by Sophia Sharp
“At your expense.”
“And I can see how it tears at you. I can see how much you regret it.”
“You…can?” There’s a very sweet, very endearing mix of uncertainty and relief in his voice. “Really?”
“Yes,” I promise.
“Penny.” He looks at me hopefully. “I… I can’t help the way I feel about you. That’s why we need to be apart. That’s—” he grunts all of a sudden as I hit him hard in the ribs. “What was that for?”
“For your idiocy,” I tell him, rubbing my hand. I had no idea how much it would hurt. It felt like punching a steel wall! “For having the audacity to keep pretending you know what’s best for me. For thinking I want to be left behind while you run off.”
“It’s the best thing for you.” He pulls his hand out of mine and picks up his shirt. Regret and disappointment fill me as he tugs it over his head. I feel disproportionately exposed in nothing but the blue bra he’d bought for me. Rich continues. “You saw the type of people who want my sister. You know they want me now, too. If I take you with me—” he grunts and shakes his head, “—and I can’t even believe I’m entertaining the possibility—but if I do, and if they discover the way I feel about you, your life will be at risk. Your life, Penny! I can’t do that to you.”
“And how is that?” I ask.
He looks at me quizzically. “How is what?”
“How is the way you feel about me?”
Rich makes a vague, empty gesture around him. “You know.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t know.” I step up to him and look him in the eyes. His beautiful, misting silver eyes. “Tell me.”
He stares at me for a long time. In the quiet moment, I feel the connection between us. It’s more than lust. More than mere attraction. It’s something deeper, more profound. I can see it in the way he looks at me. The concern hidden behind his eyes, the conflicting emotions raging in his head. I can feel it in the way my skin tingles when I stand this close to him. In the way my heart beats louder and my breaths become fluttery.
He breaks off by turning away. “I can’t. I can’t put it into words, Penny. And even if I could, I wouldn’t.” He lowers his voice. “Because then I’d be afraid you might never let me go.”
My heart melts at the unwavering sincerity in his words. He really does care for me, I realize. “Rich?” I say softly. “Answer me this. If I were any other girl, would you still have come back for me?”
He looks back over his shoulder at me. His eyes seem to soak me in. They run over my face, down my body, and back up again to meet my eyes. “How can you even ask that, Penny? I came back for you, and you alone. No. If you were anybody else, I would never have returned.” He grunts in a half-laugh. “You can see how much shit that little decision has gotten me in.”
“Rich—”
“No.” He points a finger at me. “Don’t start again. Don’t tempt me.” His voice becomes hard. “Put your sweater back on. If Amanda comes home and finds you like that, she’ll make assumptions.”
“Let her,” I say, emboldened by what he has just told me. Rich came back for me. Not for anybody else. Just for me. “I want Amanda to see us like this.” I start toward him in my best impression of a sultry walk. “I don’t care what she thinks.”
I step into him, leaning my bare body against his. Rich stands still as a statue. “I never got to thank you… properly… for what you did.” My hands go back to his jeans, resuming the work they’d begun before. This time, they’re steady and resolute.
Rich still doesn’t move. “If we do this…”
“No ‘ifs,’” I purr, going on my toes to kiss him. My lips brush against his, gentle as silk rippling in the wind. His mouth parts slightly, as if he’s unsure of himself.
Then he grunts and shoves me away. “No.”
I stumble back and nearly fall. The moment between us shatters.
“What the fuck, Rich?” I demand, growing angry. “You can’t just—”
“You can’t,” he stresses. “You can’t do this. I will not let you get involved with me.”
“You fucking condescending bastard!” I yell at him. “Why do you always get to decide what’s best for me?” I feel humiliated, rejected as surely and cruelly as I had been just now. Livid words pour out of me. “Why do you get to decide what’s right for me? Huh, Rich? What makes you think you know best?”
“What do you know, Penny?” he rages back. “You’re no more than a child! If you had two proper thoughts in that brain of yours, you wouldn’t be anywhere near me right now!”
“A child?” My voice drips with scorn and anger. “Is that how you think of me? Take a look in the mirror, Richard! You may be smart enough to have gotten into Princeton, but you have all the emotional maturity of a five-year-old!”
He glares at me. “Put your sweater on,” he says coldly. He turns and stalks out the garage. “Once you’ve calmed yourself, you can come find me and talk.”
--
It takes me more than a few minutes to compose myself. Never before have I experienced such a slew of emotions so rapidly. I’m lost, uncertain, and angry. My temper threatens to boil over. I wait for it to simmer down.
When I emerge from the garage, the anger I feel is only a muted roar at the back of my mind. Only.
I find Rich in the living room. I wonder what he’s feeling. His hard eyes give away nothing as he watches me move across the room. It’s like nothing has happened.
Nobody can go through what we have and recover so quickly. It has to be an act. Well, I can act unaffected, too. But damn him for stirring all these feelings in me. Damn him for kindling all the emotions raging and then acting so aloof, so distant. Damn him for kissing me, and damn my body for reacting to him so resoundingly.
I reach under the coffee table and pull out the laptop I’d noticed there before.
“What are you doing?” Rich demands.
“Checking my email,” I say, giving him a bright and brittle smile. “You don’t think Amanda will mind, do you?”
“I—”
“You said so yourself,” I continue, booting up the computer with an angry jab. “You want to leave me here while you continue on. Fine. I need to check my mail and get in touch with certain people if I’m to go home.”
“That,” Rich says hesitatingly, “would be for the best.” He sounds distracted. My eyes dart to him then back to the screen. He’s staring off into the distance. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I snort loudly as he stands up. That was it? That was how easily he’d accepted what I just said? The rush of air as he walks by threatens to stir the smoldering flames in me in to a full-out conflagration.
I fixate on the glowing Windows logo as the laptop starts up, and try to find my calm.
“I am sorry, you know,” Rich says from the doorway.
I ignore him.
“I know the way I’ve handled things with you has been shitty. But, a clean cut now? It’ll be for the best.”
I don’t dignify him with a response. I can feel his eyes digging into my shoulder blades. The tension builds for a long time. It only dissipates when he finally turns and leaves.
I exhale a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding. With Rich out of the room, I feel somehow more unsteady. Less certain of myself. My fingers tremble as I place them on the keyboard and use the mouse pad to open a web browser. I type “www.gmail.com” into the address bar and sit back, waiting for the slow connection to load.
The browser hits the page and logs in automatically. I’m so distracted I don’t even notice I’m in Amanda’s inbox until I mouse over the “Compose Mail” button.
Irritated, I move the cursor horizontally across the screen to log out, when the most recent message catches my eye. The subject line is innocuous enough: “Meeting.” But the name of the sender sets my heart racing.
“Rich?” I call out. I can’t help the quiver in my voice. “Rich, come here!”
> He must have picked up on my urgency, because he comes running. “What? What is it?”
“Rich,” I say softly, turning around to face him, “what is Tam’s last name?”
“Bakker,” he tells me. “Why?”
I point a trembling finger at the screen. He frowns as he walks over to me. When he sees what I’m pointing at, his breath catches.
“He’s meeting with Amanda,” he says, his voice hoarse with disbelief. Hearing him confirm it sends a chill down my spine. “Shit! When? Penny, quick, open the email!”
The cursor flies across the screen. I click on the subject line.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Rich urges behind me. “If it wasn’t for this damn dial-up connection… There!”
My eyes sweep over the newly-loaded text. I find what I’m looking for right away. “One-fifteen,” I say, pressing my finger to the screen. “And now it’s…” a despairing, sinking feeling weighs down my chest. “Almost one-thirty.”
“Shit!” Rich curses. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“I thought you said they didn’t know we were here!” I exclaim. Panic throttles up inside of me. “Rich! Answer me!”
“They don’t! Or, they didn’t. Or, rather, they weren’t supposed to.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck! Amanda must have told them.”
“I thought you said we could trust her!”
“That’s what I thought,” Rich says in a rush. “Fuck! I should have thought of it before. Of course these people would have checked on my past relationships. Of course they’d know about Amanda!”
“Could she really be so spiteful? Could she really have given us away?”
Rich snorts. “You’ve met her. What do you think?”
I don’t hesitate for a second before answering. “Yes.”
Rich starts pacing the room in front of me. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. I would never have believed it of Amanda. But I’ve always tried to see the good in her. Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “This changes everything. Amanda doesn’t know that we know. She could just be meeting with Tam to cover for us, to say we’re not here.”
I look at him flatly. “Do you really believe that?”
“No.” He fidgets with his hands. “No, even I’m not that naïve. She’s bringing him here. The question is, when? Penny, read the email. Where does it say they’re meeting?”
My eyes scan the screen. “A coffee shop in town.”
Rich nods. “Okay. Good. It takes about fifteen minutes to get from there to here. Which gives us—”
He cuts off as the sound of tires driving over gravel sound from outside. I jerk my head toward the window. Mel starts to bark.
“Get down!!” Rich hisses, grabbing me by the waist and nearly tackling me to the floor. A thrill shoots through me at having his body so close to mine, but it’s quashed by the nearly maddening panic twisting my insides into knots. “Stay there,” Rich says, and sneaks to the window to look outside. His head hovers above the sill for a moment. When he turns back, his face is drained of blood. “They’re here.”
“Who?” I demand with desperate fright.
“Tam and Victor. Amanda’s with them. She drove.” Rich looks around the room wildly, like a cornered animal. “Victor looks excited to get some revenge.”
“Holy shit,” I whimper. “What do we do? We’re trapped.”
Rich’s eyes focus on the hallway. I know an idea has formed in his mind. “Not yet,” he says. He rushes to me and takes my hand. “I promised I’d keep you safe. I don’t break my promises.”
--
We rush through the halls of Amanda’s enormous house. I fully expect Tam and Victor to pop up around every corner. For each one we pass that they don’t, I only become more uneasy. I know it’s just a matter of time.
Rich bursts into Amanda’s room and rips into her closet.
“What are you doing?” I say, aghast.
“Looking for something,” he replies. A leather jacket flies over his shoulder at me. I catch it. “Put that on. You’re going to need it.”
I shrug my shoulders into it, but I don’t understand. “Rich, hurry!” I urge. It might just be my imagination, but I think I can hear the front door opening. Mel begins to bark. “Hurry!”
“Got it,” he grunts. He’s holding a ring of keys in one hand. He looks at me for a moment, then bursts out in a grin as if nothing at all is wrong. “That jacket suits you.”
Before I can answer, he grabs my hand and runs so fast I nearly fall as I try to match his long strides. He leads me through a back room, down a flight of stairs, and into the cellar.
“Rich, we’re trapped down here!” I exclaim, terrified. “What the hell are you thinking?”
“Lock the door,” he tells me. “Brace it. We can’t have them breaking in before we’re ready.”
“Ready? Ready for what?”
“Just go!”
I scramble to the door and slam it shut. I think I can hear footsteps above us. I look around desperately for something to put against the door. There’s a shelf of preserves beside me. I heave it down with all my strength. It crashes to the floor.
“Jesus Christ!” Rich screams. “Why not announce to them we’re down here a little louder next time, huh?”
“Sorry,” I say, abashed. He’s right to get angry, though. It’s just—well, I’ve never had experience with these types of situations before!
I shove the shelf toward the door. Every inch it moves seems to sap half my strength. By the time it’s in place, there’s not a muscle left in my body that isn’t burning. I can definitely hear footsteps above us now. Mel’s barking continues, audible even through the floor.
I hear a resounding clang of metal striking metal behind me. I spin around. Rich is standing in front of a locked shed. I hadn’t noticed it before. I have no idea why it’s here.
Rich raises something over his head, and brings it down against the lock. Another metallic clang echoes through the room. A flash of light lets me see that Rich is attacking the lock with a fire axe.
My eyes dart over the cellar. I notice something hanging on the far wall. I run to it, grab it from its hook, and hand it to Rich. “Here.”
Rich turns. “What?” Then he sees the shape in my hands. “Bolt cutters. Where did you find these?”
“I can be handy in a tight spot.” I show him all my teeth.
“I’m beginning to learn that.” He takes the cutters from me, flexes them against the thinnest part of the lock, and presses down hard. The metal snaps with a twang.
Rich throws the shed doors open. Inside are two dirt bikes. I look at him incredulously. “Bikes? That’s your grand plan?”
“We’ll take the trails behind the house,” Rich says. He surprises me by slamming the fire axe into the tires of one of the bikes. “There’s no way they’ll be able to follow us in a car.”
“How did you know the bikes were here?”
“They belong to Amanda’s brothers.”
“Great,” I say, seeing one glaring flaw in his plan. “And how do you propose we get out of the cellar?”
Rich points over my shoulder. I glance back—and feel like a complete idiot. There’s another set of stairs leading to a pair of those horizontal basement doors. I can see the puddle of water beneath it from the rain.
Rich grins and sticks one of the keys into the bike. The engine roars to life. “Open those doors,” he tells me, “and get on.”
Chapter Twelve
I cling to Rich’s body as the bike flies over the uneven forest ground. Rich maneuvers over the trails like he’s been off-roading his whole life. Maybe he has. I still know very little about him.
I feel like I’ve been caught in some bad action movie. But the constant pounding of blood in my ears tells me this is real. The wind stinging my eyes tells me this is real. Rich’s hard body in front of me tells me this is real. And the fact that my heart leaps to my throat every time the bike lifts into the air
tells me this is very, very real.
Rich slows down after half an hour. We’re deep in the woods, so the trees are keeping the worst of the rain off. “I don’t think they’re following us,” he says.
“That’s a relief,” I sigh.
“You can let go now, by the way.” He looks over his shoulder at me. “You’re squeezing so tight I can barely breathe.” His eyes flicker to mine. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I unknot my arms from around his waist, and find them stiff and cramped. I flex them a few times at the elbow to work some circulation back. “Now what?”
“Now, we continue on.”
--
Hours later, we’re riding along an empty stretch of highway. Rich had found a trail that led out of the forest and connected to the main roads. The rain had let up recently. Before doing so, however, it had soaked my leather jacket so much it feels like I am carrying a carcass on my shoulders.
I see the lights of a town coming up in the distance. More cars start to pass us. Rich takes an exit and drives through the streets before pulling into a half-empty parking lot. There’s a small, dark building in one corner. A sign hangs over the door: The Blackbear Pub.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as I swing my legs off the motorcycle.
“Food,” Rich replies. “Warmth. Information. I have to figure out where we are. Come on.”
When he opens the doors, a blast of hot air greets me. Hot air, loud music, and hundreds of overlapping voices. It had been impossible to tell from outside, but this place is packed.
Rich doesn’t wait for the hostess. He grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowd. We go straight to the bar. There are a pair of empty stools near the corner. We take them.
The bartender is a long-legged, bubbly blonde with a fake tan, fake boobs, and fake lashes. She darts over as soon as she sees Rich. “What can I get for you, honey?” she drawls in a lilting, Southern accent that she probably thinks is sexy.
I roll my eyes. I don’t think she even realizes Rich and I came together. Well, I’ve dealt with her kind in California plenty of times before.