by Sybil Bartel
I wasn’t some sheltered hick. I knew life wasn’t fair. More than anyone, I knew that to be true. He didn’t have to rub it in my face when I was asking a simple question about how he felt.
Which, fine, he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to.
And I sure as heck wasn’t gonna waste any more breath trying to pry it out of him. He could keep his dang feelings if he wanted them so bad. I didn’t need them.
Or him.
Anger still simmering, I glanced behind me.
A frown as big as any expression he ever made covered his face as he stared at the approaching crossroads, and I suddenly felt like a jerk for being mad at him. He’d killed for me today. He’d protected me without a single second of hesitation. He wasn’t asking nothing of me, and here he was riding a Harley for the first time, worrying about a turn because he ain’t never been on a bike.
Sweet Jesus.
Did I really have a right to grill him about something I was pretty damn sure wasn’t even in his vocabulary before he got himself beaten and stabbed and thrown out of the only life he ever knew? Of course I didn’t.
I came to a stop and cupped my hands at my mouth to holler over the roar of the engines. “Pull your clutch in. Don’t stall out!”
Braking much smoother than last time, Tarquin glided the Softail to a stop and came up next to me, putting his feet down.
His voice even, he looked at me without annoyance or anger. “I have not seen anyone behind us yet.”
“Me neither.” I’d been checking my rearview mirror, worrying who’d be after us by now.
“You were angry with me,” he stated without preamble.
Shaking my head, I smiled without humor. “I can’t get nothin’ past you, can I?”
“No,” he replied before giving me another peek into his past. “When no one speaks to you, you learn to read expressions. They are more telling than words.”
“Well, I’m sure my expression said I was hopin’ you’d declare your undyin’ love for me forever and ever.” I let out an awkward half snort, half laugh.
He didn’t even smile. “There is nothing I dislike about you.”
I felt guilty all over again for being mad at him. Embarrassed, ashamed, I didn’t know what I was, but stupid words came out of my mouth. “Be still my heart.”
“I am not making a joke.”
Inhaling a lungful of fresh air laced with citrus blooms, I told myself to get a grip. “I’m sorry. Just ignore me. It’s been… quite a day.” I glanced up and down the road. “So we got two choices from here,” I began, trying to change the subject and get out of the uncomfortable mess I’d created. “We can—”
“I will never ignore you.”
God help me, my heart tripped. Worse, the seriousness of his tone and expression made me feel like it was an opening to get him to share more of his feelings. But I wasn’t gonna pry the lid off another can of worms with a game of twenty questions, so I just gave him my gratitude. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
His gaze intent on me, he stared. Then after a beat, he nodded once. “You are welcome. What are our options?”
For a long moment, all I could do was stare back at him.
The perfectly sharp angles to his face, his sun-streaked blond hair, the muscles in his shoulders as he held his bike—he was so intense and so beautiful, I was questioning whether I deserved his attention at all.
Telling myself it was fate that brought us together, I swallowed past a lump in my throat and ignored the heat between my legs that never seemed to go away anymore whenever he was near. “Okay. There’s two ways to get to the cabin from here. We can take the road goin’ south. It swings behind my daddy’s property, and it’s the shortest way to get there. Or we can go north, make a big loop through Homestead, then come at the area the cabin is in from the north. It’ll be a bit of a longer hike once we’re on foot, but we won’t be skirtin’ Daddy’s property.”
“The north route,” he answered without hesitation.
“Well,” I hedged, “here’s the issue with the north way. We’ll be goin’ on county and state roads, and we’re drivin’ two stolen bikes. If we get pulled over or spotted, we’re toast.”
Glancing first south, then north, his gaze came back to mine. “How crowded will the roads to the north be?”
“This time of day?” I shrugged. “No tellin’. Not many people live out here, but it’s quittin’ time, and people’ll be comin’ and goin’ as they leave work and head home.”
“What if we wait until well past nightfall?”
I shrugged again. “Less traffic. But that’ll also make us more visible. We don’t have any helmets, so two blonds on bikes? Rush’s club is probably already lookin’ for us.”
He thought for a moment. “The cabin is in a secure location?”
“I think so. As long as we don’t lead anyone toward it. No one I know has any idea about it, as far as I can tell. I think Daddy would’ve mentioned it before now if he knew it was there. He would’ve warned me off it or warned the bikers about it when they came for barbeques on the property. He would’ve told them to stay away from it. I figure if someone knew about the place, I would’ve heard mention of it, but I never have.”
“If we leave the motorcycles where they can be discovered, it will lead them in that general direction.”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
His eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“You said motorcycle instead of motorbike.”
His shoulders lifted with an inhale, but he otherwise ignored my grin. “I think we should go north after nightfall and take the time between now and then to dispose of one of the motorcycles where it will not lead to the cabin’s location.”
“That’s a solid plan, but I think I got a better one.” I smiled. “Hear me out?”
She smiled.
It was without any pretense or motive. Pure of heart, it was a smile of innocence, and I did not want any other man seeing it.
“Explain,” I demanded, the urge to take her again already sharp.
“Okay, well. remember how I told you Rooney at work can get anything, and he got you your antibiotics?”
I already disliked her plan. “We should not reveal our whereabouts to anyone.”
“No, no, nothin’ like that. We’ll go to him.”
I shook my head. “No. It is not safe.”
She held a hand up. “Just hear me out. Rooney is such an obvious choice, they won’t think to look for us there. Mama will have told Daddy that we’re headin’ to Kentucky, and if we keep to the same plan of goin’ north, but stop by Rooney’s, we’ll just let the same information slip, and it’ll only solidify our story. But more, Rooney isn’t only good for gettin’ things that you can’t otherwise normally get. He fences stuff too. Let’s give him the Road King and take some cash for it. It’s a win-win.”
I hated the idea. “No.”
“What do you got against money? It’s not like we have any.” Her eyes narrowed more with challenge than suspicion. “Unless you’ve been holdin’ out on me?”
“The only thing of value I had, I gave to you.”
She frowned. “You did?”
“My knife.” The knife the same brother who had made me memorize the address had given me. The knife he had put in my hand when I had thought I would draw my last breath.
“Oh!” She pulled it out of her pocket and ran her thumb over the ornate handle before handing it to me. “It’s a beautiful knife. Thank you… for trusting me with it.”
Holding the motorcycle steady, I nodded and secured the knife in my pocket. “I do not have anything against money. I know it is a necessity, but not at the expense of your safety.”
“My safety?” She looked surprised. “What about yours?”
I did not address her question. “We are not doing it.”
She sighed. “Okay, look, if we wind up needing to actually run, as in not stay at the cabin, we’re gonna need cash. This is the
only way I know how to get some other than what I took from work before I hightailed it out of there.”
“Then we already have some money.”
She smirked. “You can never have too much money.”
Thirsty, hungry, on edge, I did not want to argue with her. “I am not discussing it further.”
“Okay, great, it’s settled. We’ll head north, find a place to pull off the road and get the bikes hidden. When it’s well and truly dark, we’ll go to Rooney’s and get rid of this beast.” She patted the bike between her thighs. Then she taunted me. “Unless you’re worried about ridin’ that Softail on the main roads?”
My jaw ticked. I did not comment.
“Okeydokey then,” she said cheerfully. “It’s settled. Follow me.”
Before I could protest, she was off.
I put my motorcycle into gear and gave it gas.
The initial start smoother than the previous ones, it was almost enough of a rush to have me forget my anger at her plan to put herself in danger.
Following her, I made a wide but relatively smooth turn onto the paved road before shifting through the gears and catching up to her. I still could not reconcile a female on a motorcycle, but with my woman’s hair blowing behind her and the confidence in her posture, it was hard to deny she belonged on the Harley.
The wind rushing by, the power of the machine, the speed, it was intoxicating like I would imagine a drug to be.
I did not want to quit this feeling.
I wanted to keep riding.
But I could not forget what had transpired today.
As soon as the last two bodies were discovered, we would be hunted by more than just her father.
We needed to get off this paved road.
I led us as far north as I dared before turning off the county road into an old hunting preserve. Even though I’d lived in this area for years, I rarely left Daddy’s property. Daddy used to take me riding when I was younger, and he’d take this very route. Sometimes he’d take me into Miami proper and take me shopping or to a sit-down restaurant to eat.
But the past few years, those trips had become so infrequent that I’d stopped expecting them. And the last time he took me to eat, we didn’t even take Daddy’s Street Glide. One of the Lone Coasters who’d been driving Daddy around for a year drove us. Using his rearview mirror, the jerk eyed me in the back seat the whole time. Daddy pretended like nothing was wrong, and he never mentioned it, but next time he came to visit me and Mama, he had a new driver. I never saw that jerk who’d eyed me again. Not even at one of the barbeques Daddy hosted out at the house.
Driving around the chained, single-arm gate that blocked the road into the preserve, I glanced behind me to make sure Tarquin made the turn without incident, but I shouldn’t have worried. He’d taken to riding like a fish to water.
I drove around back of the single building that housed a public restroom and cut the engine on the Road King.
Tarquin pulled up beside me and smoothly glided to a stop without stalling out his Softail before cutting his engine.
I smiled at him in the post twilight darkness. “Good job.”
He put the kickstand down and swung his leg off the bike like he’d done it a million times. “Good job doing what? I have done nothing.”
He’d protected me, learned to ride, made love to me, and saved my life, all in a day’s work. I fought a sarcastic smirk and tried instead to learn a taste of his kind of honesty. “Riding. You did good today.”
Pausing in his scan of our surroundings, his gaze cut back to me. “What is inside this building?”
For a second, he threw me. The two doors in front with the little pictures of the filled-out stick figures of a man and woman were self-explanatory to me. But that didn’t mean it was how they did things at River Ranch. “Restrooms. One marked for boys and one marked for girls. Did you have unisex bathrooms at River Ranch?”
He shook his head once and resumed scanning. “The females had their own facilities in the women’s quarters.”
“And you?”
“The men had their own in the men’s quarters.”
“So you like, what, all bunked together?”
He walked to the edge of the building and scanned the road coming in even though we hadn’t passed another soul out here for miles. “Mostly.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “So you had roommates? Kinda like the barracks in the military?” I’d read about that in one of my history books.
His gaze cut north. “I am familiar with the term, but I do not know specifically what the military does.”
“Soldiers all room together, in training, in battle. Sometimes buildings, sometimes tents.”
He turned to face me, and I was taken aback again by how striking he was.
His eyes almost looked clear in the moonlight shining down on his face. “Then, yes, it was like that. Some of the men, the elders and the hunters, had their own quarters. It was a hierarchy system. The higher up your post, the more privilege you received. As a digger, I did not warrant private quarters.”
Curiosity got the best of me. “What if you claimed a woman?”
“I would have claimed a female, not a woman,” he corrected. “And if I won rights, then I would have been granted private quarters to occupy.” He looked to the south.
“Did they have their own bathroom?” I couldn’t imagine sharing a bathroom.
“A toilet and a sink. Showers used too much water for the septic system on site, so they were off system behind the quarters.”
I frowned. “Off system? So what, you like showered outside?”
He nodded once.
“Every day?” That sounded like camping, and not dissimilar to what we’d have to do at the cabin. Which, now that it was getting close, the very idea of it was starting to sink in, and I didn’t think I’d fully prepared myself for the reality of that.
He stopped scanning our surroundings and focused his gaze back on me. “I do not understand the question.”
“Every time you wanted to shower, you did it outside? No matter the weather?” He was so close, I could reach out and touch him, but I didn’t.
His arms at his side, his body still, he made no move to touch me either. “Yes.”
I rubbed my hand over my throat. “We’re gonna have to do the same at the cabin,” I admitted.
His eyes tracked the movement of my hand. “I did not think any different.”
Oh Lord, thinking about the shower made me realize the other issue. The big issue. “So, um, there’s no toilet at the cabin.” And when it was just me going there, I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal. I’d even practiced doing my business in the woods and covering it up afterward. I figured it wouldn’t be too bad a tradeoff for freedom until I could figure out a long-term plan, or until Daddy gave up looking for me, thinking I was either dead or gone.
But staring at a man who was well over six feet, it made the situation… bigger.
“When you said the cabin had a well pump outside, I did not presume there would be any indoor plumbing.” His voice calm and steady, he gently grasped my wrist and brought my hand off my throat before letting go of my wrist.
The single touch made my nerves sing. “So, we’ll have to…” I waved my hand around awkwardly. “You know. Outside.” I blushed, hard.
As if seeing my embarrassment, he swept a single finger across my cheek. “I am aware.”
Despite my jacket, I shivered. “That doesn’t bother you?” I mean, I’d stocked toilet paper. And I’d heard you could use leaves in a pinch, and oh sweet Jesus, I didn’t even know how I was having a conversation about this, let alone thinking about it when he was looking at me like he was.
His gaze dropped to my lips. “There are many worse things.”
The air between us suddenly too warm, his comment too close to home, I stepped back and tried not to think of his hands on me or what would happen to us if Daddy or Rush’s club found us. Needing to change the su
bject, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Did any of the men try to claim a female just so they could get private quarters?” Saying female and quarters in any other conversation would have seemed out of place, but with Tarquin, the words rolled off my tongue as if I’d been using them to describe women and housing my whole life. Maybe that should’ve bothered me, but like he’d said, there were many worse things.
Walking behind me, he scanned the other side of the building. “I am sure that was the motivation behind some of the men’s attempts.”
“Attempts?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Not many men survived the claiming rights.”
Oh dear Lord. “Meanin’?”
He came back to stand in front of me. Picking up a strand of my hair, he glanced at it as he spoke. “Meaning many died trying.”
I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. When I spoke, my voice was as unsure as I felt asking a question I didn’t really want the answer to. “Then you had to bury them?”
Nodding once like he wasn’t affected by the whole thing, he slid his hand down the strand of my hair he had caught between his thumb and first two fingers. “I have never seen hair your color.”
“It’s natural,” I defended, not sure why I was bothering.
“Why would it not be?”
“Some women dye their hair.” Sweet Jesus, there was so much he didn’t know about the world, that if I stopped to think about it, it’d overwhelm me faster than a semi with no brakes.
“I do not want you to ever dye it.”
A half laugh, half unladylike snort came out, because that’s what he did to me. This man made me nervous like nobody’s business. “I don’t plan on it. Except maybe when I’m old and gray, then maybe I’ll dye it back to its original color so you don’t leave me for some young thing with pretty strawberry-blonde hair.”
“Is that what your hair color is called?” He didn’t address the leaving me comment.
“Yes.” I wanted him to address that comment. I wanted him to deny it because everything about him made me crazy with jealousy.