Spoken like a true idiot. Seriously, sometimes I’m sure my father was right about my witlessness all along. I really didn’t want Cross to come to the same conclusion, but I fear that the boat has sailed on that one right now, never to return.
“Their President and his sons are dead,” Cross says. “As are the guys he brought with him to meet us last night. We’ll start taking out the rest of them tonight. So by now, they know they’re under attack. Did you tell them you were with us?”
I shake my head. “No, they asked me no questions. And I wouldn’t have told them anything if they had.”
“At least there’s that,” Cross says. “But I want you to stick close by from now on. No more going off on your own, is that understood?”
I nod eagerly, then stop so suddenly my neck cramps up. Partly because I must’ve looked like an idiot doing it, but mostly because I need to go back to Brenda as soon as I can. Only now, I can’t.
“I won’t let you down again, Prez,” I say, and I do mean it, I honestly do. But another part is already making plans to disobey him. Because even if Brenda is waiting for me to return to that shabby motel room, she won’t wait forever. And I don’t want to face forever without knowing what the rest of her tastes like.
Brenda
That was the sweetest kiss I’ve gotten in years. The hungriest too. So for a while, after he left, I just lay there on the bed, enjoying my freedom, enjoying the knowledge that a guy rode to my rescue like some knight in shining armor on a white horse that was actually a well-kept Harley. Never did I imagine anything like that would happen for real. Sure, I tried to make it happen often, most recently with Josh. Who died in the cold pre-dawn hours half a year ago.
As soon as I remembered that something snapped inside my mind and I couldn’t unsee Crow’s dead eyes staring at me as he realized I’d shot him in the chest. He dropped his knife, clutches at his heart, blood flowing through his fingers, so thick and fast I felt it, saw it on my palms too. Then he dropped and died and we ran.
And the next thing I remember waking up in a soft warm bed with the arms of a man who almost died saving me around me.
That’s what I should focus on.
Not the deaths. Not the captivity. Not the fear. Not the guilt.
Freedom.
But that’d be a whole lot easier if Colt didn’t leave with no promises of when he’ll be back, just that he will be.
How long’s this room even paid for? He didn’t even tell me that.
Do I even deserve him to come back after all the death and misery I’ve caused?
But Crow would’ve killed me. He’d have cut me up like an animal. I start shivering as that image explodes in my mind so vividly I can hear the dry grass hissing and the cold wind sliding over my naked skin.
I get up and put on my dirty clothes. They smell of piss and sweat and being worn too long. Whether Colt ever returns or not, I’ll need some more clothes. There’s gotta be a mall around here somewhere, there’s always one nearby out in the country. And if there ever was anything that could get my mind off miserable, hard truths it was shopping.
Life’s too short to worry or fret or feel guilty and to not have fun in general. I learned that watching my mom slowly but surely lose her mind by the age of thirty. I might be going that way too. And I sure as hell won’t go there feeling bad. Or feeling guilty over killing a creep like Crow. The world’s a better, safer place without him in it.
Colt
Blaze is waiting for me at the end of the hallway, his scowling face about as grey, maybe greyer. I try to keep my face expressionless as I walk towards him, but that’s not an easy thing to do with all the conflicting things shooting through my mind.
How will I go see Brenda now?
How will Cross react if I disobey what is now his direct order to stay put?
“How did it go?” Blaze asks as I reach him.
“He told me to stick around and do as I’m told from now on,” I reply.
“Or else?”
“He didn’t come out and say that part, but I think we both know the answer,” I say, my voice low and toneless.
I don’t want this morning’s kisses to be the end of Brenda and me knowing each other. But they very well might be all I get of her. Fuck my unlucky stars.
“I know that look, Colt,” he says as he falls in step with me on the way to where we keep the food and drinks. I don’t respond to his provocation.
The “kitchen” empty and dark and full of coolers. The odor is plastic mixed with the smell of cheese that’s not kept at a low enough temperature. Not appetizing, but I’m starving. I grab two sandwiches from one cooler, and a couple of bottles of water, and a sports drink from another. With the mood I’m in, I might’ve opted for a beer, but there’s nothing alcoholic in this bunker unless one of the brothers has a stash. I doubt that, though. Cross doesn’t want us drunk on this job. It’s too important.
“No breakfast, huh?” Blaze says and takes a sandwich too.
“I was told to come right back here,” I say in a more surly tone than I intended and walk to the adjacent room where tables and benches are set up into a sort of makeshift cafeteria.
Blaze has caught on that I’m in no mood to talk and follows me in silence, then sits next to me in silence as I take the first bite of my sandwich. Once I’m done eating it and drinking a bottle and a half of water, I feel better. Food always has that effect on me.
“So, basically, Cross said you can’t go see that new lady friend of yours,” Blaze observes. “Only not in so many words. And it’s put you in a foul mood.”
He’s read my mind correctly, as he usually does. I just look at him, don’t even need to nod for him to know he’s right, as I rip open the plastic wrap around the second sandwich.
“She said she’s gonna wait for me at the motel I took her to, but why the fuck should she if I don’t show up back there soon?” I say in between bites.
“I doubt she’s gonna wait,” he muses annoyingly.
“And I can’t go see her without fucking things over even worse with Cross,” I say.
“But you want to do exactly that,” Blaze snaps. “It’s written all over your face.”
His eyes are angry, livid even, the way they always are when he thinks I’m acting like an idiot.
“She’s something else, man,” I tell him and chuckle. “I’ve never met a woman quite like her.”
Blaze rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I can name five you’ve said this same thing about and describe at least five more. And where are they now?”
“Where I left them,” I admit. “But this one is different, I swear. She’s just so wicked and yet so pure somehow. Like a force of nature. Like two opposing forces of nature meeting.”
“Christ, Colt, how do you come up with this shit?”
“And she saved my life. I can’t just disappear on her now.”
“After you endangered it saving hers,” Blaze says. “I’d say that makes you even.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say and chew the last bite of my second sandwich viciously, then wash it down with the sports drink, gulping it down so fast I start coughing.