***
Violet climbed back into the truck and pulled the door closed behind her, stirring Remy awake.
Through his blurred vision, he could see they were sitting at a gas pump. The key was still in the ignition, engine running. He had half a mind to tell her how dangerous it was to pump gas with the engine running, but he was too overcome with complete exasperation that there was simply no room for any other emotion but sheer exasperation.
“I know, we can’t stop.” Violet turned to him from where she’d been staring out of the windshield. “We had to stop. We needed gas,” she explained. “It’s pumping right now, should be done any minute. I’ve been keeping to the back roads on the map, and the radio says it’s going to flood later and keep up until tomorrow. So that should help us. If they send choppers, they won’t be able to see us from the air if it’s raining.”
We.
Us.
The words made his teeth itch every time they made an escape from her busy mouth—which was often. Just when he was sure he’d heard the last of them, she’d blast him back with more. Remy let her ramble on, not unaware of the approval seeking tone of her voice. Why in the world would this woman want his approval on anything? He squinted at her as if she were a complicated puzzle he’d never crack.
“I got us some snacks for the road.” She motioned to the backseat where piles of junk food were piled up. “And, apparently, I owe the store owner a blowjob for giving us all this shit for free. Do you have any money?”
His head was spinning far too wildly to respond to anything she’d just said. He waited for his vision to clear as he lifted his bare wrist, blinking at the soft red ring that embedded his skin where the handcuffs used to be.
“I found a paper clip on the floor of the truck and managed to jimmy the lock, so, you’re free now,” she said.
He sat up tall, running his hand down his forehead before shooting her a look out of the corner of his eye. The smile she gave him blew his hair back and sank his stomach. He had to get rid of her. “I didn’t know it was possible to jimmy police cuffs.”
“It’s possible to jimmy anything if you know what you’re doing. In grade school, my sisters and I used to handcuff each other to any solid object we could find—with real handcuffs--and then run home and tell our parents that we had no clue where the handcuffed sister was. You learn to jimmy locks pretty quickly when you’re a hungry kid whose parents will kill you if you’re not home before the streetlights come on.”
Remy watched her, horrified. He waited for a punch line that never came. “What the hell kind of demon house were you raised in, Chambers?” And how the hell did a grade schooler manage to get her hands on a pair of real handcuffs?
“I beg your pardon, I was raised in a beautiful, loving home.”
“Is that right? Because it sounds like your folks raised three demon babies.”
“That’s rich coming from a guy who hotwired a police helicopter--with one hand, might I add. You’re on a whole other level of criminal than me and my demon baby sisters, okay?”
“I didn’t hotwire anything. If you know the right sequence of switches to flip, and buttons to press, you can start almost any aircraft.”
“So you really are a glorified bus driver, huh?”
His jaw clenched at that.
Violet swallowed the victory with amazing thirst. “My sisters and I were not demon babies. We have deep love for each other.”
“I don’t have siblings, so maybe I’m wrong, but… Choking one another until you pass out? Handcuffing and abandoning one another? That doesn’t sound like deep love. It sounds like…” Remy pretended to think. “Demon babies,” he concluded.
“You didn’t think I was such a demon baby an hour ago when you were telling me all the nasty things you wanted to do to me in bed.”
Remy felt his heart somersault in his chest, which caused a chain reaction, and soon his stomach wanted in on the gymnastics, as well. His cheeks grew pink in seconds. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it.”
“I don’t say ridiculous shit like that.”
“You did. You said it.” She found it adorable that the first hint of color on his drained face had been an embarrassed blush, and decided to give him a break. “You were high as hell on those pain pills. You didn’t have any idea what you were saying. It was actually pretty unfair of me to have even brought it up, because you were gone. Gone, gone, gone.”
Remy’s eyes searched hers, but the crimson tint on his cheeks didn’t subside. His voice lowered without warning. “I wasn’t that gone.”
Violet bit her bottom lip, and decided to pretend she hadn’t heard that. The admission had sent warm chill waves running a race all across her body. It had been a long time since a man had made her body do that. He still had that medication in his system, however. She still couldn’t trust anything he said. Even if he did seem pretty lucid, even if she did like it a little more than she knew she should.
With a small smile, she turned to him, and caught the intense look in his blue eyes just as she flopped one of the two Yankees hats she’d found in the backseat on his head, pulling it low and tight. The brim of the hat shadowed his eyes and only served to highlight the deep, penetrating gaze he was bestowing upon her right then.
She forced herself to look off, her body betraying her completely as she felt a familiar rush. She shifted in the blue jean shorts. They were extremely short and tight, rubbing up against her in all the wrong ways, ways that were dangerous when combined with the look of desire Remy was hitting her with at the moment.
“Stop looking at me like that.” She turned to focus on the gas gauge. A few seconds passed, and she was unable to help herself from looking back across the truck. He’d fallen asleep, once more. She exhaled. Good. If he was sleeping, it meant he wasn’t looking at her with sex in his eyes, and that was for the best. For both their sakes. Just as soon as his eyes were closed, however, they’d popped back open.
“What is it?” Violet asked as he reached for his door handle. “What are you doing?”
“Bathroom,” was all he grumbled, throwing her a look when she immediately hopped out of the car and circled around to the passenger’s side, throwing his arm over her shoulder. “I don’t need your help, Chambers.”
“Your leg begs to differ. You can’t even stay awake for five minutes at a time. I’d say you do need my help, and if your pride won’t allow you to admit it, then I’m just going to have to give it without you asking. Now come on.”
They began an uneven walk towards the run down, sanitarily questionable door of the gas station bathroom. One look at that door had Violet cringing. She didn’t even want to think about the treasures it had inside. She doubted this shithole even had toilet paper in there, let alone soap.
Once the made it to the door she pulled it open for Remy and, to her surprise, it wasn’t nearly as disgusting as she imagined. The appliances were old and run down, but it was apparent someone made an effort to keep it clean and stocked.
“Be quick,” she said, as he held onto the doorframe and stumbled inside, slamming it closed behind him.
From the distance, she heard the gas pump finally jolt to a stop, relieved that just as soon as Remy was finished in the bathroom they could get the hell out of there. She gave a knock on the door. “Pump’s done, let’s go. We can’t hang around for too long.” She realized that people who bothered other people in the bathroom were the worst kind of humans, and she was now one of them, but Remy was truly taking longer than she cared for, and it was making her nervous.
As if confirming her paranoid thoughts, a police cruiser came driving slowly up the road in the distance.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, pulling the second Yankees cap she held in her hand on her head and over her eyebrows, watching the cruiser from under the brim as it rolled slowly down the road. Was he slowing down? “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop…” She prayed softly, then cursed to herself when the cruiser made a sudden tu
rn into the station, pulling up to the pump directly adjacent to the truck.
She was now hoping that Remy took his sweet ass time in the bathroom, and even pressed her back against the door, just so she could push it closed if he tried to open it.
She hoped he still had that Yankees hat pulled low on his forehead, then realized it wouldn’t matter. Remy was attractive to an unusual degree. If he came out of that bathroom, she knew the cop could look at him, because it was impossible not to. He was too tall, too domineering, too blessed with a remarkably handsome face that demanded attention--from both men and women. Once that cop got a look at him… his face would be instantly recognizable, even with that hat on. The full pink lips, the strong shadowed jaw, and the smatterings of dark blonde hair peeking out from the back were all more than enough to motivate an officer to take a second look. The voices on the radio were already calling him the most wanted man in America. Surely anyone who studied that his face of his for longer than half a second would immediately recognize him.
From what she’d seen on the small television screen that’d been playing the news inside the gas station, the police still didn’t know they were alive. Still, she knew all it would take was one phone call, one blast, and word would spread like wild fire. The man from the boat had almost surely been found. Perhaps the police knew they were alive, but had yet to alert the public for fear of tipping them off.
The cop climbed out of his cruiser with a pair of aviator shades shielding his serious face. As he slammed the door to his car closed and covered his gun holster with his hand, he looked directly into the windshield of the white truck, then turned his head towards the bathrooms. His shaded gaze landed on Violet just as she leaned all of her weight on the door, realizing, much to her horror, that Remy was trying to open it from the other side. She tried with all her might to keep it closed while smiling at the officer, but it was no use. Remy was too strong for her, and soon she was sliding forward under the strength of his push, her boots crackling against the rocks and gravel on the ground just as Remy squeezed through the small crack he’d managed to make in the door.
“What the hell are you doing, Chamb--”
Violet stepped away from the door and turned to Remy just as he said her name, covering his lips with hers while shielding his face from the cop completely. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the officer was now making his way to the doors of the market, still watching them, so she kept her lips on Remy’s, placing her hand on top of his hat when the brim of hers almost pushed it off of his head.
A soft gasp jumped to her throat when Remy jolted then, almost instantly, softened. He pulled her body closer, tugging her in for more, and she continuing to block his face as the officer pulled open the door of the store. White-hot relief washed through her veins when, shockingly, the officer tilted his hat towards them before stepping into the door with a laugh and shake of his head.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, looking to Remy, shocked when she saw nothing but blind need blazing across his eyes.
Taking her words as a heartfelt response to their kiss, blue eyes deep with desire, Remy took the back of her head gently, and pulled her lips back to his. His tongue tasted her bottom lip gingerly, and something moved inside him. His mouth opened over hers hungrily, and he moaned from deep in his throat, a guttural sound that screamed sex.
Soon, Violet was gone, finding her own tongue dipping out and meeting his between their moving lips.
His heart felt like it was ready to explode right from his chest, she could feel it from where he kept her pressed tightly against him. When she realized he’d become aroused, her own body responded in kind.
At the familiar feeling of her nipples hardening, and the dangerous impulse to rub them against him, she had to remind herself that there was a cop mere feet away, seconds from discovering who they were. She pulled her lips from his and, with his hands still buried in the hair at her neck, she peeked through the window of the store from the corner of her eye.
“Oh god,” she gasped, looking back to Remy. “Oh god, Archibald… we have to go. Stay right here, and I’m going to pull the car around. A cop just walked passed us and we can’t risk him seeing you limping back to the car. It would make him suspicious.”
She didn’t miss the confusion on his face, but she wasn’t foolish enough to hang around and explain herself further. There would be plenty of time to explain, they just needed to get the hell out of there.
She raced to the car, removed the gas pump and climbed in, circling around to Remy. She leaned over to push the passenger door open, barely giving Remy the chance to climb in and close the door before she was racing out of the lot and down the beaten road.
She drove off, keeping a steady pace that moved them quickly away without drawing attention. She watched the store grow smaller in the rearview mirror until it was out of sight, and only then did she allow herself to breathe, once more.
“Remy, I’m sorry I had to do that, but…” The sight that met her struck her silent.
Remy was out cold, once more.
Violet was surprised at the feeling of her heart dropping to her feet. He was still high on those meds. He couldn’t even keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time.
That kiss had curled her toes, but he probably wouldn’t even remember it when he finally came to.
She swallowed back the lump that was rising in her throat, and mumbled softly to herself. “Get a grip, Chambers.” With a deep sigh, she threw his sleeping face one last glance before starting the truck and speeding off.
6
Remy went in and out of consciousness as they drove, each time just long enough to give Violet directions to a woodland area of Santa Cruz. She drove obediently, never asking him just where he was leading them, not even as the truck pulled slowly up a winding gravely road that lead to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Violet put the car in park, leaning over the steering wheel to look up at the sky. The rain pattered softly against the truck, but she knew it would be storming soon.
Some angel must’ve been sitting on their shoulder. As soon as it started raining, it would be all but impossible for police choppers to spot this car overhead. For the first time in her life Violet, an avid hater of all things rain, hope it rained all day, and kept raining, until she and Remy were able to clear his name.
She looked to him, passed out in the passenger’s seat. “Remy. We’re here. This is it, right?”
Remy sluggishly awoke, looking about on the verge of death, and looked out to the house in front of them. He climbed out of the car without answering.
Violet watched him move, closing the door behind him as he hobbled up to the front door of the house. She climbed out just as the home’s door opened, and a handsome man about Remy’s age stepped out. He was average height and build, but had the face of an angel. With slicked blonde hair, blue eyes, and full lips, he reminded her of James Dean. He also favored Remy, but with a softer edge, so much so that she wondered if perhaps this was Remy’s younger brother. Then she remembered Remy saying he didn’t have any siblings.
She closed the driver’s side door and made her way up to the porch with her hands in her pockets. She felt like she was intruding on an intimate moment as Remy launched himself at the man and wrapped him in a ferocious hug, groaning happily in the process. The man slapped Remy’s back with the rough intensity only a man could, while tucking his teary face into his neck with a laugh. She tilted her head away and side eyed them.
Perhaps this was the reason Remy had so easily passed out after the kiss they’d shared at the gas station. Was it her severe lack of a penis that had left him so cold? Was this his homosexual lover? His life partner?
“I was hoping you’d be here, Jason,” Remy said.
“Where else would I be?”
After embracing for a questionable period of time, the two men finally turned to Violet and, upon realizing she was still standing there, both of their smiles immediately fell.
V
iolet smiled tightly in response, raising a quiet hand of greeting.
“Tell me this isn’t the girl you snatched from the courthouse,” the handsome man, who Violet now knew as “Jason” said. “Please tell me this isn’t Violet Chambers.”
“Guilty as charged.” She shrugged.
“I can’t get rid of her,” Remy grumbled, before looking away from them both.
“Wait, let me get this straight. You’re sticking around on your own accord? For this shmuck?” Jason laughed heartily. “Baby, I hate to be the one to break it to you… but you chose the wrong guy. This one isn’t going to fulfill whatever Stockholm Syndrome, Fifty Shades hostage fantasies you’ve got rolling around in that head of yours. This one’s dull as dirt.”
“Yeah, I already know that.” She nodded.
Remy finally looked at her, offense clouding his eyes.
“I realized he was dull as dirt right around the moment he made me jump out of a moving helicopter and into the Pacific Ocean. Or was it when we hijacked that sweet man’s boat and left him stranded in the water? Or maybe when we choked that crazy old lady to death? Gosh I don’t know, Remy, it’s all so very dull.”
“I thought you told me that you didn’t choke Barbara to death?”
“I didn’t,” she cried, exasperated by his perpetual bleeding heart. “I told you, she’s fine. I just said ‘we choked her to death’ for dramatic effect.”
“We did not choke Barbara. You choked Barbara.”
Jason’s head flew back and forth between them.
“I’ve already been convicted of murder, Chambers, I don’t need you adding any more colorful felonies to my already extensive list.”
Violet turned to Jason, having quickly grown bored. “Look, I know Remy is innocent, and it looks like you do, too.”
“He is innocent,” Jason said, calmly.
“I agree with you, and that’s why I’m here. He’d cut off his left nut before ever admitting it… but Remy is going to need me to help clear his name.”
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