we suddenly lifted. The motorboat ahead of us shot forward, and I screamed as we flew higher and higher over Port Isabel. I kicked my bare feet against the cool rush of air. Suddenly the wind let up and we dipped abruptly down, only to catch again and stretch back tight. Cade was laughing beside me as we snapped into the sky.
The resort skyscrapers of South Padre Island turned to tiny blocks below us, and I could see the different depths of color in the water. The sky rattled my face. Somewhere in the distance was dusty, landlocked Tanner, and beyond that, Mexico. Up here, there was only Cade and me.
Us. All day. We held on the best we could to a huge inner tube as a small motorboat hurled us across the top of the waves. When we popped off, we hit the water like rocks skipping, falling underneath in a jumble of our own arms and legs.
And in the cloudy turquoise water, Cade grabbed ahold of me so I wouldn’t get freaked out by all the fish. It took me a while to get used to the snorkel. I kept forgetting my nose was blocked and I could only use my mouth to breathe. Cade caught on fast, holding his breath and diving down to the coral below us to poke around, then spewing out the salt water as he surfaced.
Schools of tiny silver fish scattered around us and reformed on the other side like we weren’t even there. Big yellow glazed fish glided by, their fins looking sharp enough to cut. Fish with underbites, fish with ridges, fish with huge tails. Their shadows danced on the sand of the seafloor. Off in the distance I spotted a huge one with an eye the size of a dinner plate. A barracuda, suspended, stared at me sideways. It is more scared of you than you are of it, I told myself. I wished that could be the case with people too. It was time to get back on the boat, I thought. Somewhere in the water, there are always sharks.
CADE
The sunset was crazy bright. I couldn’t have ordered it up better. And right on cue, a pod of dolphins jumped out of the water and splashed back in, riding our wake back to shore.
The boat ground against the dock.
“I want to go back to the hotel,” Jane whispered against my ear.
“We will.”
“With you. Now.”
“Oh.”
I don’t even know how we found our way there. We kept stopping to kiss each other, leaning against the sides of buildings, holding on to each other’s elbows while walking along backward so our mouths could stay pressed together. At one point I scooped up Jane and ran with her on my back. We kissed in the lobby and in the elevator, and when the door opened on one of the floors, some uptight older couple looked horrified, which made us laugh.
We fell into the room, and I started to peel Jane’s shirt off her.
“Ow, ow, ow,” she said.
She was sunburned even worse than the day before.
“You’re a lobster.”
“I know.” She pouted.
I grabbed the aloe we bought. “Lie down. I gotcha.”
Jane glanced at me over her shoulder and lay down on her stomach on the bed. I gently eased her shorts off and undid the back of her bathing suit. She flinched and let out a little squeal as the cold aloe vera landed on her skin. I rubbed it as gently as I could across her shoulders, down her thighs. Then she rolled onto her back, and I leaned down to kiss her before rubbing the aloe across her stomach . . . and then all over. Jane reached up and took my shirt off over my head and pulled me down onto her, all slippery slick from the aloe. Her mouth met mine, everything I knew now—the full lower lip, her tongue, the little sounds she made that told me she liked what I was doing.
“Do you . . .”
“Yes.”
JANE AND CADE
Cade kissed down the side of my neck, to my shoulder, tra
cing my collarbone with his fingers.
Fingers were ten points of heat on my back, Jane’s hands wrapping around me, pulling me against her skin.
Skin on skin. When Cade’s chest grazed mine, my back arched to meet him, and I pressed against him, breathing in time with his breathing.
Breathing her in, I ran my fingers through her hair, down her neck, up her bare arms.
His bare arms, strong, holding him over me, smooth chest. The world slowed down in the safety that radiated from him, even as my heart sped up. What’s your real name? he whispered.
Whispered echoes of everywhere she’d been before me filled my head when she didn’t answer me right away. There was still so much about her that I didn’t know.
I didn’t know why everything was unraveling. Come on, he said again, tell me your name. Why did it matter? Especially right now. I’m not that person anymore. “Jane” was the only version of me worth loving. How could he still not trust me?
How could she still not trust me? As long as I only knew “Jane,” I wasn’t in love with all of her. Maybe she didn’t love me, just the idea of me, shelter, school, friends, a make-believe life. What happened to no lies, no secrets?
No secrets. The promise not to lie itself a lie. I can’t believe you still won’t tell me, Cade said, and abruptly got up and dressed. I pulled the sheets over me. But when Cade closed the door behind him, I was left a certain kind of naked no clothes can cover. I offered him everything. And he didn’t want it. He didn’t want me.
JANE
You would think that what happened in Mexico would have taught me to be good. But I am not good. Cade knew it. That’s why he couldn’t go through with it. He thought he was better than me—and he was. Or was he?
I got up and threw on my clothes. No. Not this time.
“Cade!” I called out to him as he opened the door to the stairwell at the far end of the hall. I jogged to catch up. “Stop.”
By the time I got to the top of the stairs, he was already close to the bottom. I looked over the railing at him. He was framed by flights of stairs between us, squares inside squares, each getting smaller, and he was stuck in the smallest one.
“You don’t get to just walk out on me!” I called down to him.
“Why? That’s what you’re going to do to me,” he said.
“That’s not true.” I started down the stairs toward him, stopping when I was just one flight above.
Cade threw his arms in the air. “I’m supposed to believe you want to share the money? You want me to come find you . . . someday? I’ve told you about my mom. You’ve seen me beaten up by my dad, but you can’t even tell me who you really are?”
“One thing doesn’t have to do with the other. I meant what I said.”
“Who knows what you mean?”
“Has anyone ever told you how judgmental you are? You think I’m this bad person . . .”
“I didn’t say that . . .”
“You’re no better than me! You took my money and lied about it. You want that cartel drug money!”
“Oh, come on now. Stop.”
“No, you stop. You’re a thief. You’re no better than anyone.”
“And you’re a coward who latched on to a thug to get out of dodge. You’re no different than someone like my mom.”
Cade’s words were a punch in the throat. I sat down on the steps. “And there it is—how you really feel.”
“Shit. Jane. No.” He rubbed his eyes and forehead and tugged at his hair. He started up the stairs toward me. His phone rang in his pocket, but he ignored it.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Cade sat down next to me.
I didn’t look at him. We sat in silence.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it all sometimes, you know?” he finally said.
“It’s not like I chose my life,” I answered.
“But you did. You chose to go with Raff.”
“I meant my whole life. My mom. The foster families. I mean, come on, Cade, stay with loser foster family . . . or . . . run off to a resort town in sunny Mexico. Spring break forever.” I put my hands out like a scale. “What would you have done?”
I curled up against the railing and rested my chin on my knees. “I didn’t see the underside of where all the money was coming from with Raff . . . until I was in too deep. My life felt like a crazy movie. Clubs. Fancy cars. Even the guns. Drugs. None of it seemed real.”
Cade didn’t answer. I fixed my eyes on his and challenged, “But the barn, I guess that wasn’t real either, was it?”
“No. The barn was real,” Cade said without hesitation.
His phone rang again. He pulled it out of his pocket. I looked over at the screen.
“It’s Mattey. You should get it.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“No. Look at your missed calls. He’s called four times.”
Cade picked up.
“Hey . . . wait. What? Mattey, slow down. . . . You’re kidding me.”
Concerned, I leaned in, trying to hear.
“Are you okay?” Cade asked. “Hold on, hold on . . . when? How are they? Where are you? . . . Are you serious? . . . For real? . . . We’re on our way.”
Cade hung up. He looked stunned.
“What? What is it?”
“Last night Mattey’s house got broken into, torn apart . . . and then his sister Sophia . . . she was attacked.”
My heart sank. “By who?”
“She was with Diego. Their car got stopped in the road. He got pulled out and beat up bad.”
“Oh my God.” It was my fault.
“They’re both hurt real bad.”
“Because of me?” I asked in a tight voice. “The passport?”
“Diego runs with a bad crowd. He probably owed somebody something. Don’t jump to conclusions till we know more,” Cade said, but I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
My heart was pounding. I was tied to everything going wrong in Tanner. The bridge. The bomb. The break-in. The beatings. If Tanner were a house, it was like I tossed a cigarette out the window and never worried about it smoldering near the foundation. I didn’t pay attention to the early smell of smoke. Then, when I couldn’t help but notice the smell, I still refused to believe anything was on fire. Only now, when the flames were visible, lapping at the walls, sucking out the oxygen, was I forced to admit my world was burning down. I never walk away in time. I run away too late. I knew this. I always knew. But it didn’t stop me. I really wanted that house.
CADE
Door kicked in. Windows smashed into pieces you could slice a throat with. Drawers, cabinets, closets opened. Every belonging not where it belonged.
Mattey said their whole house was trashed.
That’s how my head felt too, like someone went in and ransacked it.
I never drove faster. A ride never felt longer. We came to a screeching halt outside Tanner Memorial Hospital. I flew out of my truck. Jane hung back.
“I need a minute.”
“I’m not leaving you alone out here. Come on.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Jojo demanded when we rushed in. “Mattey called you, like, nine hundred times.”
Jane approached Mattey cautiously. She tried to put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off and walked away. Jane faded back against the wall.
“How’s Sophia?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet. The doctors are with her. The police are talking to Diego right now. Where were you?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re here now,” I told her.
Right back at the hospital. Full circle. I could practically see Gunner sitting there with his dad in the ER waiting for word about his mother. But instead, this time it was Mr. and Mrs. Morales holding on to the girls and each other and crying.
“We were
at a church thing when they broke in,” Jojo said. “Who knows what might have happened otherwise?”
Mattey hadn’t said a word to me yet.
“Can we see Sophia?” I asked.
“She’s unconscious,” Mrs. Morales answered.
“And Diego?” I asked.
“That good-for-nothing piece of . . . ,” Dr. Morales hissed.
“Basta, basta,” Mrs. Morales shushed him. “They both are alive. That’s what we must focus on.”
Mattey motioned for me to follow him around the corner, away from everyone.
“I told you we should have gone to the police right after the bomb,” he said, fuming. “Now look at what happened.”
We left with Tanner crumbling at the core, the families that held this town together, the good ones, coming undone. Dirt. Drugs. Booze. Blood.
We came back and it was the same.
Which made it that much worse.
JANE
I slipped into the lobby and out the other side while Cade was talking to Mattey, walking like I belonged down a hall where I definitely wasn’t allowed. I needed to see what they did to Sophia. And then, when I found her room, I wished I hadn’t. She was a mess of purple and red, bruises and cuts. She looked like a version of me when Cade found me. The machines beeped. She was unconscious.
I backed out and hurried around the corner, almost crashing into a nurse pushing a cart full of little bottles of medicine. “Sorry, sorry,” I said, with my hands up, as I headed to his room. The halcón. Diego.
“Well, look who it is,” he mumbled through puffy, cracked lips. “The girl everyone is looking for. Thanks for the makeover.”
“What happened?” I whispered.
“You happened.”
“Seriously.” My heart did a weird skip thing, and my face and hands felt tingly and heavy.
“Oh, I’m serious.”
A monitor hooked to him beeped high and steady.
“Please . . . tell me everything.”
“You wanna know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. I’m driving with Sophia when my car tires get shot the hell up. Next thing I know I’m spinning out, the car comes to a stop, and I got my doors thrown open, a gun in my face, and me and Sophia, we’re on the damn pavement.”
Hide with Me Page 20
