by Nikki Wild
I let my hand drop, arm limp at my side. The tears were coming faster now, but I didn’t sob along with them. Didn’t make a noise. Just watched him be swallowed by regret, the way an antelope is swallowed by a python. He wanted to come to me, to touch me, to make me stop crying. He wanted that - but he knew he couldn’t do it. He made one jerky motion, arms and legs both coming forward, a single step in my direction, and then he just went limp.
“No,” he said. “You stay here. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to town. We need to split up for a while. You need to stay here, Misty. I can’t let anything happen to you…”
His voice caught, and he looked away, trying to pull himself back into that macho rage that fueled this whole disaster. I’d never been able to read anyone as well as I read him that night. It was like opening a book; I didn’t have to think about understanding the words on the page. I just did.
“I’m not letting you die because I fucked this up,” he finally said. “Stay here until it’s over. I’ll finish it without you. Send someone up here to make sure you’re safe, and finish it down at the Bend. And that’ll be it.”
I couldn’t say anything. Even though this big awful part of me wanted to forgive him right away and say he should stay and that we needed to do this together because we worked so well together and dammit I wanted to be together with him…
But then I saw it. I could see it in his eyes as clear as day. There was a reason he was acting like this, and it had nothing to do with Trick or his bullshit.
“What happened Rev? What the hell are you keeping from me?” I said, finally cutting the silence between us. “What did Trick say to you out there?”
“He got a phone call from my parole officer, Misty. I’m going back to jail.”
“Your parole officer?” I replied, my voice breaking halfway through the sentence. “What the hell is going on?”
“Some prostitute says I roughed her up. She’s lying through her teeth, but the cops won’t give two shits about that. When you’re on parole, you’re guilty until proven fucking innocent,” he said with anger flaring in his voice.
“Why would somebody do this?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“I’m being taken out of the game Misty. The people coming after you know what they’re doing. I knocked on one too many doors and asked too many questions. They’re gonna have me locked up and I’ll be lucky if I’m out in ten fucking years. If I go away, I can’t keep my promises. I can’t keep you safe. I’m sorry Misty...”
I’d never once heard Rev apologize for anything.
I couldn’t stop myself from playing back his words in my head over and over again. I stared right through him as his voice echoed.
I’m sorry.
Chapter 26
Rev
Contrary to the evidence put forth by everything I did and said, I’m not a stupid man.
I knew exactly why I said what I said to Misty. I was trying to piss her off. I thought maybe I could lessen the blow when I disappeared. If these people were paying some prostitute to say I beat the shit out of her, I knew that was only an opening shot. They wouldn’t stop. Criminals were supposed to have a code of honor, but the asshole looking for Misty wasn’t following it. If I was going to stay a free man, I needed to get the hell out of this city, state, county, and fucking country.
I needed to leave Misty behind.
But it shook me to my hardened core to admit it. So I didn’t admit it.
We ate pasta in silence. Misty looked lost in thoughts, like she might be able to come up with some idea to get us out of this fucked up mess.
“If you go back alone, where will you stay?”
There was no inflection in her words, so it didn’t really seem like a question. And she was looking out the window when she said it, so I couldn’t read a question in her eyes. Thank goodness for context clues.
“I guess I can stay with Mickey.”
“Maybe if you talk to your parole officer…”
“If I call him, we’ll be having that chat on the inside of a prison cell,” I replied.
“Don’t get sent back to jail.”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t help me if you’re in jail.”
“Misty…” This was killing me. This conversation that wasn’t a conversation at all. Our words were nothing but a broken façade. This was our attempt to be civil in the face of the truth.
“What?” She spat the word like a snake spits venom, spinning in her seat to look at me. Her brown eyes were a choppy, chocolate river. A rio grande of anger.
I wanted to find the words to fix things between us before I left, but before anything could make it out of my lips, her phone vibrated loud against the table. Her eyes dropped down to the screen and quickly swept back up to my own, the anger within them replaced with tears.
“What? Misty, what? What does it say?”
She didn’t answer.
“Misty! What! Tell me what the goddamn text said!”
“My house,” she said, her voice a high, pained moan. “My house.”
“What about it?” I barked, wondering if I should pull the car over.
“It’s gone,” she said. “My house is gone! Oh, my god…”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?”
The only thing I could think of was the Wizard of Oz. Misty’s house, with its lawn flamingos and blue shutters spiraling up into the air.
“Fire,” she said. “There was a fire…”
“Arson?”
“I don’t know. Luis says don’t come back. Luis says it’s all gone, and the cops…”
Her voice trailed off again.
“What about the cops, Misty?” I said, voice bordering on rage.
“They’re after you. The cops think you burned the place down. Somebody told them I’ve been kidnapped. Luis says we need to run.”
“Shit!” I slammed my hands on table, grabbing her phone and throwing it forcefully against the wall. She watched in shock and surprise as I stood up and walked over to the broken device, smashing it repeatedly under the heel of my boot. I turned to look at her; she was shaking all over, shock setting in, eyelids rapidly opening and closing.
“If they think I took you, they’ll be tracking that thing. They’re going to know exactly where we are.”
I stepped back toward her, unable to stop my hand from reaching across to grab hers. By some miracle, she didn’t scream and pull her hand away and claw my eyes out like she should have. She didn’t do anything.
“We need to get out of here. Now.”
Chapter 27
Misty
“Shit.”
Rev hunched over the wheel, breathing the curse word as though he didn’t want me to hear.
“What? What now?” I groaned, lifting my head off the window. We’d been driving for twenty minutes down a dirt track behind the safehouse that could barely be called a road. Rev clearly didn’t want to use the dirt road we’d come in on, and I understood why. If the cops were coming, we damn sure didn’t want to run straight into them.
“I don’t know where to go, Misty,” Rev snapped, cutting off my thoughts. I flinched at his anger, then felt my own rising to respond. But he cast another glance my way, eyes implying apology. He was wound tight. So was I. We couldn’t go back to the Bend. And now, we weren’t even safe at the safe house. We were trapped, bugs in amber, frozen in motion. We could drive as much as we wanted. There was nowhere to go.
“A motel?” I offered, rubbing my temples. I didn’t see any other option. We needed someplace to regroup, come up with a new plan. Rev nodded and kept driving, taking us to the highway. The silence between us was oppressive, but I knew he was just focused on getting us somewhere safe.
The Daniel Boone Motor Lodge offered three main amenities: cable, an ice machine, and anonymity. We paid in cash under a fake name. Continuing our stream of fabulous luck, the only available room had a single queen-size bed.
“Do you have any cots?” Rev ask
ed the chain-smoking, 700-year-old man at the front desk.
“Eh?”
“COTS?!”
“No cots. What? You fightin’? No fightin’. You break anything, you pay for it.”
He narrowed his eyes, coughed, and leaned across the table.
“Need dope? Give you a number, you need dope…”
“We’re good,” Rev sneered, grabbing the key and ushering me out.
Our room wasn’t fancy, but at least it was clean. I could see the outline of the springs through the sheets and I knew it would be a long night. Purrloin was even less impressed, and promptly sat herself down at the door, scratching at it in a vain effort to leave. I knew exactly what she was thinking.
I glanced over at the phone on the bedside table. I knew I’d have plenty of calls to make sooner or later. The police would want answers, and so would the insurance company for my house… I couldn’t imagine trying to deal with any of it. Not yet. Not with Rev sitting there on a squeaky armchair, staring at the blank TV, waiting for me to say something. Of course, I was waiting for him to say something too.
I could just keep waiting, expecting him to say something. But I knew he never would. If I wanted to resolve this - or begin to try to sort of resolve this - I’d have to move first.
“Rev….”
“I’m sorry I tried to push you away.”
I literally gasped. Overdramatic or not, it’s the reaction my body had. He didn’t look at me when he said it, or after. I almost wondered if I’d made it up in my head. If he hadn’t said a goddamn thing, but I’d heard what I wanted to hear. But then he turned to me, eyes impassive, and he said it again.
“You’re too damn good for this,” he said. “And too damn good for me.”
“How do you figure?” I scoffed.
“You’re legit. You’ve got a degree, a job, friends you can show your back to without worrying about getting knifed. You could leave this town behind and never look back.”
“Oh, Rev,” I said, shaking my head. “You believe that all you want. But don’t take it out on me. You think I judge you for your life? Me? Of all people? I’m not sitting in this shitty hotel room with you because I’m heiress to the Colgate fortune.”
“You didn’t ask to be Millions’ daughter,” Rev pointed out.
“Yeah, well, whose son are you? The President? The last Nobel Peace Prize recipient? What did your old man do? Why are you in the life?”
Rev’s fingernails dug into the armchair, scraping its tweed fabric.
“He drove,” he growled. “Same as me.”
“And you think if he was a steel worker, you wouldn’t have been a steel worker? If he’d been a dentist, you couldn’t have been an insurance agent?”
“You’re not a criminal,” Rev snapped.
“No,” I said. “I got lucky. I was born without a dick. My dad raised me to walk the right kind of lines because I was his little princess. He wanted me to be safe. He taught me to never trust anyone. If I was a boy, you bet your ass he would have taught me how to steal everything in sight.”
“You can’t just blame your old man for everything,” Rev said. “Every decision I’ve ever made was mine.”
“Yeah, well, you decided not to snitch on Millions when you were arrested,” I said. “And you decided to help me. And you decided to risk your ass to save my cat. And you decided to help your brother. You wanna talk about people being better than other people? You’re a better man than you think, Rev. You’ve got it in your head that I’m so damn special, but I’m the pretty girl fucking your whole life up. You didn’t have to be here. You could have walked out of that prison and never said another word to me, but you didn’t.”
Shit. I hadn’t meant to say that. His head jerked on his neck, turning to look at me.
“Don’t,” he said, voice quaking just the slightest bit. I remembered him looking at me in the morning, when I’d said that very word, meant the same thing. We were both trying so hard not to. Why? Because we figured the other couldn’t help but hurt us?
“Tell me what you saw. That morning. When you watched me sleep. When I told you not to.”
“Misty, I don’t want this,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s not fair. It won’t end well for either of us.”
“I don’t want it either, but it looks like we’ve both got it, whether we want it or not,” I said, and got to my feet. I went to him, stood above him, leaning down to put my hands on his arms. “We keep fighting this, Rev. I’ve got this voice in my head telling me you want to destroy me. That everything you say, everything you do, is nothing but words. I’ve got my old man telling me that a boy is a shortcut to a broken heart. What have you got? Tell me. Tell me what makes you not want this.”
He stared back at me, our eyes level. He didn’t even go for a glance down at my cleavage, which was impressive. He didn’t speak for a long time. Almost long enough for me to give up again.
“I guess I got the same voice,” he finally said, sounding pained. “Telling me a woman never sticks around. She’s always leave you. Always. Especially the good ones. And Misty, you’re the best. Best I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not gonna leave you, Rev,” I said, blinking, realizing how true that statement could be - if he let it.
“Well, I’m not gonna hurt you,” he breathed. He wrestled his arms free from my hands, took me by the waist. My heart hitched, stretched, seared. It was like setting a joint back in place. The brightest flash of pain, and then the sense that things were finally right. “I couldn’t ever hurt you, Misty. I love you more than freedom. I love you more than my life.”
For the first time, he kissed me without hunger. Without heat. Without expectation. It was just sweet. Just full, sweet, and a little bit sad. He pulled me into his lap, I grabbed his face in my hands.
“Crying?” he asked, pulling back. And that’s when I realized that I was. We were so impossibly screwed. We were hiding from cops and criminals with nothing to show for it but each other, and this dangerous man just told me he loves me. I spent a lifetime waiting for a moment like this. I was crying because our moment happened to come at gunpoint.
“I love you too, Rev.”
Chapter 28
Rev
This time, when I laid her down, I made sure I didn’t fuck her.
I made sure we were making love.
She wasn’t crying anymore, but I could still taste the salt on her lips. On her back, she moaned, let me undress her piece by piece. Her breasts, each perfect handful, were warm in my palms, her nipples taut and needy. When she pulled at my shirt, whimpering, I let her take it off, but then I was right back where I belonged. On top of her, my lips on her lips, my tongue in her mouth, my hands on her body.
I cupped her breasts, holding them from their sides, rolling my thumbs over her nipples until her lips protested against mine. I tasted her cheeks, slipped down to her chin. She was all mine. She wasn’t leaving. Not tonight, at least. I wouldn’t let her. Wouldn’t let her go.
When my mouth finally found her chest, I brought one hand to her hair and held it tight. My mouth closed over one nipple. Her cry of pleasure had me fevered, and I sucked hard, feasting on her - each breast in turn. She was a buffet of pleasure, and I wanted to sample everything. There wasn’t an inch of flesh I didn’t want to taste. I could smell her growing arousal, and I could hear it in the panting breath that forced her chest to flutter. Wrapping her thighs around my waist, she felt so hot it could have burned me. If I wasn’t burning just as hot in return.
“Rev,” she whimpered. “The way you touch me…”
“I know, baby,” I said, moving lower now, brushing my lips down the tight slope of her stomach, dipping into her bellybutton, my hands running like water down her sides. I could feel her muscles under her skin, that’s how deeply I searched her body. Straining and tensing with each writhing thrust of her hips.
I was so fucking hard, it hurt, waiting to pierce her. But first I wanted to taste her. I wanted to c
atch her pleasure on my tongue. She was rain, my mouth was a desert. The thin curls above her mound were fragrant with arousal, tickled my cheeks, I rubbed my face in them, savoring the sensation. This. Here. A woman. My woman. Her sex, opening for me, waiting for me to bring it to life.
“Please,” she moaned, hands tracing my scalp, unwilling to push but insistent all the same. Two fingers between her lips and I groaned. She was so wet. A thin, sweet stream of desire. I brought my fingers to my lips and sucked them clean, watching her from my vantage point between her thighs. Her brown hair was melted chocolate spreading on the sheets, her breasts two mountains with a valley between them, her face turned up to the ceiling in sweet anticipation.
I grabbed her thighs, pulled them apart, and watched her lips glisten. Slowly, I reached forward, and traced one lip with the tip of my tongue. Her body jerked. The other side begged for the same treatment. Her heat against my face turned that shitty motel room into an island paradise; an exotic jungle, fragrant with flowers, demanding to be explored.
And there was the rarest fruit; my tongue traced her hood, barely touching her clit. She bucked and screamed my name, her hands demanding more, pulling my face against her. I couldn’t tease her anymore, not if I wanted us both to keep our sanity. I needed to make her come.
My tongue swathed and circled her clit, rounding it again and again, flicking it until it was swollen and hard between my lips. She gasped and squirmed, grabbed at her chest to play with her breasts. Her thighs were slowly tightening around my head, a vise. Her stomach trembled. I wanted her to explode. I slid my fingers inside her, found the deepest well of her pleasure, and stroked it. My tongue wrapped around her clit, nudging it hard, pressing until her body went stiff.
“Rev.”