Escape

by Jay Crownover

  Since neither one of us slept more than an hour at most, we were up in time to watch the sunrise over the desert, and if the circumstances were different I would admit to the sight being as beautiful and as breath-stealing as the woman standing next to me. A landscape that was so stark and hostile shouldn’t feel warm and dynamic, but each color that shot across the sky, and each grain of sand that sparkled a different shade in the awakening sunshine painted a picture full of life and experiences. It reminded me of home.

  Brynn and I worked quickly and efficiently together to break the tent down and paused only long enough to eat a quick breakfast. We spent the morning in contemplative silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Vegas was still on the agenda, but some of the excitement about visiting Sin City had waned. Suddenly a city where anything was allowed with very few consequences wasn’t as appealing as it was before that panicked scream in the night had ripped Brynn and me apart. We were both intimately acquainted with the results of what happened when someone wasn’t afraid of consequences. I’d taken a bullet, and she’d lived a life ducking thrown fists and wandering hands.

  The drive was only supposed to take a little over three hours which I was grateful for. While I was too keyed up the night before to sleep, staring at the road and the flat desert landscape that was stretched out in endless, rolling miles ahead of us, was enough to lull my eyes into a series of heavy blinks and to have me fighting back yawn after yawn. Brynn used her phone to book a couple of rooms at one of the flashy, glittery casinos on the Strip and I couldn’t wait to faceplant in the center of the king-sized bed. I didn’t question her when she said she got two rooms. It was clear she needed some space to work through the way things were changing between us, and I assured her that I was going to be in the suite next to hers all alone unless she decided she wanted to keep me company.

  Since I left the ranch, I was running on nothing but nostalgia, remorse, and adrenaline, not to mention I was still healing from major surgery. I was drained, both physically and emotionally. Having my hands tied when it came to helping out that kid who may or may not be in trouble was the last straw. My well was dry, and I needed a good night’s sleep, a steak, and a shot—or six—of good whiskey to recharge. I also wouldn’t turn down another taste of the woman sitting silently beside me, but I didn’t want to be greedy.

  “Do you mind stopping at the next rest stop or gas station?” Brynn’s question pulled me out of my sleepy musings. She held up an empty bottle of water and gave it a little shake. “I drank one too many of these this morning, I think.”

  We left the campsite so early that we would hit Vegas before most things besides the casinos were even open. We weren’t in a rush, so I didn’t feel like I was racing a clock. I told her I would be happy to stop as many times as she needed me to.

  She gave me a little grin of appreciation, and I felt the way my blood heated in reaction swirling in my veins. I forgot how great it felt to be the reason she smiled. Even now she didn’t do it enough.

  “I forget that it’s okay to ask for what I want and that I’m allowed to say what I need. Your dad was the one who drilled that into me. He was the first adult I ever met who didn’t make me feel bad for asking for more.” She fiddled with the ends of her hair. “He was also the one who taught me that just because you asked, didn’t mean you were going to get it. He told Lydia over and over again what he could do to make her happy, and when he told her what she could do for him and you kids, in turn, she practically laughed in his face. Boyd was such a good man. I will never understand how he loved someone as selfish as your mom for as long as he did.”

  I grunted and felt the way my face twisted into a dark scowl. My dad had done everything he could to make sure my brothers and I had a great childhood, except protect us from our mother’s frigid indifference and heartbreaking disappointment. He let her ruin our family time and time again because he couldn’t stay away from her or tell her no. Not until he got sick and she finally committed the ultimate sin. Dad wanted her to come home and help out with the ranch and to keep an eye on Sutton and me since we were still in high school. He told her that he was dying and that he wanted to spend his last few years as a family, together. He’d been sick for a little over a year at that point without any of us knowing about it. My mom practically laughed in his face. She told him that as soon as he was gone, she was selling the ranch and taking the money to buy a house in Dallas. It was the coldest and harshest she’d ever been, and it was finally Dad’s breaking point. He could deal with Lydia not loving him, and not loving his kids, but there was no way he was going to tolerate her not loving and caring for his ranch after he was gone.

  Discarding his family’s home like it was as disposable as their love had been, taking the only thing left of his legacy away from his sons, he wouldn’t stand for it. So, he filed for divorce the next day and put the wheels in motion, cutting Lydia out of everything in case he died before the divorce was final and leaving everything to my brothers and me equally. When Brynn became family, he also left a portion of the property to her, a portion my mom had tried to wrest away from her after my dad passed. She was convinced she could contest the will and prove that she was the rightful recipient of the inheritance due to the length of her marriage to my old man, and because of all the questions surrounding his union with Brynn. Brynn had only been a Warner for a little under a year at that point, but she was so much more a member of our family than Lydia had ever been.

  Mom lost, and nothing made me and my brothers happier than to see her go down in flames. The rage she had at no longer being able to dangle my dad at the end of her rope was immensely satisfying, but none of it made up for her years of jerking all of us around.

  “He always said there was something special about her. There was something about her he couldn’t let go of. Maybe because she was the first person he’d ever loved? Maybe because she gave him three boys to carry on his birthright? Who knows? He never looked at anyone the way he looked at her, even when she broke his heart every time she left.” I cut a look in Brynn’s direction and let out a sigh. “I used to pray she wouldn’t come back. Every time she left I wished it was finally the time she’d had enough of us, enough of the ranch, and she would stay away. She never did.” My hands curled around the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles turned white. “She always ran out of money or got bored with whomever it was she was sleeping with. Whenever real life got too hard, she came back to us with her tail between her legs. She was only conciliatory for as long as it took her to drop her bags at the front door.”

  I spotted a sign for a gas station at the next exit and shifted lanes so we could get off the highway.

  “The Warners also have a really hard time admitting they’re wrong. Dad held onto Mom for as long as he could, Cy would have never walked away from his first wife even though they were never a good fit, and Sutton put up with Alexa and her madness far longer than he should have. We never seem to get it right the first go around.” Which was why I hadn’t bothered to try up until now. She made me look at taking that risk in a whole new light. Maybe we were the very definition of it being better to love and lose, than never having allowed ourselves to love at all.

  Brynn let her head drop back against the headrest and worried her lower lip with her teeth. “Do you think you’re ever really able to let go of the person you love first? Is that love the biggest, brightest love that will eclipse any other love that tries to take its place? Is there no seeing around the love that ultimately teaches us how badly loving someone can hurt? Does first love taint all the other love that follows after it?”

  I hit the brakes too hard when I pulled off on the exit. We both jolted forward getting caught in the seatbelts. I hated that I was her first love and that she called all the different ways she felt about me back then tainted. I never wanted her to think of the way she felt about me as dirty or ugly. Even when I didn’t know what to do with it or how to return it, I thought the way she loved was the most beautiful thi
ng in the whole world. I’d never seen anything like it until my older brother met Leo, and then again when Sutton allowed himself to fall for Em.

  I rubbed a hand roughly over my exhausted face and pulled the truck to a stop at the pumps. “I think first love is important because it shows you how strongly you can feel about another person, both good and bad. Then I believe there is a forever kind of love which is the love that simply feels right. It’s the kind that you know was meant to be yours all along. Everyone in my life has been burned badly by first love, but my brothers held out and fought for the forever kind, and they sure seem happy. They didn’t have a problem finding their way around whom they loved first, or second, for that matter. They all made their way to the person who could love them the right way, except for my old man. He ran out of time before he had the chance to find the kind of love that wouldn’t hurt him every single day.”

  Brynn reached for the door, cocking her head to the side as she climbed out of the cab. “So, you think it’s all a matter of patience? That forever love will find whomever it’s meant for?”

  I followed her out of the truck, boots landing with a thump on the cracked asphalt. The gas station was quiet, we were the only people at the pumps, and aside from a lone semi parked off to the side, there didn’t seem to be any other customers. I watched Brynn through the space between the open doors, and she watched me back just as intently.

  “I think that both your first and your forever are important. I don’t think you can have one without the other, and I don’t see any reason why your first can’t also be your forever as long as it’s the right person. Someone special.”

  Her rust-colored eyebrows lifted and another one of those grins that shook me to my very foundation crossed her face. I was starting to think of them as my smiles, ones she only gifted to me. I was going to covet them and collect as many of them as possible before we got back to the ranch.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. I’m going to run in and do my thing. You want me to grab you anything while I’m in there?”

  I tipped my hat back with a finger and smiled at her. “Funyuns.”

  She wrinkled her nose and made a face of utter disgust. “You still eat those gross things?”

  “Yep.” I made sure to pop the ‘P’ on the end and added a wink for good measure. She handled all the cooking and most of the grocery shopping, not only for the family but the guests at the ranch as well. If I wanted a Funyun fix, I had to go into town, and I typically only ate them when I was out on a trail ride. They were my survival rations when I did the tours like the one Emrys and Leo had initially gone on, the ones where guests paid to live off the land and really, truly rough it for a week. The Funyuns were a lifesaver after five days of fish and whatever else they foraged from the forest.

  She rolled her eyes at me and muttered, “gross,” just loud enough that I could hear her.

  I propped my boot up on the back wheel of the truck and watched as the gas gauge ticked up and up. Fuel out in the middle of nowhere was damn expensive. I was wondering if it would have been smarter to fill up when we got to Vegas when I was jolted from my thoughts at the sound of a vehicle pulling up along the opposite side of the tanks. The RV rattled and shook like it was about to die when it rolled to a stop. I frowned when I realized the ugly machine was more rust than metal and the hair on my arms lifted when I realized all the windows in the ancient vehicle were covered up with wilted and sun-faded cardboard. I couldn’t see the plates, but I had a feeling if I walked around to the front of the RV they would be the familiar white and blue ones from the Lone Star state. There couldn’t be that many RVs in the desert with blacked out windows.

  I pulled my hat down low on my forehead and watched as a burly man hefted himself out of the driver’s seat. I watched as he lumbered around the front of the RV, head down while he muttered to himself. The guy was several inches shorter than I was but about twice as wide and it wasn’t from middle-aged spread. He was built like a damn bull, and there was no way that a scrawny kid would be getting away from him no matter how hard they fought.

  The guy ran his card through the machine and finally noticed me leaning against the side of the truck. We considered each other silently for a long, tense moment until he tilted his chin up in a brisk greeting.

  “Afternoon.” The voice was bland and disinterested, but I got the feeling his narrow-eyed gaze was cataloging every move I made.

  I lifted my chin in return. “Afternoon. It sounds like that beast could use a tune-up.”

  The other man looked at the RV and then back me with a scowl. “It gets me where I’m going.”

  I rubbed my thumb along the edge of my chin and lifted an eyebrow. “And where would that be?”

  The guy frowned in confusion and started to tap his foot impatiently, the big tank on the RV taking forever to top off. “Where would what be?”

  I pushed off the side of the truck and shot a look over my shoulder to make sure Brynn was still inside the gas station. I had no idea if this was the same guy dragging that kid across the campsite, but I had a bad feeling about him, and those covered windows were making my skin crawl.

  “Where are you going? Pretty sure we were at the same campsite in Joshua Tree, but you lit out of there like you just remembered you left the stove on at home. Just wondering where you’re off to in such a hurry.” I dropped my arms, so they were hanging loosely at my sides. I wasn’t going to let anyone get the drop on me ever again.

  The guy took a step back, and his eyes widened in obvious surprise. He shook his head and moved to quickly pull the nozzle out of his tank. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t anywhere near Joshua Tree.”

  I moved a step closer to him so that I was standing between the gas tanks. “Are you sure? This old hunk of junk is pretty memorable. So was the scene you caused when you pulled that kid through the campsite.” I was taking a guess he was the same guy. I was a great poker player and knew when a bluff would pay off. This was one of those times. A mixture of fear and anger moved in a flash across the stranger's wide face. He jammed the gas pump back into the holster and shifted to move around the front of the RV, keeping his angry gaze on mine. I wasn’t letting him get back behind the wheel without knowing for sure the kid was okay.

  He shook his head at me and took another step toward the open driver’s side door. “You’re mistaken, man. I’m traveling alone. I bought this beater years ago so I could hit up Burning Man, now I’m just a desert rat, a nomad. I never stick to any one campsite for too long. I need to get back on the road.”

  I stepped off the concrete divider and with one long stride was in front of the other man. I pointed the finger at the covered windows and practically growled, “Why do you have the windows blocked? What are you trying to hide in there? If you’re traveling alone why don’t you let me check inside the back of your camper?”

  I was pushing it, but I didn’t care. If he had a kid in there who didn’t belong to him or who was in danger, I was putting a stop to it. I couldn’t save Brynn. I couldn’t save Daye. But I could do something to help the mysterious kid who should be anywhere else besides inside of this blacked out RV.

  ‘Man, you’re crazy. I’m not letting you inside my camper. Get the fuck away from me.” The guy reached up and pushed me directly in the center of my chest. My still healing ribs screamed in protest, but I easily knocked his hands away.

  “I’m calling the cops.” I pointed at the RV again and gritted clenched teeth. “I don’t know what’s going on, but everything is telling me it’s not anything good. You aren’t going anywhere until I know you’re alone and that you don’t have a kid in there.” I smirked at him. “I bet they’ll impound that rolling garbage can based on your outdated emissions alone.”

  The guy swore at me, and I anticipated his move long before he lunged at me. I braced for the impact, so he wasn’t able to take me to the ground, but his bulk slamming into my body was like taking a hammer to all my still injured places. My ba
ck connected with the gas pump and my breath escaped in a whoosh as a meaty fist landed heavily on my side. I managed to get my hands on the stranger’s chest and shoved him off of me with all my strength. I tossed an uppercut before I could think about what I was doing and watched with primal satisfaction as the guy’s head whipped back so fast I knew it had to hurt. I heard his teeth click together and rolled my eyes when he called me a ‘mother fucker.'

  “Mind your own fucking business.” The guy wiped a hand across his mouth and spat a mouthful of blood in the direction of my boots. I smirked again. I lived on a ranch; he had no idea the crap…literally…these boots waded through every single day.

  “If you’re hurting a kid, making him scream and dragging him around, that is my business. If you’re lying about being alone so you can hurt that kid, that’s also my business. Just tell me what’s going on and why you have the windows all covered up, and I’ll be on my way. Call me nosey.” I shouldn’t taunt him, but his evasiveness was wearing on my last nerve, and the longer I kept him engaged, the longer I had to figure out a way inside the camper.

  “The only thing anyone is calling you is an ambulance, asshole.” The man bent and pulled a wicked looking knife out of his boot. It was the kind that had a thick, rubber handle and a serrated edge. The kind of knife my brothers and I used when we went hunting and had to clean game in the wild. That blade was made to separate skin and muscle from bone. The afternoon sun glinted off the blade and highlighted the deadly intent in the stranger’s unwavering gaze. “You ain’t getting in my RV and you ain’t calling the cops. You’re going to walk away and forget you ever saw me. Are we clear?”

  The only thing that was clear was that he had something in the back of that RV that he was willing to kill for. I tilted my head to the side and lifted my hands up in front of me in a harmless gesture. “Easy, buddy. No need for the knife.”