by Dee, Cara
“How would you like it, sir?” the waitress asked.
“A good vet should be able to bring it back to life,” Darius replied.
Gray watched the waitress giggle and blush before he looked out the window at the dark parking lot.
He wasn’t feeling too well. The thick layer of numbness was slowly thinning out. It messed with his focus; he heard too many voices—the lady two tables away had the most annoying fucking laugh—and he grew restless. He felt like a restrained animal. Always out of place.
There were the ghosts too. Jonas and Milo lived in his head, constantly pleading for their lives. The smells never dissipated either. Gray could pick up the faintest scents that reminded him of…everything. When a waiter passed with what had to be grilled fish, Gray had to hold his breath. He’d had enough of that on the island. Sometimes, a random voice rose above the din and reminded him of one of the guys they’d lost. Other times, it was a movement or someone’s tic.
Fuck.
He ran a hand through his hair and pulled out his phone. He needed to distract himself before the others noticed.
As their drinks arrived, Jayden received a box of crayons to color the designs on his paper placemat.
He eyed the crayons like he’d never used one before.
Gray abandoned his phone and picked up a red crayon. “I was never good at staying within the lines.” He began coloring the front of a house. There was a barn in the background, a tractor, a big sun, horses on the lawn—because that made sense—and some ducks walking toward a pond in the corner. “What color do you think the horses should be?”
Jayden observed for a bit, his gaze wandering between Gray’s coloring and the crayons on the table.
“Black?” he asked rather than stated.
Gray nodded. “Black is a great choice.”
It was painful. The boy knew how to use a knife but had never owned a coloring book.
Gray cursed Jayden’s parents to hell—if they weren’t already there.
“Ducks are brown or white,” Jayden said frankly.
“True.” Gray slowed down when Jayden seemed to get the hang of it. “That’s great, buddy.”
Leaning back in his seat, he watched Jayden for a moment. He was getting into it. He was good too. A quick learner.
Gray ruffled the boy’s hair lightly, then picked up his phone again. But movement across the table caught his eye, and he reluctantly glanced over at Darius, not very surprised to find him observing them. Darius’s hazel eyes were unreadable; they always were when he didn’t wanna reveal what he was thinking.
Despite having gotten better at deciphering Darius’s expressions and anticipating his line of thinking, the man was still a professional, and Gray could probably read a random stranger on the street better than the man across from him. Mr. Former Private Military Contractor Gone Restaurant Owner.
Gray took a swig of his water and returned his attention to his phone once more.
He pulled up Google Maps and put the phone down on the table. Then he pinched the screen and zoomed out. They’d reach Cleveland tonight, no problem. And tomorrow… Chicago would be five or six hours away from Cleveland. The stop after that, along the route the app recommended, would be Minneapolis. Eleven hours from Cleveland. Which was doable if they drove in shifts, but the thought of reaching Minneapolis tomorrow tightened an invisible noose around Gray’s neck.
For being such a big country, it didn’t have to take very long to drive through it.
At this rate, they’d be home in Washington in three or four days.
Christ, he’d just left Florida. He wanted more time. He wasn’t ready.
Something brown appeared in the corner of his eye, and he shifted his gaze to Jayden’s coloring.
A brown lawn. All right. Jayden colored the lawn brown in big strokes, leaving some patches untouched.
Darius cleared his throat and planted his elbows on the table, and he cracked his knuckles absently. “Where are we heading tomorrow?”
Gray pinched the screen again. “Minneapolis, I guess.”
“You in a rush?”
Gray’s brow went up slightly. “The opposite, but it’s not like we have any other plans.”
“We could make some.”
“Huh?”
Darius lifted a shoulder. “You’re not ready to go home, and no one says you have to.”
Gray furrowed his brow.
“It’ll take some time before Willow has a good lead for us,” Darius went on. “While we wait, we could take the long way home.” He nodded slightly at Jayden. “Let him see more of the country.”
Was he serious?
Darius leaned forward and grabbed his beer bottle, lifting it to his lips. “Maybe a road trip will be good for you.” He took a swig. “We’ll return the rental. I have a buddy in Louisville we could borrow a car from.”
“A road trip,” Gray stated.
“Is that so hard to imagine?” Darius chuckled, confused. “I told you I wouldn’t let you avoid what you’re running from. I didn’t say you couldn’t be on the road.”
Gray didn’t know what to say. The prospect of taking the scenic route and possibly delaying the homecoming a few days—or maybe even more—was insanely appealing. But foreign. Never in a million years had he thought Darius would suggest such a thing.
He dropped his gaze to his phone and typed in Louisville as the next destination.
It was a six-hour drive south of here. They could probably make it to Columbus tonight; it was about the same distance from where they were now as it was to Cleveland. Only, in a new direction. One that would take them away from their route home.
Gray swallowed and felt something flutter in his gut.
They could head farther south after that. Perhaps show Jayden Nashville and Memphis…not that Gray had ever been to either. His mother had grown up in the South, though. Shreveport. Unable to help himself, he moved a finger on the screen and shifted the map westward. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona…
He met Darius’s patient expression and nodded.
Please.
Gray didn’t know where the road would take them any longer, and it was exactly what he needed.
It felt like a weight just flew off his shoulders.
He could breathe.
“It’s settled, then,” Darius said. “We’ll travel a bit.”
Gray tested a smile, feeling weirdly nervous. In a good way.
Six
Gray rolled down the window and took a deep breath, inhaling the dry desert air.
He’d been dozing on and off the past couple hours since they’d had breakfast outside of Dallas, and his mind was finally at peace again. The road stretched long, the landscape was burned and dead, and yet…everything was perfect at the moment. Jayden was humming in the back seat and playing games on the iPad they’d bought.
Darius was driving—for the first time. That friend of his in Louisville was former military and ran a short-term leasing company, and he’d let them borrow a Jeep Wrangler for free, on the condition that they delivered it to his location in Bakersfield within two weeks. A great deal, Gray thought, though Darius was mostly happy because he’d get to drive an off-road vehicle. Well, that was until Gray put his foot down. Darius had been freaking stabbed. He’d needed a couple days of actual rest, so Gray had forced him to get comfortable the first leg of their new journey.
This morning, Darius had had enough and wanted to drive, and there was no denying that he looked at ease. Window rolled down, Ray-Ban shades on, one arm resting casually on the door, his other hand in his lap with three fingers holding the wheel, head bobbing slowly to the radio.
The ventilation system blasted some heat, compensating for the fact that it wasn’t actually warm in the South yet. But low sixties was a lot better than the midthirties Philadelphia had had to offer.
Here, the sky was blue, and the sun was shining brightly.
Gray extended his hand out the window and moved it like a wave as the
music on the radio swept him away for a second. The song was heavy and poignant, a mix between alternative rock and country, and the singer sang about being taken through high water and hell. The tune was almost sluggish, playing on like the drummer and guitars were wading through thick molasses, but the harmonies pushed through it and built up a crescendo that sent a shiver down Gray’s spine.
“Any response from Cole yet?” Darius asked.
Gray shook his head.
He’d texted Cole last night to say they were in Texas. Cole was from here, and Darius had suggested they visit to check in on him. Gray was wholly on board but wasn’t too surprised there’d been no reply. Cole had mentioned more than once that as soon as he got home, he wanted to close himself in with his family for a while and help his dad tend to the ranch.
“Too bad you didn’t put a tracker on him,” Gray said casually.
Darius snorted quietly. “He’s not a runner.”
Whatever. “By the way, how did you find us at the park?” It was something Gray had thought about briefly the other day, but he’d forgotten to bring it up. “I was watching the bench where I left the tracker. You didn’t go near it—I would’ve seen you. Instead, you showed up at the truck.”
“If the advance is easy, it’s an ambush.” It sounded like a quote. “You check the perimeters before you go to the target location.” He paused and frowned to himself. “If I’d applied that to my dating history, I could’ve saved myself a lot of hassle.”
Gray’s forehead creased in confusion. “Like, what, you should’ve interrogated a woman’s family before you went out with her?”
Darius nodded and tapped his temple.
Gray resisted rolling his eyes; he had a more pressing question. “Don’t you think I would’ve seen you if you’d been lurking around the perimeters a bunch first?”
“First of all, no—it’s called stealth. Second of all, no, because I didn’t have to lurk. I knew exactly where you were.”
Frustration bled through Gray’s response. “How—”
“Because I planted a second tracker on you, knucklehead.”
Gray blanched.
“The bottle cap,” Darius said. “You found the letter, right?”
What the fuck. Gray tensed his jaw and pulled out his wallet, where he’d saved the bottle cap in the coin pocket. He picked it up and brought it close, inspecting the cap. The underside, rather. Using his fingernail, he scraped off the plastic pressure seal and cursed. He was such an idiot. So was Darius, but for other reasons.
“You’re un-fucking-believable,” he muttered. “So much for the bottle cap meaning a lot to you.”
“You won’t find a single lie in that letter,” Darius told him. “It does mean a lot, because you mean a lot, and the cap ensured I could find you.”
Gray was too irritated to absorb the compliment—or whatever it could be called. “You gave me some bullshit story about your dad giving you and your brothers bottle caps.”
“He did.” Darius slowed down as they approached a lone tractor on the highway, and he tested switching to the lane for oncoming traffic to see if it was safe to pass. “When I went off the deep end after an assignment seven years ago, he tapped into my sentimentality and gave me a bottle cap to remind me of home—that my family was always there. Which was true, but he gave it to me so he could know where I was when I headed up to their cabin in Whistler to drink myself into oblivion.” He paused. “When Lias was dumped by his girlfriend, he was heartbroken and took off.” He spoke of his youngest brother. “But Pop predicted the escape and sent him off with a bottle cap to remind Lias of our grandfather’s alcoholism. To let him know that drinking his ass off wouldn’t make shit better.”
“He didn’t use that approach on you.”
Darius shook his head and smirked faintly. “He knew it wouldn’t have worked.” He quieted down as he drove past the tractor, and Gray rolled up his window a bit. “For one reason or another, we’ve all fucked off at least once in our lives.”
Gray had nothing to say. His mind was a jumbled mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He could recognize the concern, the thoughtfulness, and, well, kudos on the creativity, but it bugged him. And part of him wondered if it bugged him so much because he mattered a lot to Darius for the wrong reasons. Gray didn’t want to be the pitiful victim that required a babysitter.
Ignoring how petulant he felt, he extended the bottle cap. “Well, you tracked me down. You can have this back.”
Darius turned his head slightly toward the bottle cap. “You can throw out the tracker. Battery’s almost dead anyway. But keep the cap.”
“There’s a battery in here?” Gray asked incredulously. Then he brought the cap close again and traced the thin wires leading to that little metal plate with three tiny bumps.
“Not a very good one,” Darius answered. “It’s supposed to be attached to a device like a phone so it can harness power from it. On its own, it lasts about a week.”
Of course. Naturally. Obviously. Made total sense.
Gray shook his head and pocketed the cap and his wallet again. “So, should I feel special, or is there a Bottle Cap Club for everyone who’s received one?”
Darius let out a laugh and planted a hand on Gray’s leg, giving it a quick squeeze. “If only you knew how special you are, knucklehead.”
Fuck you.
He hated when Darius said things like that. It crammed more questions and doubts into his head—when all Gray should focus on was getting over the fucker next to him.
He slumped back and rubbed his forehead.
Even though the hand was gone from his leg, he could still feel it.
He wanted it back.
He wanted…too much.
After spending a few hours hiking through a desert landscape Jayden was weirdly fascinated by, they stopped outside of El Paso for the night. There was a cluster of motels, diners, a small grocery store, and Mexican restaurants, and Darius went inside one of the motels to get them a room.
Gray and Jayden stepped out of the SUV and stretched a bit.
“I like this one the best.” Jayden showed him a rounded rock he’d found during the hike.
“It’s pretty.” Gray smoothed down Jayden’s hair by running his fingers through it. “How’s your headache?”
It was possible they’d run out of water on the way back to the car.
The sunset in the desert was something else, though.
Jayden closed his eyes, evidently enjoying the sensations. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Good.” Gray scratched his scalp lightly and earned a hum of approval from Jayden. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. Can we get tacos?”
“Definitely.” They’d seen the one-dollar-taco signs coming off the interstate, and Jayden had exclaimed that he could buy eighty-two tacos with his money.
He’d bought a toy in Memphis the other day, his first one since he and Jonas had ended up on the streets. Both Gray and Darius had told him he didn’t have to pay for the action figure himself, but then…the look on Jayden’s face when he walked up to the register with the doll, clutching a twenty-dollar bill… Fucking Christ. This kid had wormed his way into Gray’s heart so quickly. Jayden had been so happy, he’d barely known how to react. He’d been quiet and smiling widely, eyes glassy. It’d been the first time Gray had seen the eight-year-old in him.
Gray peered around them in the parking lot, deciding between the two closest Mexican restaurants sharing the same lot as the motel. There were more on the other side of the main road, but the cantina closest to them served breakfast too. If dinner was good, they’d know where to go tomorrow morning.
When Darius returned, they grabbed their bags and trailed up to the second story where their room was just a few doors away from the stairs.
Darius strode into the room and dropped his duffel on the nearest bed.
Jayden skipped over to the other bed and flung his backpack on the bedspread.
Me
anwhile, there was no pullout couch in this room. Gray had specifically asked for three beds—or two beds if there was a sofa bed—the previous nights.
“Did they not have any family rooms?” Gray asked.
Darius’s forehead creased as he looked around the modest space. “Didn’t ask. Is something missing?”
Gray lifted a brow. “A third place to sleep, maybe?”
At that, Darius rolled his eyes. “Since when—”
“Since I decided to get my shit together,” he interrupted irritably. Perhaps it was easy for Darius, but it wasn’t for Gray. If they crawled into bed together, it was only a matter of time before he’d seek comfort from Darius, and before they knew it, Gray would be begging to get fucked.
“Don’t fight,” Jayden said uncertainly. “I can sleep on the fl—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” Gray rushed out the words and felt a brick of guilt smack into him. “We’ll make it work, sweetheart. Come on, let’s go eat so many tacos that we almost burst.”
Darius watched them but said nothing, so Gray took the lead and ushered Jayden outside again.
Christ. The boy’s offer made Gray’s stomach churn.
“We’re not fighting,” he made sure to add. “We’re just bitching. It’s what we do.”
Jayden squinted up to him. “You’re bitches?”
Darius chuckled behind them.
“He sure is,” Gray whispered conspiratorially.
Jayden snickered.
Jayden’s eyes went large when the waiter arrived with their food. Since they’d all wanted tacos, they had ordered a family special: a platter with twenty soft tacos. They had chicken, ground beef, shrimp, and pulled pork to choose from, and each taco was topped with a shitload of cheese. In the middle of the platter were pockets of salsa, guacamole, and queso. A bowl of chips was already on the table.