For the first time in weeks, I sat back and watched. I wasn’t worried about dangers that could jump out at any moment, or gun-toting madmen. I wasn’t worried about the fire that had changed our lives forever.
This could be a good life.
Bonnie caught me watching her from time to time, a smile finding its way to her face. She was totally in her element. While I wanted to imagine that this could be our lives, I also knew that she’d never settled before.
Was this any different? Was this sliver of peace enough to tempt her to stay?
As though she could sense my trepidation, Bonnie crossed to me, planting herself in my lap as I sat in a chair at the table. The Kid tossed knives, missing even the closest target. I rested one of my arms over her legs, tipping my head up to press a kiss to her mouth.
“You okay?” she asked, her arms hanging loosely around my neck.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing between Will and Clara and my brother. “Wanna get out of here?” I gave her a lopsided grin. We could sneak out and they’d never know it. Bonnie climbed out of my lap.
“Where are we goin’?” she asked.
“To find some trouble,” I said, winking at her. A grin lit up her beautiful face. I took her by the hand and led her back into the house. She clutched my arm as we walked toward the front. I pulled the truck keys from my pocket, swinging them on my index finger as we made our way into the kitchen.
Then I stopped short. Mickey sat at the table, Gabriela beside him. He slumped forward, fresh tears on his cheeks. Gabriela gave us a forced smile. Then Mickey noticed us, his eyes showing me how lost he was to the drink.
“I never knew she had another kid,” Mickey said, seemingly losing himself to another sob.
“You wouldn’t have,” Bonnie said beside me. “There was no way for her to tell you.” Mickey looked up at her, eyes rimmed in red.
“You’re sure they’re dead?” he asked, the words hard as though he didn’t want to believe what we’d already told him.
“I buried them myself,” I said, tension building in my shoulders once more.
“Buried who?” came a small voice from behind me.
Fuck.
I closed my eyes as I dropped Bonnie’s hand and turned to my brother, who clutched the entryway to the kitchen.
“No one—” I lied.
“Liar. Who’d you bury? Was it the guys that attacked us?” he asked, in that way only an innocent kid could.
“Kid, I—” The words caught in my throat. An image of my parents’ bodies, clutched together as the smoke rose above them, came to my mind. Up until now, I’d avoided having this conversation to shield him from the truth. I didn’t want him to have nightmares like I did. I knew I’d have to tell him one day. I’d just hoped it wouldn’t be any time soon. I crossed to him, squatting down to his level. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Mom and Pop. They—”
“No, they’re comin’. They’ll be here,” he said, shaking me off. “They’ll find us. Mom promised.”
My grief was a living thing, clawing its way up my throat.
“Harry—” I said, reaching for him again. He took a broad step back, eyes wide.
“You haven’t called me Harry in a long time,” he said.
“Kid,” I corrected, trying to reach for him again. I knew that I needed to talk to him and not at him. Bonnie had taught me that. “They’re not coming. They didn’t make it.”
“You’re wrong,” Harry said, his chest puffing out at me.
“Kid, I buried them. When I made you wait by the trees outside the house,” I said. It hit him then. He took another step backward, right into the wall. I’d left him alone a long time that day, and he hadn’t understood it then. His eyes grew wide, filling with tears.
He understood now.
“That’s how you got Pop’s ring,” he whispered. My heart wrenched in my chest, and my knees crashed to the floor. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know how to help him through grief I hadn’t even fully processed myself.
“Kid—” His name came out from between my lips, strangled.
“No!” He darted down the hall. Seconds later, the door to his room slammed. I hung my head, defeated. I’d betrayed him. I didn’t know if it was something we would ever come back from.
Bonnie put her hands on my shoulders. I reached up to cover one of hers with my own, comforted by her touch. But I wasn’t the one who needed her now. I stood, slowly, my own eyes hot.
“Go to him, please,” I said, the emotions in my throat choking my words off. Without a sound, Bonnie nodded and pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. She squeezed my hands, then headed down the hall.
I turned back to the table, stealing Mickey’s bottle of tequila. Then I walked out to sit in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. I needed a minute. That was all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Bonnie
I pressed my forehead against The Kid’s bedroom door and listened to his frantic sobbing for a long time. It was this part that I remembered the most, the chaos of grief as it crashed into you so hard that all you could do was sob as it swept you away. Only Jones didn't like it when I cried. He beat the tears dry, until they filled me up with a kind of poison that’d turned me bitter. So I let The Kid cry. When his sobbing ebbed, I knocked tentatively.
“Go away, Jesse!” he shouted, and something slammed against the door, shaking it in the frame.
“It’s not Jesse,” I said, my voice quiet and calm. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t throw anything either. “Can I come in?” When he didn’t answer, I cracked the door open and peered inside. He was curled around his pillow, face buried, shoulders still shaking. Instead of trying to talk him through his grief, I climbed into the bed beside him, the way Jesse had done for me earlier. I wrapped him in my arms. My fingers brushed through his hair until his tears started afresh. He turned swiftly and flung himself against me. I clutched him tight, wishing more than anything I could take this pain away from him.
It could have been hours, but I didn’t move. I let him lean on my strength the way I’d leaned on Jesse’s when I needed to fall apart. I pressed a kiss into his hair, and he raised his bloodshot eyes to look at me, sniffling.
“Bonnie?” he asked. “They can’t just be gone.”
Something sharp twisted in my chest at his broken words. I wiped the salt tracks from his cheeks and helped him sit up next to me. I blinked back the heat gathering in my own eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. The Kid mimicked me without realizing it until he looked steadier.
“They aren’t gone, Kid,” I told him. He gripped my hands tight. “You remember that day by the lake?” He nodded, his unruly blonde curls flopping into his eyes. I pushed them back. “You saw Jesse smile and you said he looked just like your pop.”
“That doesn’t count,” he said, sniffling and dragging the sleeve of his shirt over his face.
“Yes, it does,” I said, leaning forward. “I don’t know what your parents believed, but I don’t think the people we love are ever really gone. Just like you saw a shadow of your dad in Jesse that day, I’m sure Jesse sees a lot of your parents in you.”
“What about your mom?” he asked. “Do you see her?”
“Every single time I look at you,” I said, my eyes hot. His unwavering kindness and the burning curiosity in his eyes reminded me so much of my mother’s goodness. Her unconditional love.
“She would have loved you,” I said. He leaned back against the headboard. “Sometimes I think my mom and your parents brought us together because they knew we needed each other,” I muttered. He nodded solemnly, as if that made perfect sense.
“You remind me of my mom sometimes, mostly when you’re yelling at Jesse,” he said, and a small smile curled on his mouth. “He lied to me.” I nodded, my eyes falling to the quilt, tracing the pattern beneath my fingertip.
“He did,” I admitted. “But what’s rule number three?”
“Keep your word,” he said, grumbling as he crossed
his arms over his chest.
“Outlaws may steal, lie, or cheat. But always keep our promises,” I finished. He swallowed down his tears. “Jesse made a promise to your parents, Kid. He promised to get you here. To keep you safe. He lied to you, but he kept his promise. You have to forgive him, okay?”
He hugged me again, for a long time, before nodding into my shirt.
“Promise you won’t leave us, Bonnie,” he said, the words small against my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my jaw tight to keep from letting the hot tears fall from my eyes. I couldn’t make that promise. I couldn’t. Because I loved him, both of them, too much to put them at risk.
“I don’t wanna lose you, too,” he said. I kissed the top of his head and rocked him against me for a while, struggling for words.
“I’m not a sweater you flung off at bedtime, Kid. You can’t lose me,” I said, forcing a playful tone into my voice and struggling to regain my composure. He pulled away then, offering me a sad smile. It was a smile, nonetheless.
“I’m glad we found you,” The Kid said, his voice uncharacteristically solemn. I opened my mouth but couldn’t find any words.
Found. I’d been found.
Instead, I offered him a sad smile. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Jesse leaning against the doorframe and wondered briefly how much he’d overheard. I cuffed The Kid on the chin with a breathy laugh.
“Alright, handsome, stop charmin’ me and go make up with your brother.”
The Kid pushed off the bed and walked over to Jesse warily, eyeing him with his arms crossed over his chest. He squared off against Jesse, staring him down.
“I’ll forgive you,” The Kid said, his face a serious mask. “On one condition.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. He was extorting Jesse emotionally. Maybe I had been a bad influence on him after all.
“Can I keep the horse we got from the wagon? Can I name her and everything?” The Kid asked, looking between me and Jesse quickly. “I want to be able to ride with y’all when we go on our next adventure.”
Not if, when.
“Sure, Kid,” Jesse said, crushing him tight to his chest. Until The Kid complained that Jesse was hugging him too long and squirmed away, shouting to Will that he needed help naming his horse. I shook my head, incredulous. His resilience astounded me. I unfolded from my position on the mattress and pushed to my feet, feeling shaken.
“That kid is gonna be all kinds of trouble in a few years,” I said, smiling as I crossed the room to Jesse. I started to walk into the hallway, but Jesse stopped me, pressing me gently against the other side of the doorframe, keeping me trapped in the steel cage of his arms.
“Gonna be? He already is,” he said. “It’s your fault.”
“Good,” I said, proudly. “Every time he gives you hell, you’ll think of me.”
Jesse’s eyes dimmed, turning dark at my words. I swallowed down the many things that’d been running through my mind for the last few days. He opened his mouth to say something, but Will’s voice echoed down the hall, the back door slamming open and shut again. Jesse’s attention was diverted for a second. I bit my bottom lip to keep the doubts sealed inside of me. When he turned his attention back to me, something in his demeanor had changed.
“Want to go for a drive?” he asked. I didn’t. Not if it meant having the conversation we’d both been avoiding. Not if it meant leaving them. Instead of saying that, I nodded.
Gripping my hand, he led me down the hallway and out one of the side doors to the front yard. It was still littered with bottles and debris. He crossed to the truck and opened the door for me. My mind whirred, thoughts forming and shattering in the span of seconds as I slid onto the seat. He climbed in beside me, and as he turned the engine over, my heart leapt into my throat.
“I know what you want to talk about and—"
He leaned over and kissed me swiftly, silencing me as he shifted gears and backed out of the drive. We drove forward a second later, earning stares from everyone we passed. I pushed my hair behind my ear nervously, biting my thumbnail to the quick. How was I supposed to say what I needed to say if he kept kissing me?
He reached over, his hand covering mine. I pulled away. The lines around his eyes deepened, and he dragged his hand back, balled into a fist on his knee. I couldn’t think when he touched me, and I needed to think. The truck pulled through the gate a minute later, and my heart was in my throat.
“Bonnie, I—"
“Let me talk,” I said, my breath heaving in my chest. “If I don’t say it now, I might not say it at all, and I have to.”
Jesse slung his arm across the back of the seat and turned the wheel to park us just outside of the gate before turning his full attention to me. My pulse pounded in my ears, his eyes trained on me expectantly. He didn’t rush me; he just waited until I was ready.
“Okay,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ears. “I’m not good with words, so bear with me.” Now I was stalling. The words strangled me; they were harder to say than I expected. “You’ve been saying a lot of things lately. You’ve said that you wanted me.” He opened his mouth as if to add something, but I gave him a desperate look, and he ran a shaking hand through his hair. “You’ve said that we would figure things out together. You’ve said that you want to stay by my side.”
Why was this so hard?
“Those are all really nice things to say. Things most women would kill to hear,” I told him, swallowing down my painful awkwardness. “But the thing is, I learned early on in life not to depend on anyone. Because they would just hurt you, or leave you, or die.” His eyes blazed in the fading light, something anguished in the depths of them. “Until you.
“You make me want things I’d given up on. And it’s killing me, because I can’t have them. You make me feel safe, and I’d forgotten what that even meant. Goddamnit, Jesse, you make me feel free.
“When you touch me—"
His hands were on my face, his thumb brushing the line of my jaw. A shiver raced down my spine, and my world narrowed to the contact of his skin on mine.
“When you touch me, the rest of the world fades to smoke. Until you’re the only thing that’s left, the only thing that’s real. And if you ask me to stay—"
“Stay,” he said, his voice the deep canyon timbre that unraveled me at the seams.
“It’s not that simple—"
“Bonnie, you have to stay,” he said, his forehead pressing hard into mine.
“Jones and Sixgun are comin’ for me, and if anything happened to you or The Kid, I would—"
“I love you,” he said, with the same conviction with which he said everything. I gasped, breathing in his warm leather and desert dust scent, tasting him on my tongue. “Damnit, Bonnie, I’m in love with you.”
“You love me?” I asked, the words clumsy on my lips. He smiled at me, and the last of my resistance shattered as my arms curled around him. A wild smile spread across my mouth as I blinked back the heat gathering in my eyes. The tension had been building since we met all that time ago in Vegas, gathering like storm clouds over the open desert.
“I love you so much it hurts,” I breathed against his mouth.
Then, the storm broke.
We crashed together, my mouth opening with a cry beneath his. He hauled me into his arms, settling me on his lap as we hurtled out of control. His wicked hands roamed over my curves without hesitation. Time slipped away from me, contorting the way it always did when Jesse and I were locked together like this. We could have drowned in each other. Heat crackled like lightning across my skin. His hands were beneath my shirt, cupping my breasts as I moaned into his mouth.
A loud wolf whistle split the air, male voices making lewd comments from the top of the gate. I pulled away from Jesse breathlessly; his eyes were so bright. An unapologetic grin slipped over his lips and his thumb teased my nipple before he slid his hands out from beneath my shirt. I kissed his wicked mouth again, lingering for a moment before I pushed off of
his lap and settled beside him.
“We should probably drive a little farther from the gate,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting the front of his pants as he turned the engine over. The truck lurched forward as he pushed the gas pedal down hard. I was in his arms, my hands running over his chest, my lips tasting the skin beneath his ear, teeth tugging on his earlobe.
“How fast do you think this truck can go?” I asked, breath hot in his ear. His hand slid down to cover my ass, grabbing hard as a groan was wrenched from him.
“I miss those shorts,” he said, his voice a rumble that shook me through to my toes.
“I thought you hated my shorts,” I said, my hand slipping up his thigh as he pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
“I hated not being able to peel you out of them,” he said, switching gears as the truck flew over the crumbling asphalt. The sunset was a violent riot of color as we hurtled towards the horizon. It felt like I was flying. Jesse’s hot mouth ran along my throat before turning back to the road.
A loud pop followed by a metal grinding sound echoed around us as the truck rapidly lost speed, black billows of smoke rising from beneath the hood. Jesse swore, turning the wheel until the truck finally rolled to a stop in a field of tiny yellow flowers. I tried to stifle the sound, but the laugh escaped anyway. Jesse turned incredulous eyes on me, but it only made me laugh harder. I bit my lip to keep the smile from spreading too widely across my face, and his eyes dropped to my mouth.
“You have no idea how bad I wanna bite that lip,” he said. Suddenly I wasn’t laughing anymore. My pulse pounded in my ears, and just like before, we folded against each other as if we’d rehearsed this a thousand times. His mouth was hard on mine, his hands firm as he lifted me onto his lap again. I fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, and he broke away, chest heaving beneath my hands. He opened his mouth to protest, but I kissed him again, hips rocking against his until I forced a choked groan from his mouth.
“If you say we can’t or we shouldn’t one more time, I swear I’m gonna—"
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