by Jackson, Meg
Gabriella nodded, her eyes now filling with tears, seeming even deeper and wiser than they usually did. Something about the way that salt water pooled above her lower eyelid made her eyes sparkle. It broke Reign’s heart to see her cry, but he had to admit she looked beautiful doing it.
If you stay with me, I’ll make sure you’ll never cry again, he thought, wanted to say, kept inside his throat. He turned from her, exiting the bar quickly. As he turned, he watched her collapse into a stool, her elbow hitting the surface of the bar with an audible smack. She lay her head in her palm, her black hair forming a curtain around her face. On the far side of the bar, he saw Honey watching them with interest. She couldn’t hear anything, but Reign bet she knew what was happening. Endo was looking over, too.
Great, glad you fuckers caught the damn matinee, this is a one-time-only performance, he thought bitterly, pushing the doors open. Anger was growing inside him alongside the sadness, and the feeling of loneliness that had already taken root in his heart in anticipation of what it would feel like to watch Gabriella drive away. He trotted to his apartment behind the bar, willing himself to keep his emotions in check long enough to see her off with a forced smile on his face. She probably felt bad enough, he didn’t need to make her feel any worse by acting like a child.
In his apartment, the cool air that usually brought immediate relief from the desert heat offered no salve for his pain. He gathered the few items he’d managed to gather in the short time Gabriella had been in Ditcher’s Valley. How long had that been? How long had she been there? Two days? Three days? How had she made him feel this way in such little time? He, who used to brag about his lone wolf nature, who thought he’d never need a woman around to make him feel whole, had let himself fall hard over the short course of three days.
It seemed impossible. It seemed like something that only happened in cheesy romance novels. But there he was, living proof.
And damn, did he hate it.
Gabriella’s face was not the one looking back at him from the passport and driver’s license he held, but it was close. The face on both documents was much more Latina. But it would do. It would pass. It was the same fake passport, the same fake driver’s license, that the club doled out to illegal immigrants who could afford the luxury get-into-America package.
The names were different, but the pictures were the same. Gabriella was so much more beautiful than all those other women, Reign felt irrationally ashamed to be giving her the forged documents. But they’d have to do; he hadn’t had enough time to get her to sit for a new picture.
The phone he’d bought was the same model, style, and carrier as his own. Commonly known as a burner phone, and most often associated with shady figures hanging out in alleys, handing out free samples of low-grade black tar heroin to anyone who copped a dimebag. But it, too, would do. It would have to.
He flipped open the screen and quickly added his number to the contacts list. At least, his current number. Soon, probably, he’d find himself with a new burner, a new phone, and then she wouldn’t be able to find him. He found her burner’s number on the packaging and entered it into his own contacts. Same story, though. Eventually, she’d get a new phone. She’d have a new life. They’d never cross paths again…
The thought was too painful to dwell on, and he let it pass through his mind quickly, without lingering. His heart felt like it was in a vise, and every moment that passed brought him closer to losing her, tightened the screws a bit more. It would be better to just get it over with. The waiting to lose her – that, surely, was the worst of it.
It had to be. Didn’t it?
He left his apartment, trotted back to the bar. She hadn’t moved, was sitting behind her veil of hair at the bar. Didn’t even look up as he drew near. Honey and Endo were still acting like they had front-row seats to the hottest concert of the summer, though when he shot them a knowing sneer they got busy looking elsewhere.
He wondered what Endo was doing outside of the kitchen; as far as Reign knew, he was supposed to be on lunch duty. But it didn’t matter; being next in line to lead the club meant Reign knew about what happened at the bar but wasn’t required to give a damn about the day-to-day operations. He knew his interest lay mostly in his irritation over Endo and Honey acting like they had the right to peek in on this private moment.
He lay his hand on Gabriella’s shoulder and she jumped. When she looked at him, he saw only fear in her eyes. That was worse than the tears.
I’m gonna go kill her husband, he suddenly thought. I’ll go to Colorado and I’ll kill him and then she can come back to me.
You’re gonna do that like you’re gonna set fire to the bar, the rational part of him said. He knew he would do nothing of the sort. It was one thing to harbor a slave; another thing entirely to lynch the slaver. He didn’t need to make any waves outside of Utah, not for himself and not for the Black Smokes. His duty and his life were one in the same. She was his heart, but that had to take the backseat.
“Oh,” she said as he lay his gifts out on the bar.
“The phone can’t be traced to you. Neither can the ID’s. They’ll get you where you need to go, baby. And I’ll make some calls, and get you a contact down in Juarez. My number’s in there,” Reign said, pointing the phone, which Gabriella held, staring at it like it was some sort of strange alien food. She nodded, though. He reached out to her again, this time taking her chin between his fingers and lifting her face to his.
“You can call me whenever,” he said, keeping his eyes on hers although they wanted to look elsewhere. It hurt so much to look into those eyes, but it would haunt him forever if he decided this was the right moment to take the easy way out. “Say it. Tell me when you can call me.”
She croaked out something. He smiled, shook his head.
“Say it, baby.”
“I can call you whenever,” she finally said after taking a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes, opened them quickly when he gave her chin the slightest shake. She looked like maybe she was trying to smile back, like she was trying to be brave. That was a good idea. She’d need to be brave.
“I don’t know how these things happen, baby. I ain’t ever felt anything like this before in hella years. And three days was all it took. Damn, they say these words are hard to say but…shit, I never knew how right they were,” Reign said, forcing a chuckle. He was telling the truth; there were women, many women, too many women, who’d wanted to hear those words, and to whom he’d said them. They’d rolled right off the tongue, easy as pie, and he hadn’t mean them in the slightest.
Now, when it was true, when it was all he could feel, when it seemed like every speck of dust and drop of water on the earth had been put there just to bring him to Gabriella’s arms, he couldn’t say those words. They caught in his throat, threatened to choke him if he didn’t swallow. Or cough them out.
“I love you,” he finally managed, and watched as her face flit from joy to sorrow to joy to sorrow -- tossing and turning from one to the other at breakneck speed. She opened her mouth as though to say something in return, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he leaned in, met her parted lips with his own, and took all of her in that one moment. It seemed to stretch out forever and end too soon all at the same time, their tongues meeting briefly, one last breathless embrace.
And then she was gone.
~ 25 ~
The truck slowed to a crawl passing the motel and bar. A gleaming red Ford Mustang sat in front of room 7. So she got new wheels after all, Silas thought, happy he’d thought to double-check. He’d assumed something of the sort had happened when the car that had been parked outside her room had disappeared the second day she’d been there.
Of course, it was possible that the Mustang belonged to a new guest – but he knew enough about shitty motels in shitty towns to know that if it was empty and the staff had the choice to clean a dirty room and put someone new in it or not clean the dirty room and just put newcomers in a different room, the latter was
the most likely.
There was still a little risk that she’d already skipped town, but Silas was confident enough she hadn’t not to risk going back into the bar to wait for her to show up. He was done spying; he’d been there too long anyway, and it would only draw more attention now that he’d skipped a day of pretending to be a barfly.
“That’s where she’s staying?” Jeremy demanded.
“Could be. Could be in her new beau’s room now,” Silas answered noncommittally. Of course, it was true. She was probably keeping her stuff in the motel room and lounging in bed with her biker stud at that very moment. Reign was probably tickling her in all the right places, making her squeal like a pig. The image amused him, especially considering the fact that the fuming, jilted husband beside him was probably thinking the same thing with considerably less good humor.
“Shut up,” Jeremy grunted, and Silas bit back a smile. He hit the gas and sped off past the bar. If he’d gone a little slower, if he’d rolled past a few minutes later, he would have seen Gabriella dashing from the bar to the Ford. He would have seen Reign follow her outside and stand watching from the wooden porch as she peeled out of the parking space. He would have seen her pull up beside him, their eyes locked, their mouths closed in solemn understanding.
As it was, he missed all that, but it worked out for him. If he’d seen all that, he would never have had the time to put his plan in action the right way. He’d have to make something up on the fly, something Silas was quite capable of but preferred to avoid whenever possible.
When he did see that car again, they were a mile or so ahead of her. He narrowed his eyes, squinting into the rearview, and muttered “shit” under his breath. Jeremy, who had nothing to do but listen to Silas’ breathing, picked up on it, his head snapping towards Silas.
“What?” Jeremy demanded. Silas rolled his eyes, favored Jeremy with a condescending smile.
“Nothing,” Silas said. “Just looks like you won’t have to do much waiting, after all. Looks like the girl’s on the move.”
He nodded towards the rearview mirror even as he sped up, breaking the speed limit without a whit of concern. Jeremy had just a glimpse of bright red on the road behind them before it was blotted out by the dust rising around the truck’s tires.
“Are we ready? Shit, are we ready?” Jeremy asked, lifting himself up in his seat, his eyes widening. Go ahead and have your little shitfit, kid, but don’t fuck this up for us, Silas thought.
“We’re fine. I’m just gonna put a few more miles between us. But you’re gonna have to be quick with that spike strip. You look strong enough,” Silas said, hoping his voice would be enough to calm the cop down. He only needed Jeremy to help him with the spikes that would rip Gabriella’s tires to shreds; after that, Jeremy could go full-on psycho.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jeremy said, now seeming eager to please. Silas could get used to this side of Jeremy. A few minutes later, the road was nearly enveloped by a fog of sand and dust, and the red Mustang was nowhere in sight. Silas veered off quickly, coming to a sudden stop on the side of the road.
“Now,” he barked, and Jeremy hopped to it. Musta been a great student at the Academy, Silas thought, noting how suddenly attentive and obedient Jeremy had become. A great clanking clatter from the bed of the truck as Silas got out told him that they’d have no trouble getting the spike strip on the road before Mrs. Policeman could catch sight of them. He watched Jeremy trot across the road, spreading the strip as he went. Silas leaned against the truck, a wicked smile on his face. This job was even easier than he thought it’d be.
~ 26 ~
It had gotten mighty dusty mighty quick. Stupidly, I turned on the windshield wipers, but they did nothing to dispel the blowing dust. Leaning forward, I squinted through the haze.
As the dust seemed to settle a bit, I noticed something glinting on the road before me; in the hazy heat waves baking off the tar, it was impossible to tell what it was, and to be frank it didn’t really make me think twice. I wish it had. When I look back on everything, it’s one of the things I can’t seem to stop fixating on: if I’d slowed down, if I’d realized, if I’d been more aware…
Reign says not to beat myself up about it. No one in my position would have done anything different. They make those things specifically so that you can’t tell what they are. They wouldn’t be very good tools if anyone could just tell they were there.
But you can’t help what your brain decides to latch on to when it comes to regrets.
At any rate, I didn’t slow down. I didn’t know what was coming. Even when I got closer and saw the truck pulled off to the side of the road; what did I know, then, about who was waiting in that truck? Why would I believe it was anything except a guy checking his voicemail, or a family of three consulting a map?
I just sped on, feeling low and like crying despite the image I was putting out into the world: I looked like Thelma, or Louise, driving off to freedom with the wind in her hair. I felt like hell.
Though, to be fair, I can’t say I didn’t also feel a little bit better by virtue of being back on the road; the directionless terror and anxiety that had taken up residence in my stomach seemed to be abating with each mile I put behind me. But Reign’s smile kept flashing in my mind, and with it I’d feel something new (and awful) in my stomach.
A falling feeling, like a dream you know you can’t wake up from, a dream where you’re tumbling headfirst into nowhere with nothing to stop you or slow you down. All I knew was that I was leaving behind the first thing that had made me happy in years, and I was leaving it behind for a future that was uncertain at best.
But all those thoughts would be cut short soon. Does it sound crazy if I say that it was almost a relief when I heard the awful popping noises, and suddenly felt my new car skidding, veering wildly? At least it was a respite from my thoughts, of Jeremy and Reign and everything in between. I only felt fear, mortal fear, temporary fear.
In a panic, I clutched the steering wheel, reality still elusive, my mind fixated on nothing but keeping myself from turning the car over and being crushed into the dirt. What the fuck, I thought as I heard the terrible screeching of metal against pavement, my car slowing even as it slid across the dusty road, my heart falling as the panic was replaced by a sense of hopelessness. I still thought that it was just bad luck; a flat tire caused by some act of fate, a way for the universe to punish me, a sign that nothing would ever be easy, nothing would ever come cheap.
The Mustang finally came to a screeching, painful stop – in the middle of the highway. I was done. I hunched forward, my forehead meeting the front of the steering wheel. I bet you’ve found yourself doing the exact same thing at some point or another: groaning, two hands still on the wheel, rubbing your forehead against the leather, back and forth, hoping that when you come back up and open your eyes and look around everything is, somehow, better.
Of course, sticking your head in the sand has been proven to work zero times out of ten.
At least there’s whoever’s in that truck, I suddenly thought, happy to at least not be all alone. I heard the sound of slamming doors from behind me. I was so thankful. I was so stupidly, naively thankful that I wasn’t going to have to try and push my car off the road by myself, that maybe someone would keep me company while I waited for a tow truck in the blaring heat. Maybe they could help me put on the donut that had come in the truck, and I wouldn’t need a tow at all…
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a bit of trouble, miss,” someone said. Not just someone. I knew that voice. I knew that voice when it yelled, when it whispered, when it cursed, when it said “I love you.” I knew that voice better than I knew my own.
My heart went cold, my blood stopped flowing, and my stomach packed a bag and took a flight straight up my throat. My mouth felt dryer than the air around me. No, no, no, no, I thought, unable to lift my head from the wheel, trying frantically to tell myself it was just a trick of my addled mind. I knew it wasn’t, but it was all I could
do to keep myself from pissing my pants.
It was impossible. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair! He couldn’t be here! He couldn’t have found me, and he couldn’t have fucked up my car, and he couldn’t be standing beside my passenger-side door, and he couldn’t be there! If he was, it just meant that I was destined for misery, that I would never have a good thing in my whole entire life, that I must have been some sort of awful in a past life and was paying for it now.
There was silence for a long moment. A silence that felt heavy, full of things that were going to be said, full of words waiting to be screamed. There was only one way to confirm what I knew to be true, or to prove that I was just experiencing some sort of desert psychosis. Slowly, with my breath still trapped in my lungs, as though if I didn’t breathe it would stop happening, I began to raise my head.
I didn’t make it very far.
My forehead hit the steering wheel again, this time with the help of a strong grip on my hair. I heard a crunch as my skull met the leathery surface, and my last thought before everything fell into a world of painful red flashes was that I’d been asking for this. Maybe since I’d left, maybe since I’d married him, maybe since the day I’d been born, I’d been asking for this. Pain unfolded inside me like a snake that had been waiting to strike. The world dissolved. After that, there was nothing but pain.