by Bethany-Kris
And then she thought about all the other things she knew Carmen had already done to her children. What would something like this be compared to all of that?
A drop in an already full bucket, Lucia imagined.
She’d wanted to hope he was panicking.
She knew inside that he wasn’t.
Lucia peered back at Diego again who was still comfortably sleeping like his whole world wasn’t burning down around him. And hell, maybe it wasn’t for the kid. He still had his brother, after all. That’s all Diego ever seemed to want.
“Do you have an idea about where we’re going?” Lucia asked.
Renzo shrugged. “Maybe.”
It was something in the lilt of his tone that had her attention going back to him again. In the darkening light of the day, and with the little glow the dashboard provided for them to see, Renzo finally seemed back to his old self again. Calm, unbothered, and hers. All things she loved.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“It’s something.”
Renzo nodded ahead, and Lucia glanced out the windshield to see what he was staring at. A sign coming up, it seemed. It read the miles left before they crossed over into a new state. Away from New York, her life, and family. It was the first time since she had gotten in the car that she thought about them at all.
How long would it take them to figure out she was gone?
What would they do, then?
Still, even as those questions danced through her mind, they were quick to leave before they could linger too long and bother her. She was where she wanted to be with who she wanted to be with. That’s all that mattered to her.
Was it selfish?
Crazy?
Not like her?
All those things and more.
It still didn’t change the fact that she was exactly where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do, and with Renzo. That outweighed any reservations she might have had. That stopped her from thinking about all the rest.
“Last chance to back out,” he murmured.
Lucia gave him a look from the side. “Back out from what?”
Renzo wouldn’t look at her. “This, I guess. I can drop you off at the store coming up, if you want. You can call someone—your father. I’m sure he’d come pick you up, no questions asked. I’d understand, Lucia. This isn’t exactly what you signed up for with me.”
“I didn’t sign up for anything with you.”
That was the truth.
More than either of them knew.
Lucia never expected to meet this man beside her. And when they did cross paths, she never even considered that their time together would lead to her first love, or that he would change her perception of the world—that he would change her whole world—without meaning to, or even wanting to.
She meant what she said earlier.
Where he went, she went.
She was not her without him.
“I’m not going anywhere, Ren.”
He gave a little nod, and then put his attention back on the road. His hand snaked over the middle to grab hold of hers and hold tight, though. There was something that felt desperate in the way his fingers tightened around hers, and held strong like he wasn’t going to let go. Maybe that desperation was her, too.
She needed to feel it.
“You should stop at the store, though,” Lucia said. “I need to grab something.”
“Whatever you want, baby.”
It didn’t take long for the store that had been advertised on a billboard a few miles back was in their sights. Renzo pulled into the busy parking lot, and parked along a gas pump. Lucia stepped out of the car, but gave a look into the back at a still-sleeping Diego.
“Want me to grab some food while I’m in there? He’s going to be hungry when he wakes up.”
Renzo laughed as he reached for the nozzle. “He’ll eat anything as long as it doesn’t have lettuce on it.”
“Got it.”
Lucia headed for the convenience store, ignoring the looks that were passed her way as she crossed the lot. She suspected the people were more interested in the car than her. That probably wasn’t a good thing—exactly how many vintage red Mustangs were there in New York, or even across America?
Not that many, she bet.
Inside the store, Lucia made quick work of grabbing a whole armful of food and junk from the shelves and fridges. Water, juice, chips, prepackaged sandwiches, wrapped cheese, and a chocolate milk for Diego. At the front, the man behind the counter didn’t even really look at her while she paid for the stuff. He was too busy watching a recap of the latest game on the television next to the register. He only asked her a question when he asked her if she wanted to pay for the gas at the pump for Renzo, or if he was going to come in and pay himself. Lucia paid for her shit and the gas using a debit card that was attached to her accounts and trust fund, and it took her all of three seconds to realize her mistake but it was already too late.
It could be tracked.
The second she put it in and entered the pin, her location was known.
“Excuse me,” the woman behind her said politely, trying to get her to move so that she could ring her stuff in as well.
Shit.
“Sorry,” Lucia muttered, grabbing the bags from the counter.
Turning to leave, her gaze caught something in the corner of the store that she had overlooked before. Maybe it was a stupid idea that came to her mind, but she figured at this point, her card had already been dinged here … she might as well milk it for all it was worth. Stepping up to the ATM, she stuck her card inside, and punched in her pin.
Ever since her father had taken her car away, Lucian had put her on a budget with her card. Sure, she could go into the bank and pull out as much cash from her accounts that she wanted to. But since her cards were still attached to her parents’ accounts in a third-party bank, her father could control just how much money she could take off her cards.
Not that a five-thousand-dollar spending limit was anything to scoff at, really.
Lucia punched in the max limit she could take, according to the machine which was two thousand, and prayed the machine had enough cash inside to accept it. Usually, ATMs only had a couple thousand dollars inside at a time. She almost fucking choked when the machine beeped, confirmation came up on the screen, and a second later, money came out the bottom in the amount she requested.
Hoping no one noticed her pull that much cash from the machine, she stuffed the large wad of bills into the plastic bags at her feet, grabbed them up, and headed the hell out of that store. Renzo was just coming around the side of the car to head for the store when Lucia met him there.
“I paid for the gas, and my stuff, and—”
“Whoa, slow down,” he murmured, his hands coming up to find her face with a soft touch. “Did you grab money from the car?”
She shook her head.
Renzo stilled. “You used a card?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucia.”
“I know, I know. But look.”
Renzo glanced down at the bags she was holding, and then his gaze widened when she opened them up to show the money inside. Add that two thousand onto the bit of money he had taken from the apartment, and they might be okay for a little while.
“We gotta get rid of the card,” he said.
“Okay.”
“What else do you have on you?”
“Other cards. My cell.”
“It’s all going, too.”
Fine by her.
Renzo sighed, and glanced back at the car.
“What?” she asked.
“It needs to go, too. The car, I mean. There’s cameras all around here. How much do you wanna bet this will be the first place someone comes to when they realize you’re not in the state, they can’t get ahold of you, and this was the last place you used your card.”
Yeah, shit.
The car would be on camera.
&
nbsp; So would they.
“Really love that car, though,” Renzo muttered unhappily.
Lucia laughed.
Hell, they had already gone this far.
They did this much.
What was one more thing?
“Why don’t we go find a new one you like?”
“I do know how to boost a car.”
She didn’t doubt it.
• • •
Diego sat on the hood of a black SUV and chugged his chocolate milk while holding his egg sandwich in the other hand. He watched Renzo with a curious eye as his brother moved around the back of the red Mustang they’d parked in a field. Lucia drove the SUV behind Renzo while he took the car. With darkness all around them, all that could be seen in the desolate field was their headlights shining through. They’d gone off the highway, and drove into a rural area for longer than Lucia cared to think about after they’d boosted the SUV from a closed car lot where they parked it in the back, and no cameras could see them.
“What’s Ren doing?” Diego asked.
“Nothing. You eat your food.”
“Okay.”
Diego’s chewing filled the air as Renzo finished his work at the back of the Mustang. Popping open the trunk, he pulled out an orange gas tank, and set it to the ground while holding onto a license plate in his other. Not only had they taken the SUV, they had also taken a license plate from another vehicle in the lot and exchanged it with the one on the car.
They would be highly unlikely to notice for a while that a license plate had been switched. And while the cops would be looking for an SUV with a license plate number that belonged to the stolen vehicle, they now had a different stolen plate to put on the SUV.
It was kind of brilliant, really.
Lucia chose not to ask Renzo how he came up with the idea.
It took Renzo a couple of minutes to get the correct license plate on the SUV before he came around the front. Diego was just finishing his sandwich and milk, holding the trash from the food out for Lucia to take.
“I gotsa pee real bad,” Diego said.
She helped him down, and he headed around the other side of the SUV to do his business.
“Drive to the other side of the field once he’s done,” Renzo said, holding tight to the gas can, “and then I’ll run across and meet you.”
She eyed the can he held. “Are you going to burn the car?”
“Yep.”
Well, then.
“Okay.”
• • •
“Home sweet home for the night,” Renzo muttered.
Lucia eyed the small motel room for anything unsavory, but found the place was comfortable, and clean, if not a little out of date. She could deal with the aging furniture and awful wallpaper as long as the bedsheets were clean.
After driving a good portion of the day, and most of the night, they needed to rest.
Renzo shifted a sleeping Diego into the bed—directly in the middle—and pulled the blanket up over the boy. Lucia set the few bags she had brought in from the vehicle to the floor, and let out a sigh. Renzo did a quick check of the room, including pulling open the sliding doors that led out to a small deck.
“Hey,” he murmured over his shoulder.
Lucia was tired.
Damn tired.
She had been running on adrenaline for hours. That, and the shitty energy drink she’d picked up at the store. What she really needed to do was get in the bed, and go to sleep like Diego.
She still went to him when he said, “Come look at this, baby.”
Renzo slipped out onto the deck, and Lucia followed. He was already climbing up what looked to be a fire escape ladder when she exited the sliding double doors. “What are you doing?”
“Breathing.”
Lucia blinked. “What?”
“I feel like I haven’t breathed in hours, Lucia. Come on.”
Unquestioningly, she followed him up to the roof of the motel. It was only two floors high, with them being on the second. Once she pulled herself over the top edge, Lucia found Renzo had already threw his leather jacket down on the pebbled roof, and sat his ass down. He stared up at the sky for a long while, saying nothing. Lucia simply went over, crawled into his lap, and hid her face in his chest when he wrapped his arms tightly around her.
She found her happy place like that, her legs wrapped around his waist, arms tucked in close, and pretending like the rest of the world didn’t exist. She needed a lot of things—a change of clothes, a shower, and a bed.
Right then, though, she found she only needed him.
“You can see the stars,” he murmured against her hair. “Can’t ever see the stars in the city.”
She glanced up, and found he was right.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Mmm, no. Pretty, maybe. Interesting, sure. Not beautiful.” His hand came up to find her chin, and then he tipped her head down so her gaze met his. “You are beautiful. The sky does not compare.”
Lucia grinned. “Smooth talker.”
“I don’t need to talk for it to be true.”
One soft kiss led to another, and that quickly turned into something else entirely. Something hotter, and faster. Hands up her dress, and bites on her throat. It didn’t take Renzo long at all to get them free of her clothes, and her resting on his cock as his hands warmed her body from the cool air.
And all it took was a kiss.
“You’re gonna kill me,” she told him.
She had no control with him.
None at all.
Renzo chuckled huskily, and swept his thumb over her trembling lips. “I think you have that mixed up, baby. You’ll be the death of me … that was always going to be the case.”
She didn’t know about that.
Shifting in his lap, she silenced him by taking him a little bit deeper. All she needed was his cock inside her to be reminded she had nerves in places she never knew existed before him.
“You know, I’m going to need some clothes,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss his mouth.
Renzo nodded. “Tomorrow, we’ll find something. There’s a fucking Walmart on every corner.”
He probably thought she never shopped at a Walmart before.
She had news for him.
“Oh, leggings and yoga pants, please.”
He groaned. “I bet your ass looks fantastic in yoga pants.”
“Guess you’re going to find out.”
Renzo grinned, grabbed her ass tight, and squeezed hard enough to take her breath away. This was probably the last thing they should be doing. They definitely shouldn’t have been making light about their situation.
She couldn’t find it in herself to care. Or to think about what might happen now.
She was with him.
He was with her.
They were together—the way they were meant to be. Forever.
The rest were details.
She never cared for those.
“I go, you go.”
It was like he could read her mind. Like he knew all the crazy shit going on in there. His words came out in a breath, barely there at all, and his thumb stroked her cheekbone as she came close enough to kiss him again.
“You go, I go,” Lucia echoed, shuddering when his hips flexed upward. “That’s how it’s going to be.”
Until the day one of them died.
HARBOR
RENZO + LUCIA, BOOK 2
BETHANY-KRIS
PROLOGUE
har·bor
/ˈhärbər/
verb
1. keep (a thought or feeling, typically a negative one) in one’s mind, especially secretly.
2. give a home or shelter to.
There’s got to be more to life than this.
Even as the old man landlord bitched in the apartment doorway, Renzo Zulla’s mind was on something else entirely. Somewhere that bills weren’t a problem, and rent wasn’t due. Somewhere that a newborn didn’t cry harder than other newborns, and he
didn’t have to stay up all night just to watch the baby shake in his sleep because the drugs their mother had pumped into her body during his pregnancy hadn’t left his blood yet.
Somewhere that was better than here.
He’d not found it yet.
“Where is your mother?” the landlord demanded.
Renzo came out of his thoughts to stare the man head-on. What should he say?
I don’t know.
She left the night we brought Diego home.
Probably shooting up somewhere.
Renzo figured none of those things would help his case here. If only because, well, the man might call someone on Renzo. It was just him and Rose, and two-week-old Diego in the apartment. He wasn’t even fucking seventeen yet, either.
“She’s out,” Renzo lied.
The bitterness that festered in his chest whenever he lied for his mother grew each time he had to do it. Mostly because he didn’t want to have to lie for her at all. It wasn’t like she deserved it. She couldn’t even do the bare minimum for the three kids she brought into the world, but here he was protecting her time and time again.
Even if it wasn’t really for her.
Still pissed him off.
“When is she gonna be back?” the landlord demanded.
Renzo swallowed the thickness in his throat, replying, “Later, maybe.”
Days was more like it.
If not weeks.
Carmen was harder to predict than the weather, and Renzo had stopped trying. Besides, he didn’t have the time or patience anymore. He had other things to worry about—the two-week-old in his arms, for example. Diego needed to eat, and Renzo was running low on that powder formula. Or even the girl in the living room trying to get her brush stroke just right with paint brushes he’d lifted from an art store, and a canvas her teacher let her take from school.
He couldn’t worry about where the fuck his mother was right now, or when she was going to get back. Frankly, a part of him wished she would never come back because honestly, life might be easier.
