by Carol Lawson
It wasn’t just the idea of never seeing Lily again, it was the fact that she might have been in trouble. He decided to try one last time and walked into the McDonald’s. Luckily it was all but empty, and the chubby woman with a ponytail behind the counter asked what he wanted.
“Actually, I’m looking for someone… she might’ve come in here,” he said, and gave Lily’s description.
The woman looked at him dumbly, and he wondered if anything had gotten through until her eyes brightened and she threw her head back as if remembering something. “Oh yeah, she did come in here, wanted to fill up her water bottle. She was waiting on the curb for a little while, and then someone picked her up. An older guy, with a beige Volvo. They headed into town, I think… I dunno.”
Shane muttered a quick thank you as he plummeted out the door and jumped back into his Toyota. If they were heading into town, there was a chance he could still find her – a beige Volvo would stand out. He hit his GPS and started a circuitous route into the main drag of downtown Port Angeles. His eyes frantically scanned every car that passed or was parked, and as he neared the actual port where cranes were lifting huge crates off of a container ship he started to give up hope.
It was a chance in a million. He turned around again. One more lap back and he’d call it. Lily was gone. He sighed and slowed down at a red light.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, something caught his eye and he turned his head toward a rustic red wooden building that had a Vacancy sign lit up. In the parking lot, crammed between an Outback and a Mercedes was the beige Volvo.
It took him less than a minute to park and he jogged to the parking lot of the hotel. It was definitely a beige Volvo, it wouldn’t be a coincidence. Inside he fidgeted with his wallet and meandered up to the concierge, who was a thin kid with freckles and a bad case of acne.
“Checking in, sir?”
“Actually, I have a friend who’s staying here. I was supposed to meet her actually.”
“Uh, last name?”
Shit. He didn’t know Lily’s last name, and it had never occurred to him to ask. He cleared his throat. “She’s a thin woman, white dreadlocks, a big backpack on her shoulders?” he said, hoping that would suffice.
“Oh yeah, she just checked in, another guy with her.”
“Ah! Perfect… what room are they in?”
“I can’t uh… I can’t tell you that, it’s uh… hotel policy,” he said.
Of course, he should have anticipated that. He curled his lips and shifted the weight on his foot, trying to look innocent while he thought up an alternative. The kid behind the counter had a sleepy dazed look, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he would still be difficult to outwit.
“Alright, uh, can you call them for me? Tell them I’m waiting,” he asked.
“Oh yeah! I can do that!” he said, and picked up the receiver of the phone on the side of the wall. “Who should I say is calling?”
“Just a friend, she’ll know who,” he said, not wanting to give his name, and watched as the kid hit three numbers. Two, five, three.
“It’s uh… it’s ringing, but no one’s answering,” he said, and Shane nodded.
“Alright, I’ll just wait for them. They should be down shortly anyway, we’re heading to dinner. Any good recommendations?”
“I like uh…I like Al’s Seafood, it’s like… two blocks that way,” the kid said.
Shane nodded trying to supplicate the kid and checked his watch. “Say, is there a washroom around here, actually?” and followed the kid’s finger to a sign that led down the hallway. “Perfect, thanks.”
The kid sat back down and started reading comics, and Shane looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t looking. He kept repeating the numbers two-five-three and darted left up the emergency staircase. On the second floor he turned right again and followed the ascending order of numbers until he came to a white door at the end of the hall with gold plastic numbering that fit the number. He hesitated for a moment before knocking, and gave three sharp raps.
There was a sound behind the door, and he realized it was an older building. All the doors were lacking the peephole. Someone growled at him from behind the door, a man’s voice, and Shane stumbled for the words.
“Who’s there?”
“Uh, I’m… I’m a friend of Lily’s,” he murmured weakly.
There was a pause and the door slowly opened, just enough to reveal the dark inside. Shane tentatively pushed at the door and it swung open. All the windows were closed with curtains and the lights were off, and he could barely see anything as he stepped inside.
“Hello?”
The next instant something heavy hit the side of his head and he toppled. Stars started to swim in his vision and he felt his brain explode. He fell onto his knees face-first into the carpet, and could smell the antiseptic.
The lights came on and the door closed and he heard a familiar voice shouting, feminine.
“Christ! Shane?! What the hell are you doing here??” and a pair of strong arms lifted him to his feet.
He touched the back of his head and hissed in pain. Beside him Lily’s eyes were wide with terror and surprise, and she helped him sit on the side of the bed. In front of the door a big man with a beard held a sawed off shotgun in one hand, and leered at him dangerously.
“Lily, what…”
“How did you find me??” she asked, “shit, it’s bleeding. Chris, get me a towel from the bathroom. He’s a friend, okay? Trust me. Get me a towel, now!”
The older man growled again and Shane saw he was wearing a black T-shirt and jean jacket with the arms cut off.
“I… I couldn’t just,” he winced, “let you go. I heard your phone call, in the cabin. I had to come back. If you were in danger, I had to… I don’t know what I was planning, honest. I just couldn’t abandon you like that.”
“You idiot,” she said, but her voice was half-sobbing. Chris returned with a towel and she put it against the back of his head. “It’s not that bad, but you’ll have a bump. How did you find me?”
“Asked around,” he said simply, “I think… I think you need to tell me what’s going on.”
She held the towel to his head and glanced at Chris in the corner, uneasily. “Chris, go get us some ice from the 7-11. I need to bring the swelling down. Please.”
“Are you sure about this, Lil?” he grunted.
“I said we can trust him, just go,” she urged, and Chris grumbled and set the shotgun down on top of the TV stand and left.
Lily folded her hands in her lap and seemed to be taking a moment to collect her thoughts.
“Let’s start with who that guy was,” Shane said. He could feel a major headache coming on, and when he pulled his hand away from his head there was a smudge of blood on his fingers. He glanced uneasily at the shotgun.
“Chris was my neighbor. Back in San Francisco, I mean. He helped me. He’s been helping me ever since…” her voice petered out again, and Shane could tell it was a difficult topic to broach.
“It’s okay,” he insisted, and reached out with his free hand and touched the tight balls of her fists. This time she didn’t recoil, but unfolded her palms and pressed her two palms against his.
“I didn’t want to get you involved in this, Shane.”
“Well, I am. Now, it doesn’t matter what you tell me, I’m not going anywhere,” he said soothingly, and the promise of it caused Lily to start crying. Her back hunched over and he saw her eyes squinch and felt several hot tears drop and land on the back of his hand.
“I told you I grew up in San Francisco. That much is true. But I didn’t have a good family life, Shane. I mean, every family’s dysfunctional. But mine… my mother died when I was very little, it was just me and my sister and our dad growing up. But he wasn’t a nice guy, Shane. He was an asshole, I mean a real asshole.”
Her voice started to shake again and he reached out and drew her closer. She leaned her head against his chest and gathered th
e courage to keep going.
“He didn’t like me, he’d just hit me, which was fine. I could take it, I was a tough kid. But my sister… the things he’d do to her. Every night, he’d sneak into her room. And I could hear it. I tried not to, I held my ears, but there was… I couldn’t escape it.
“This went on for years, Shane. Until one day, I was old enough, and strong enough, and I decided to stop it. So when he snuck back into Lacey’s room, I took a knife from the kitchen and I followed him in. He didn’t even resist, it was all over so fast.”
Shane felt another lump in his throat grow and his heart heaved heavily against his ribcage, almost painfully. He wrapped his hand tighter around her waist and she fell against him with another muted sob.
“That’s why you left San Francisco,” he whispered, filling in the pieces.
She nodded. “I had to. The cops knew it was me, so I ran. But Lacey, she was safe… that’s all that mattered. Chris, he used to live next door to us, and he knew about our situation. He helped me get out… gave me money, got me set up.”
“And you’ve been on the run ever since,” he said.
“It wasn’t the life I imagined, Shane. And I regret it, I didn’t want to kill him, but… I had to, I had to stop him from-”
“Shhh,” he said, and kissed the top of her head, “you don’t need to explain at all. I understand now. What happened to Lacey?”
“Chris brought her up, and then when she was old enough she joined the police department. I think, she wanted to make sure that what had happened to her never happened to anyone else. I think she also knew that if she was in the department, she could help me… I tried to discourage her, but…”
“She was the one who called you in the cabin, then. Okay. So what changed then?”
“I dunno. She sent me a text, that the cops were looking for me in Seattle. Somehow, they must’ve traced me, I don’t know. I’m always so careful,” she said.
Shane nodded and pulled the towel off his head. It was still painful but he could still see and focus, and the bleeding had stopped. He felt overwhelmed by everything. He knew that Lily had secrets, but he had never imagined this. He’d fallen in love with a fugitive.
It didn’t seem right, that she had sacrificed so much. She had only been protecting her sister. In her position, he wondered if he would have had the courage to do the same. Probably not, he thought. I’ve been a coward all my life when it came to the things that really mattered.
Lily wiped away more of her tears and stood up and patted her cheeks.
“That’s my life, in a nutshell. A sob story if ever there was one. Now you understand why I didn’t want to get you involved. If the cops come, you can be implicated. Harboring a fugitive, that’s a felony, Shane. I can’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.”
“I don’t care about that,” Shane said, and was surprised by himself. He sighed and laughed, and Lily gave him a screwy look.
“Have you flipped?” she asked.
“No. Well, maybe. Yeah. But if I have, then I think it was for the best. Listen, Lily, I don’t care about your past. I’ve always lived my life by the straight and narrow. Hell, I’m the definition of straight-laced,” he said, and saw Lily rolling her eyes and giving him a shy nod.
“You do look good in a suit,” she joked.
“But that’s not who I want to be. That’s’ a mask. One I’ve worn for so long I’ve lost the ability to tell the difference. Until I met you,” he said.
She tugged at her elbow and took a step back. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, in the…” he looked at his watch, “well, look at that, forty eight hours on the dot. In the forty eight hours I’ve known you, something’s changed. Or maybe it just opened my eyes, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sorry… I don’t either, really. I just know that until I met you, my life was a grey dull static palindrome of work, sleep, work. Nothing more. Life is more than that. So much more I can’t even begin to explain it to you. You said once, that we shouldn’t try to define it. I’m not anymore… I’m not defining anything, I just know that I want to be with you.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying, Shane. Stop it,” she said, and took another step back. “You don’t know who I am or what I’m capable of. I only hurt people…”
“That’s not true. You saved your sister,” he said.
“By abandoning her!” she almost yelled, and he suddenly understood where her real feelings of regret came from. It had been the ultimate dilemma. In order to save her sister, she had had to completely leave her sister. He closed his eyes – it was an unimaginable task.
“You’re stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. No one could have done what you did for her. You did the only thing you could.”
“And I’m paying for it, Shane. I pay for it every single day. You don’t want that kind of life,” she said, and shook her head vigorously, unbundling the dreads that had been bunched at the back of her head. They fell down over her back like streams of silver. “My life is hell. I am always on the run, always alone. You can’t imagine that, and I can’t let you fall into it.”
“That’s my choice, isn’t it?” he said, with a coy smile.
“You’re crazy right now. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to go, before the cops come. Before I ruin things for you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, I told you,” he said, and his voice became a low hum, “I’m not going to abandon you. I don’t care if I just met you. I feel like I know you better than anyone. You can’t tell me you don’t feel… something.”
She turned away from him. “I… I don’t.”
Shane froze and saw her back quiver as she hid her face from him. The sound of a passing semi zoomed past outside. He took several steps toward her and placed his hand on her shoulder, gently swiveling her toward him.
“You’re so used to protecting others and yourself, that you don’t remember how to let someone else protect you,” he said so quietly it was a whisper.
“I’ve never had anyone to protect me,” she said venomously.
“Now you do,” he said, “because I love you.”
He put his other hand on her other shoulder and felt her muscles relax under the warmth of his fingers. Her eyes were still wet and wide with too many things she wanted to say and couldn’t. It was terrifying to let someone in, all the way. She had grown so accustomed to keeping a friendly distance. Anything more in her rapid transient life was a burden, something expendable that could compromise her.
He gently ran his hands up her shoulders and the sides of her neck, and cradled the sides of her head between his palms. All the while she kept gazing at him, her blue eyes flashing back and forth like some sort of prey that had been hunted for so long it could barely recognize its own kind. He wiped at her cheek with one thumb and drew his face towards her, and she brought her hands up to brace his own.
They kissed and he felt her become something almost animal under his fingers. She gripped at his head and her lips swam up against his, and then he felt the darting organ of her tongue against his. He lowered his right hand and flattened it against the small of her back, felt the shirt ride up and the blazing funneled heat of her skin against his.
She kissed him harder, almost ferociously, and both her hands pulled at his neck. He squeezed her bodice tightly against his chest and held her there in their frantic embrace. She grappled with him almost desperately, and he could smell the sweetness of her skin, the dark animal of her writhing against him.
She didn’t need to say anything to him. He felt it in the way she clung to him, that she truly loved him as well, even if there wasn’t a language to express it. She had never had in her life someone to rely on – she had become used to surviving on her own, but survival wasn’t enough, and now the promise he had given her was almost unbearable. She started crying as she kissed him, until finally her whole body was sobbing
and he simply held her against his chest as she wept.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t alone anymore. It was like a weight had been lifted from her chest. Finally they pulled away from each other, but Lily continued to hold onto this arms.
9.
“You’re nothing but trouble,” he teased, and she smiled through her tears.
“I know.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
“Oh boy. Okay, I need to freshen up. Can you… I know it’s shitty complimentary tea but I need something to settle my nerves. Can you make some tea?” she said, pointing to the plastic tray with individually wrapped cups on the hotel’s desk.
He nodded and she went to the washroom, returning later with a towel that she used to dab her face. He offered some of the chamomile tea and she slurped the piping hot beverage gratefully.
“Chris should’ve been back by now,” she murmured finally, and Shane’s eyes flew to the shotgun again.
“You’re right,” he said.
There was a beeping that startled Lily and she almost spilled her tea as she reached into her pants pocket and pulled out the Nokia. She flipped it open and her smile fled. She looked up at Shane and he understood the gist of it before she said a word.
“They’re here,” she said, and ran to her backpack.
“They? Who’s they?” he said, jumping to his feet.
“I dunno, cops. Federal guys, or something. Chris said they almost saw him, but he ducked into an alley. They’re canvassing all the hostels and hotel, we don’t have much time. They’re going to be here in a few minutes. Shit!”
“Okay, what do we do?” Shane said. He had never been in this kind of situation before and felt his adrenaline already skyrocketing.
Lily slung her pack over her shoulders and went to the door. “No one’s there, we’ll take the fire-escape,” she said, and then turned back to Shane, “listen, this is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. It’s the end of your life as you know it, if you’re sticking with me. I can’t ask you to do that, Shane, and I won’t. It’s not fair.”